As an emerging market for electric vehicles (EVs), Israel is uniquely positioned to be the hub of the global electric car market partly because of its size, in addition to its technological base. Israel’s small area is a major advantage for the EV market as it stands today, since the available ranges for most affordable electric cars are currently around 180 miles. Even if you are driving across the country, you won’t have to endure much range anxiety because the EV charging stations in Israel won’t be too far away apart from each other. It’s another matter that there still aren’t enough charging stations across Israel to take advantage of the shorter distances to be covered.
Past promises have been scaled down
There was talk of installing as many as 100,000 charging stations in the parking lots across the urban areas of the country as far back as a decade. Somehow, those plans didn’t materialize as intended and the country has had to renew its commitment to push for the adoption of EVs and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) more intensively. Once again, the focus is on ensuring the widespread presence of electric vehicle charging stations in Israel. The renewed commitment is smaller in scale than was the case earlier and hasn’t reaffirmed the aim of setting up such charging stations just 25 miles away from each other.
New commitment is under implementation
Driven by the government, the goal this time is to first set up 2,500 EV charging stations in Israel across different urban centers by 2022. In addition to that, the government aims to set up 60 fast charging stations on the highways that will enable easier EV driving across the country. If the government follows up this initiative with the right kind of incentives for customers to leverage, the EV market in Israel will pick up more pace than was expected earlier. The government of Israel has set 2030 as the deadline for stopping registration of fossil fuel cars in the country. At the same time, it will push harder for EV registrations to go mainstream.
Homegrown industries are eager to move forward
The EV industry in Israel had taken the hint quite some time back and many innovative companies have come up with their own solutions for making electric vehicle charging stations in Israel more commonplace. Despite the delay in Israel’s own EV industry maturing to levels attained by countries like Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands among others, the solutions developed here are among the best. In fact, many of the equipment and solutions developed by Israeli companies are highly valued even in the mature markets. Hence, it won’t take long for Israel to break into the top bracket of countries leading the global EV market.
Extending the range of a charge is one of the main challenges for faster adoption of EVs across most of the world. When the electric vehicle charging stations in Israel get numerous enough to be 25 miles away from each other as initially planned a decade ago, it will add substantially to Israel’s own market experience.
