Diário de Notícias highlights tests to electric cars at the Lisbon Mobi Summit
The Mobility Summit will have two moments: a Warm Up in January, where the public will be able to test electric cars at Central Tejo and a conference in September with world experts.
(Text by Rute Coelho in Diário de Notícias, 12/12/2017)
Have you always wanted to test your driving in an electric car but never had the chance? You will be able to at the building of Central Tejo as part of the Mobility Experience. This is one of the events of the Lisbon Mobi Summit, or the Mobility Summit, organized by the Global Media Group (to which Diário de Notícias belongs) and EDP, a global energy company in partnership with Volkswagen and Via Verde, an electronic toll collection system used in Portugal.
This stage of the future, where the main trends in sustainable and ecological transport will be presented, will have two moments. The first moment of the Lisbon Mobi Summit is the Warm Up and is happening soon from January 26th to 28th 2018. During these three days, several workshops will take place, as well as the launching of the Global Mobi Awards. The Mobility Experience will happen at the weekend as part of a vast programme of activities inside the building of Central Tejo.
In September, the great four day event (dates yet to be announced) will take place with bigger dimensions and international ambitions. It will be at this occasion that the Lisbon Mobi Summit will gather Portuguese and international experts, companies, startups in the areas of mobility and energy, academics and top managers. At the weekend, members of the general public who didn’t test drive the cars of the future during the Warm Up in January will be able to sign up to the Mobility Experience to discover, test and experiment the new transport solutions.
The event should become “an unsurmountable milestone of mobility” where “new trends will be debated and promoted”, said Victor Ribeiro, CEO of Global Media Group, during the press conference of introduction to the Lisbon Mobi Summit that happened yesterday at the headquarters of EDP in Lisbon.
The Summit will have four central axes: Cities, Networks, Technology, Business and Citizens. “We want to involve the people, the families, in the experience” of new models of transportation, said José Carlos Lourenço, COO of Global Media Group.
In 2025, “the car of the future will be electric, autonomous and shared”, predicted Ricardo Tomaz, director of Strategic Marketing and External Relations of SIVA that comprises the companies that form the SAG Group, for the distribution of brands of the Volkswagen Group in the Portuguese market.
“We estimate that in 2025, 10% of car sales will be of electric cars and that those sales will increase to 40% in 2040”, said António Coutinho, administrator of EDP Comercial. “We’re going to see a change to the mobility paradigm in the next years. We will have more population, more urban population and climate change. Therefore, the future points to an electrification of transport”, added the EDP administrator, highlighting that nowadays “transport is responsible for 25% of the total of CO2 emissions.”
Electric car prices to be decreased
António Coutinho assured that “the price of an electric car will be almost the same than a petrol or diesel car.” Until 2015 the price of kilowatt per hour will decrease to around 100 euros “when some years ago it was 1000.”
Franco Caruso, head of Communication and Sustainability of Brisa, a Portugal based international transportation company, reminded that his company “has already electrified its car fleet 13 years ago”, and recently launched Drive Now, a service of car sharing that has also started with a percentage of electric cars.
Although Lisbon is an “electro friendly” city, Ricardo Tomaz da Silva reminded that there are yet a number of obstacles to surpass. “Volkswagen sold 55 electric cars this year. From those, three went to private use and 52 to companies. The main obstacle to sales increases to companies are the difficulties in charging at the buildings where they work. They have many times to discuss with condominium representatives the issue of charging the cars and that is absurd”. Mobility is a new world.
