Chile plans to close electromobility gap between capital and regions

Chilean authorities are struggling to push electromobility outside capital Santiago, with over half of the country’s municipalities still lacking any kind of charging infrastructure and the metropolitan region of Santiago accounting for nearly three quarters of existing public charging points.

Authorities are currently drafting a national plan for charging infrastructure, which is expected to be unveiled around the end of the year. 

The main objective of the plan will be that there cannot be more than 100km between charging points, undersecretary at Chile's energy ministry, Luis Felipe Ramos, said during an electromobility webinar.

Only 123 of Chile’s 246 municipalities had at least one public access charging point as of the end of last year, despite a 75.3% jump in the number of chargers between 2022 and 2023.

Moreover, of the 745 charging points available to the public at the end of last year, 71.8% are in the Metropolitan region. Valparaíso region, which has the second largest number of chargers, has only 5.1% of the total.

The disparity is even worse considering the number of electric vehicles registered, as Santiago accounted for 85.1% of the 8,454 total at end-2023. 

Ramos said that the charging infrastructure plan will initially focus on establishing a continuous network starting at Caldera in Antofagasta region and extending to Chiloé island in Los Lagos region.

Meanwhile the third version of the energy ministry’s electric taxi program is being conducted outside Santiago for the first time.

This initiative, which aims to give financial support to taxi drivers to enable them to acquire electric vehicles, is now accepting submissions from Antofagasta, O’Higgins, Atacama and Biobío regions. Previous versions were focused on Santiago’s Metropolitan region.

The government is also aiming for charging infrastructure to be interoperable and it wants to launch a platform to address this in November. 

“What we want with this is charging infrastructure that is homogeneous and accessible to all kinds of electric vehicles,” Ramos said at the seminar, which was hosted by Universidad Andrés Bello’s public policy institute.

Chile has set a 2035 deadline to phase out sales of light, public transport and mining vehicles with internal combustion engines.

The change will also be applied to freight transport vehicles and inter-urban buses by 2045.