If you want to know what is shaping Electric Vehicles industry – you should definitely be in Oslo these days where EV players from all over the world gathered for EV Summit 2019 organized by the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association. Oslo, by the way, is cored to be the European Green Capital 2019. There are several reasons for that, but first of all due to the new approach to its public transport solutions. The ambition of the public transport sector in Oslo is to use only renewable energy in 2020. 

Private sector in Norway has also turned towards the green shift and became champions in using electric vehicles. In 2018 every second new car sold in Norway was electric. In the first two weeks of March this year in Oslo – 76% of all new cars sold were electric. Many experts believe that if it is possible to use EVs in Norway with its cold climate, it can be used everywhere.

Even though number of EVs in Ukraine is still low compared to Norwegian marked – organizers invited Ukrainian representative, member of Ukrainian Parliament, Oleksiy Ryabchyn, to share Ukrainian experience at the panel “Learning from the leaders”. This is not by chance. After Ukraine in-forced no purchase/import taxes for EVs in 2017 its number started growing rapidly last year. In fact, Ukraine is in top 10 countries in the world by growth of EVs according to insideevs. As of today, number of EVs in Ukraine reaches almost 12000 (see picture) and since favorable conditions on the legislation level were extended to the end of 2022 we will definitely see more electric cars in Ukraine in the years to come.

Growing number of EVs also increase need for developing charging infrastructure. Stephan Blagovisnuj, CEO of a Ukrainian company “TOKA”, who also visits EV Summit in Oslo, confirms that their company is looking forward to the growth of the EVs not only in Ukraine, but in the world in general because he believes that their company can both expand in Ukraine and also be competitive in other countries. For the time being TOKA is producing both hardware and software for ECC for public, as well as private sectors, running public ECC network as an operator. TOKA is also open for cooperation with Norwegian companies and believes that brining “green” businesses together leads us to a better future. 

Pictures: IRS Group