I had a conversation with some friends that started with the following question:

Does it make sense to me to purchase a Diesel van or I should wait to the electric van?

To purchase a car/van is an investment to be analyzied, the disruption that is coming in terms of electric vehicles makes that some type of models do not make sense anymore.

This is specially important as the law is being adapted to fulfill the CO2 targets we have in the EU. Nobody wants to purchase a diesel van and 5 years later the valuation is zero because basically you cannot circulate in the city (there are local authorities applying this type of practices in big cities).

For cars the situation is different, the market already offers solutions and the trend is clear through the electric vehicles. The government is also promoting the procurement of electric vehicles through subventions, so these are things you can add to the analysis of cost.

The habits

are changing a lot, in my case, now we do not use the car at all during the week, and we only do it during weekends when we go out of city. I have jumped from doing 25.000 kms / year to drive just 11.000 kms / year.

In the city we live there are sharing car companies, so you can access to a car whenever you need.

We are asking ourselves if it makes sense to purchase a car or not.

European Green Vehicles Initiative,

EGVI is a is a contractual public-private partnership dedicated to delivering green vehicles and mobility system solutions which match the major societal, environmental and economic challenges ahead.

I have read the electrification roadmap defined for Europe which contains a lot of data related to:

• Stakeholders implied on this revolution.
• Forecast of readiness of the industry.
• Level of CO2 targets estimated and how they can be achieved.
• What are the legal aspects that need to change.
• How the electric net needs to evolve.
• What are the expected benefits of the changes.
• Logistics challenges for the transport of energy, the peaks of compsumption…
• Scenarios about the penetration of electric vehicles during next 15 years.
• The importance of the research projects and the local investments in the different countries for the right deployment of the whole thing in the different regions.
• How this initiative is founded by Horizon 2020 framework.

The document answers a lot of questions about where we are going to, and there are so many other challenges that right now are still not known.

In a nutshell, if you want to purchase a van now, you can do it, it will be useful for the next 10 – 15 years. The electrification roadmap document details that for vans there are still so many technical challenges that they need to be resolved, and they give a pesimistic forecast that the peaks of high presence of new sold vehicles will be happening around 2030.