5/27/2018 https://www.ekapija.com/en/news/print?

id=2118809

Source: www.ekapija.com

Source: eKapija | Tuesday, 08.05.2018.| 15:55

10 new electric car charges to appear on Serbian roads - 15 -minute

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(Photo: Smile Fight/shutterstock.com)

Imagine driving a car that is powered by the road you`re on. Yes you read that right. It`s still a
fantasy in Serbia but if go to Stockholm we could feel it through our car wheels -provided they
run on electricity. A road which charges electric cars` batteries was recently opened in Sweden,
near the Stockholm airport Arland.

The system on this approx. 2 km -long road which was built by the eRoadArland consortium
transfers energy to the car through the rail track in the middle of the road. The part of the rail
which is 50 m in lenght is entirely electri ed and serves as a car battery charger. At the bottom
side of the car there`s a movable handle which automatically detects the proximity of the
charging rail and starts ascending towards it as the car approaches the rail.

So while European roads await automatic charging systems, Serbia is still developing the
infrastructure for electric car chargers.

Let us remind that PE Roads of Serbia partnered with Ministry of construction, transport and
infrastructure and in a pilot project from 2017 already installed 5 car chargers on the toll
stations Presevo, Sid, Dimitrovgrad, Subotica jug and Bubanj Potok near Belgrade. There are also
several chargers located in Belgrade and Novi Sad.

Roads of Serbia told eKapija that the installed chargers are among the most up-to-date devices
of their kind and they can be used on any car brand from the world. The devices have three
plug-ins, namely two for faster DC charge and one for the AC charge.

- Charging takes up to 30 mins and the service is currently free for everyone.

Since this pilot project lived up to its reputation, that the great number of transit vehicles that
pass through Serbia uses it, Roads of Serbia are preparing a new public tender for the
installation of additional 10 chargers on 10 attractive locations along the main motorways. The
ministry in charge has con rmed this information for our site.

However the locations for this latest project have not yet been speci ed.

In transit

By the time this report was done we didn`t-t manage to receive any o cial data from the
Ministry of Internal A airs about the number of registered electric vehicles in Serbia and the
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information from the Ministry from July last year shows 128 registered vehicles, 90 in Belgrade
only.

(Photo: Matej Kastelic/shutterstock.com)

Considering the low number of domestic electric cars, one can mostly encounter electrical
vehicles in transit on Serbian roads, meaning the ones that pass through our country traveling
from one end of the of the continent to the other so putting the chargers on highway toll booths
seems logical.

However, the current number of chargers and charging speed do not meet the standards that
these vehicles demand, Zeljko Despotovic from the Mihajlo Pupin Institute said.

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- Electric cars in Serbia mostly use motorways and the sections of the Beograd - Nis highway
should have at least 15 chargers. The number of chargers should in fact be equal to the number
of gas stations. Of course, it all depends how many electric vehicles there are. These cars can
travel for about 150 -200 km before the battery needs to be charged again so this should be
taken into consideration when planning on how they should be spread out, said Despotovic.

As Serbia approaches the EU membership, where using electric vehicles that cost about EUR
30,000 is becoming more and more popular, they will undoubtedly became a standard for our
country too so investing in infrastructure on the whole not just along main roads will be of
utmost importance.

For comparison, along the EU roads there are more than 100,000 chargers installed, while in
2011 there were about 3.800 chargers.

There is no exact record in Serbia of the number of charges per installed charger for now,
because their use hasn`t yet been commercialized, Roads of Serbia explains for our site, You
can ,however, check the location model and the availability of chargers in Serbia using Plug
Sur ng and Plug Share mobile applications.

The focus is on fast charging

With the rise in car charging devices, the installation of faster chargers is absolutely necessary
for Serbia, says professor Despotovic, who studies the topic together with the students of the
Faculty of Applied Robotics and Computer Sciences and The Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

- Fast chargers are becoming the norm, says Despotovic

- The battery shouldn't take a whole hour to charge since that would create jams on the charging
stations; Rechargeable battery must take 15-20 at most to charge. In such short interval
shouldn't leave you with small power capacity so the solution is to take more power from the
network these chargers are attached to. For a 15 min charge should take 300 kW. Power
transformer stations lack that capacity so we should build new ones not just beside toll booths
but on any part of the road, he says.

We couldn't get an answer from the Ministry in charge about the planned costs for the future
charger installation or whether the nances have been secured for the project. According to
Despotovic, 15 - minute charger price is between EUR 150,000 and 200,000 while 100 k w power

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stations that are already set up in Serbia and that charge the vehicles for about 30 to 45 minutes
cost between EUR 35,000 and 40,000.

(Photo: Mike Flippo/shutterstock.com)

He emphasises once more that every station for charging has great power.

- So, in order for the network to develop further rst you need to build power stations connect
them to high-voltage network and then to chargers. We are then talking about two investments -
for power stations and for the chargers, Despotovic explains.

Subventions

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While EU countries give tax exemptions for electric car purchases, Serbia doesn't-t give
subventions and the registration procedure is complicated too. Countries in the region have
subvention programs too. For instance Croatian Environmental Protection and Energy E ciency
Fund has recently called its citizens to apply for incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles.
Applications ended the very next day due to su cient number of requests within the allocated
funds up to EUR 1,62 million (HNK 12 million). Subsidies for citizens go from EUR 670 (HNK
5,000) up to 10,700 (HNK 80,000).

The corresponding infrastructure development is in progress concurrent with the greater

At the end of 2017 there was a possibility for progress when it comes to subsidies for this area
when the Serbian Government announced forming a working group for this purpose and
announced a case study with the optimal solution proposal by the end of 2019.

By the way, introducing such subsidies is one of the 13 measures de ned by the Energy
Development Strategy of the Republic of Serbia by 2025 with projections up to 2030 in order to
ful ll the goals set in the sector of renewable energy sources.

Besides the lack of subsidies, the procedure involving electric car imports into Serbia is
complicated too. If the driver wanted to import a new electric vehicle in to Serbia they will have
to procure homologation documents from the manufacturer and to use it to ask for a
con rmation about the same from the Road Tra c Safety Agency.

Considering the circumstances, the lack of subsidies and corresponding infrastructure as well as
the standard of living, professor Despotovic thinks that hybrid vehicles are a reality for Serbia.
Such vehicles use mechanical drive on severe acclivities and electric drive on straight routes,
which demands less power. Another advantage of hybrid vehicles is that while using mechanical
drive they can also recharge the battery.

Katarina Stevanović

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