Going electric: a challenge for the car-hire sector.

Going electric: a challenge for the car-hire sector. | Javier Coll

Majorca Daily Bulletin reporterPalma27/02/2020 04:01
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The Baleval association of vehicle-hire firms in the Balearics has called on the regional government to make aid available to these firms so that they can acquire vehicles with zero emissions. The association has also requested that the government instals electric charging points at firms' premises.

Baleval notes that there are 2,847 hotels with 441,284 beds in the Balearics. To serve these, there are 3,905 slow charging points, 261 that are semi-rapid and 200 rapid. Antoni Mas, the association's president, wants the government to make charging points available in order to support the government's demands regarding firms' electric vehicles. For this year, 0.6% of their fleets have to be electric, while two per cent of their purchases have to be electric. Mas believes that the government will in fact find it "totally impossible" to make available the number of charging points that will be needed this year.

In May last year, the transport minister Marc Pons stated that there would be an additional 561 charging points in 2020 on top of 361 more in 2019. For this, the ministry would provide 40% of the funding, with the remainder being private. Mas notes that no budgetary figure has been assigned to this project and that there hasn't been tendering for it.

The association is also once more demanding that there is a delay to the quota system for electric vehicles; this should be introduced over "a reasonable timeframe".