The Slovenia Times

New law designed to super-charge electric mobility

Energy
Ljubljana
The first Tesla supercharger station in Slovenia opens in Ljubljana.
Photo: Tamino Petelinšek/STA

The National Assembly has passed a law paving the way for a significant expansion of infrastructure for alternative fuels and a faster uptake of electric vehicles.

Described by the government as a keystone green transition act, the legislation sets out to introduce a dense publicly accessible network of refuelling and supply infrastructure for alternative fuels in transport.

While hydrogen and other types of alternative fuels are mentioned, the focus is on electric mobility as currently the most mature technology.

Charging network the main goal

The primary goal is to build a dense network of fast and ultra fast electric charging stations, the support infrastructure for which will be provided by ELES, the state-owned grid operator, under a public service obligation.

To achieve dense coverage, investors will be incentivised to build charging stations not just at locations that are commercially viable but in places where pure commercial interest is insufficient.

Operators of charging stations will also have to share capacity and price data with a new national digital platform, which will also contain information about potential new sites where they can build charging stations.

At the end of last year, there were just over 1,600 charging points in Slovenia.

The Ministry of the Environment, Climate and Energy estimates the cost of the law at around €230 million. Roughly half the money will come from RePower, an EU green transition facility, and the rest from vehicle registration fees and the national Climate Fund.

Electric vehicles have so far been exempted from the vehicle registration fee but that will no longer be the case. The fees will be determined in executive regulations but the law says they may not be higher for electric vehicles than for internal combustion vehicles with the same power.

Take-up of electric vehicles slow but accelerating

Slovenia is a laggard when it comes to the take-up of electric vehicles and Minister Bojan Kumer acknowledged that in his address to parliament. In 2021 the share of electric vehicles was just 1.3%. "Slovenia is lagging behind significantly," he said.

Nevertheless, the situation has been improving and in 2022 there were nearly 9,500 electric vehicles registered in Slovenia, an increase of more than 40% compared to the year before.

This year uptake has been even faster and almost 1,500 electric vehicles were newly registered in the first four months of the year alone, plus another 2,000 hybrids or plug-in hybrids.

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