The obstacles on Chile’s road to electromobility

Chile’s goal of phasing out light vehicles with internal combustion engines and replacing them with electric vehicles by 2035 is already facing obstacles due to lack of incentive schemes, limited charging infrastructure and high costs for users.

That is the opinion of Diego Mendoza, general secretary of local motor industry chamber Anac.

Despite efforts by the government to boost sales of electric vehicles, sales of zero- and low-emission units (electric and hybrid vehicles) only accounted for 0.36% of all medium-sized vehicles and only rose to 0.6% of annual sales as of September this year, Mendoza said during a webinar on electromobility goals held by the country’s school of engineers.

“The regulation regarding incentives to purchase and recharge an electric car is still a bit messy,” Mendoza said.

In particular, he stated hat the current incentives are only aimed at companies, which puts individual users in a tough position due to the high cost of these vehicles. 

For example, as of 2020 the lowest price for an electric car in the Chilean market was around 23mn pesos (US$28,500), while there are still models with combustion engines that cost less than 7mn pesos (US$8,700).

Another issue is the relative lack of incentives for installing chargers. 

Although the number of chargers in Chile was increased to 130 from 85 between 2019 and 2020, and Enel X plans to install an additional 1,200, Mendoza says that the country must not wait for the numbers of electric vehicles to increase before installing more chargers. 

“The issue is that charging points have to appear first and then the vehicles will appear afterwards. It won’t be the other way around. Therefore this is an issue that will have to be supported, strongly incentivizing the installation of charging points,” he said.

The Anac official argued that if chargers are not installed quickly enough, electric vehicle users could turn back to combustion engines due to the lack of charging options.

Aside from the 2035 goal to eliminate light, public transport and mining vehicles that use internal combustion, the government has also set 2040 as the deadline to end sales of small equipment used in construction, agriculture and forestry that use such motors or engines. The requirement will be applied to freight and inter-urban transport by 2045.