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  • Accelerating electric recharging infrastructure deployment in Europe

    2016 and 2017 are set to be decisive years for accelerating the deployment of electric recharging infrastructure and subsequently for paving the way for an EU Single Market for electro-mobility.

    In fact, November 2016 is the deadline for the submission of EU Member States’ National Policy Frameworks (NPFs) which will lay out each country’s implementation plan for the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure (AFI) Directive 2014/94/EU. The next months will therefore be crucial for Member States as well as EU policy makers to ensure a coordinated implementation of the AFI Directive throughout the EU and to define key measures to remove barriers to the deployment of charging infrastructure in the private and public domain.

    To this end, this paper provides a number of recommendations for the implementation of the Directive and more specifically for a pragmatic and innovation-oriented implementation of standards mandated by the AFI Directive; namely the deployment of normal- and high-power recharging infrastructure; intermodal electro-mobility synergies; shore side electricity; smart charging; payment solutions and appropriate parking schemes. If left unchecked, these issues could have negative consequences for the wider uptake of electro-mobility, by damaging investor confidence in the technology and burdening EV users with higher costs as a result of market fragmentation and the prevalence of proprietary solutions.