EU

The Dutch city of Amsterdam’s plans to have 10,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2015 got a boost yesterday with the announcement of €3 million in subsidies to make encourage businesses to the switch.

Companies in the city will be able to apply for up to 50% of the costs of buying an electric vehicle up to a maximum of €15,000 for a car, €25,000 for a van or €45,000 for a truck or taxi. Grants of up to €250,000 are also available for businesses wanting to invest in an electric fleet of up to 20 vehicles.

Electric vehicles will be eligible to park in the city for free and use any one of the city’s networked recharging points, which are being installed by US company Coulomb Technologies.

The city plans to have around 200 charging points at strategic locations on the roadside and at park and ride facilities within the next two years. Energy company Nuon will provide renewable energy to power the recharging stations.

Amsterdam is also one of the cities planning to participate in a potential major European effort to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles and last year took delivery of an initial 500 TH!NK city cars.

For further information:
www.nieuwamsterdamsklimaat.nl/
www.coulombtech.com
www.nuon.com/
 

Related stories:
Electric vehicle infrastructure powers ahead (27-Jan)
European cities, energy suppliers and carmakers join forces on electric vehicles (21-Jan)
Amsterdam to install electric vehicle charging network (28-May 2009)
Think delivers first electric cars to the Netherlands (25-Mar 2009)