1,500 electric vehicles on roads

ANKARA- Anadolu Agency

The number of electric vehicles in Turkey has reached a total of 1,500, said Berkan Bayram, the head of the Electric and Hybrid Vehicles Association (TEHAD).

It would take up to 12 hours to fully charge an electric vehicle with a 110-kilometer range back in 2011, but today, it takes only 30 minutes, and their range increased to 300 kilometers, Bayram noted, adding that such improvements will lure more and more people to use electric cars in the future.

“Prices of electric vehicles are relatively higher than the price of conventional vehicles which constitutes a problem for the expansion of the domestic market for electric cars. But still, I expect electric car sales to increase exponentially over the next five years,” he said.

According to Bayram, there are 60 charging stations in Turkey’s 60 provinces, and 25 percent of those are designed for fast charging.

Some of those charging stations are domestically produced, he said, adding that a wider infrastructure, power supply security and ability to provide uninterrupted service will help the market for electric cars grow.

Improvements in charging technologies will provide an extra boon to the electric vehicle market, Bayram noted.

Bayram also stressed that the local market for hybrid cars is increasingly expanding.

“Five years ago, only 105 hybrid vehicles were sold in the country, but this figure jumped to 3,816 in 2018,” he said.

The reason behind the strong rise in the sales of those vehicle was the favorable special consumption tax rates on hybrid cars, according to Bayram.

However, he conceded, tax advantages provided for electric vehicles failed to boost the sales as much as they did for hybrid vehicles.

“Lower special consumption tax levied on electric cars is not enough. The initial costs - the sales price - are high, and the government should provide some incentives,” Bayram said.

According to data from TEHAD, a total of 138 electric vehicles were sold on the domestic market in the first nine months of the year. Over the same period, 7,424 units of hybrid cars were sold.

The corresponding figures for electric cars for 2018 and 2017 were 155 and 77, respectively. In 2016, only 44 electric cars were sold in Turkey, data showed.