Electric cars are gaining popularity in Lithuania, their numbers have grown sixfold in the last five years. That is still far below the set targets.
A fully charged electric vehicle can travel up to 550 kilometres. Once the battery is low, it takes about 6 hours to recharge it at a public station. Although the number of charging points has increased more than 20-fold in the last five years, some Vilnius residents are still sceptical about buying an electric car.
“There are no parking spaces near your work where you can charge, or near schools,” says one Vilnius resident interviewed by LRT TV.
“I live in an apartment block and it would be a problem for me to charge an electric car because there are no stations nearby,” says another resident of the capital city.
Still, electric cars are becoming more popular in the country. Since 2020, the number has increased more than sixfold, according to data from the Regitra car registry.
“Of all the passenger cars, electric vehicles currently account for 1.6 percent. We can see trends that EVs are indeed gaining popularity, but they do not yet have a large market share,” says Tautvydas Paliulis of Regitra.
However, the growth has not been sufficient to meet targets. Four years ago, the Ministry of Transport set the goal of having EVs account for one tenth of all the newly purchased cars. Last year, the figure was around five percent.
The Energy Agency estimates that if the pace of EV purchases continues as it is today, there will not be 210,000 EVs on Lithuania’s roads in 2030, as planned.
“If we look at the growth rates now, and unless something changes dramatically, at least our agency predicts that we will still not reach the target,” says Agnė Bagočiutė, director of the Energy Agency.
According to the new deputy transport minister, Juris Taminskis, growth could be higher, but he cannot say whether the government will offer additional incentives.
“Growth could always be higher,” he says.
“We will talk to other ministries and, first of all, we will review the existing measures. After reviewing the existing ones, if there is a need, decisions will be taken accordingly,” he adds.
Taminskis refuses to judge the decisions of some municipalities to cut the incentives for electric cars: Vilnius Municipality has decided to stop offering free parking for EVs in the city centre from July.
“If [Vilnius Municipality] has adopted such a move, then perhaps we can conclude it thinks it has achieved all its goals,” says Taminskas.
Experts say that such cuts could discourage people from buying an electric car.
“Of course, we may not be able to measure exactly how much it will affect decisions, but it certainly does not make them more likely, because the willingness to buy and use an EV is determined by a combination of the measures and how convenient and where you can get an electric car, as well as by the other incentives,” says Bagočiutė of the Energy Agency.
There are currently around 28,000 electric cars in the country. Nearly half of them, 12,000, are driven in Vilnius.
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