Prague will have 100 new fast chargers for electric cars by 2025
By 2025, 100 new high-speed chargers for electric cars will be built in Prague. Pražská energetika and Škoda Auto are working together on their construction, following a cooperation protocol signed on Monday.
In the Czech Republic, there are already more than 15,000 battery or electric hybrid cars, mainly concentrated in Prague.
There are already around 2,000 charging points available throughout the Czech Republic. The two parties to the protocol have appointed representatives to a working group that will identify the places where the construction of charging stations will have the greatest effect.
By the end of 2025, approximately 200 charging stations should each be built in the capital within around a hundred HPC bays, each with a power of at least 150 kW.
It is expected that there will be up to half a million electric cars in the country by 2030.
The shift to electric vehicles will be accompanied by greater pressure from the government to diversify its energy sources and move away from dependence on fossil fuels towards renewable sources.
Times of crisis
Major automakers in Germany, South Korea and Japan — known as original equipment manufacturers or OEMs — are now making decisions about which production centers to convert to electric-vehicle-only production facilities.
According to analysts, the best contenders will be those who send the right signals.
Central Europe faces fierce competition from other production hubs in Europe, including Spain, which has spent 14 billion euros to develop an ‘ecosystem’ of electric vehicles and promote sales to consumers. This investment has paid off: the country is already building dozens of electric and hybrid vehicle models and attracting major new investments.
In Central Europe, Slovakia leads the pack, with nine models in production or planned. But the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland only produce a handful of models each.
A lack of government support for the expansion of the electric vehicle fleet in the region – where sales are only a fraction of those in major European markets – could also put countries at a disadvantage as automakers ponder where to build cars. electrical.
The capitals point out that the high price of electric vehicles is a significant problem for consumers in the region. But the Czech Republic, for example, offers no financial incentives to help potential buyers.
A spokesman for the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade said the government would allocate 1.3 billion euros to promote electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, but that money would have to be stretched over a decade.
The industry is now hoping that – given estimates of a CZK 186 billion (7.5 billion euro) increase in GDP and 40,000 new jobs – the government will step in to secure a key project: a “gigafactory of €4.4 billion batteries that Volkswagen has said it wants to place in the region.
