Since June this year, Bulgaria has its first interurban main road with full charging coverage for electric vehicles. The road from Sofia to Kulata, the busiest route to Greece, is secured with 3 charging stations. This makes the road to our southern neighbor possible for every serial electric vehicle. A new rapid charging station in Sandanski has been opened as this is the second station on the route after the one in Blagoevgrad. The third location is on the main road E79, at the parking lot of “Seas Cars – Sandanski”. The infrastructure was built by eMobility International through its integrated Eldrive platform. The company aims to develop the electromobility on the Balkan Peninsula by building a network of rapid charging stations (DC) and standard stations (AC) in urban environment and along the major main roads of Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Greece and Albania.
The stations allow rapid charging in accordance with the two industry-approved standards – CHAdeMO for Asian manufacturers and CCS – used by most European manufacturers. The stations have a power of 50 kW DC and allow the charging of the mass electric car models in less than 30 minutes.
By the end of 2018, the company plans to build charging stations along other major interurban arteries in the country. At present, Eldrive’s charging points for electric vehicles are 32, of which 8 are rapid-charging. The stations are located in Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas, Blagoevgrad, Albena and Damianitsa. You can find an interactive map with the charging locations on the Eldrive’s website. Payment for the charging service is done after an online registration on the website and can be done via mobile phone as well.
Global practices
While the number of electric vehicles was insignificant five years ago, it reached 2 million in 2016. Currently, China is the largest electric vehicle market with a 40% share of sold electric vehicles worldwide, according to data from a report of the International Energy Agency (IEA). This is double the number of electric cars sold in the USA. At the beginning of June, the number of public charging stations there was 16,038. In the USA, the sharp increase of the number of charging stations for electric cars and hybrids began in 2011, when Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt entered the market. Today, there are some 650,000 plug-in hybrids in the USA. Only Tesla Model S exceeded 100,000 units sold since the model was released on the market five years ago. In Europe a strong supporter of electromobility are the Netherlands. In Eindhoven electric buses have also been launched with a capacity of 110 passengers, running for 3 hours before charging, which takes 30 minutes. The city plans to have more than half of its buses powered by electricity by 2020. Globally, the registered electric vehicles with plug-in charging and the battery-powered electric vehicles went up by 60% year-on-year, according to Global EV Outlook 2017. Despite the sharp increase, electric cars account only for 0.2% of all cars.
In Bulgaria
In Bulgaria the sales of electric vehicles in 2016 increased almost 3 times year-on-year, according to statistics of the Industrial Cluster “Electric Cars”. This year several higher education institutions will open specialties related to electromobility and green energies.
Vocational High School “Velizar Peev” in Svoge will be the first school in the country to start admission of students in the specialty “Electromobiles” and the European Polytechnic University of Pernik is the first higher school with accreditation in the professional field “Green Energy” and also has permission to create bachelor’s specialty “Electromobiles”.
The first course for electric mobility trainers was completed on June 30. It took place in Sofia, at Todor Kableshkov University of Transport. Another course for trainers is expected to start. The aim is the qualification of the trainers to meet the training needs of the new specialties in the vocational high schools in Sofia, Svoge, Varna and Haskovo.