The Netherlands is one of the front-runners in the global electric mobility atlas. Netherlands Deputy Ambassador to Vietnam Christoph Prommersberger told The Hanoi Times about the experiences from the Netherlands and potential cooperation to develop e-mobility industry in Vietnam.

Netherlands Deputy Ambassador to Vietnam Christoph Prommersberger. Photos: Dutch Embassy in Hanoi

What do you think about the prospects of e-mobility in Vietnam?

The transition to e-mobility is inevitable in Vietnam. In the global quest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, more and more countries switch to electric. In the Netherlands, after 2030, only new electric cars can be sold. This is a positive development that offers an interesting perspective for Vietnam as well: Air pollution is alarming and Hanoi and HCMC are among the most polluted cities in the world. Electric mobility can provide part of the solution to that problem.

Vietnam’s e-mobility market is still in its emerging stage, but the development is fast and dynamic, illustrated by the global expansion of the Vietnamese carmaker VinFast, as part of a broader movement towards more sustainable mobility in Vietnam. Currently, car ownership in Vietnam is still relatively low but is expected to grow in the years to come. And given Vietnam’s ambitious climate targets, one could expect more stimulation policies for this sector from the Vietnamese government.

What are the challenges for Vietnam in the transition to e-mobility?

The main challenge at the moment in Vietnam is the lack of charging infrastructure and trained manpower to service an EV charging network. Besides that, the offer of attractive and competitive EV’s for the wider public is still limited. But more EV’s will find their way to the market, and more people will be able to afford one with the right government incentives. And what I also see, is that many consumers in Vietnam are still skeptical of electric cars. But that was the starting point in the Netherlands as well. But as soon as consumers found out how easy and comfortable electric cars are, that has changed rapidly. For many people who enjoy fast acceleration, it might have helped too that many EV’s offer insane acceleration that easily beats sports cars.

In a recent webinar on e-mobility organized by the Netherlands Embassy in Hanoi, 59% of participants considered a more widely available charging infrastructure the most needed for e-mobility development in Vietnam. This is the same as in the Netherlands. On average 7 out of 10 Dutch households rely on public parking, which makes a dense public charging network essential for EV adoption. The second most selected answer by the webinar participants is government incentives for EV ownership, accounting for 33%.

Fastned’s fast charging stations can be found across Europe and are able to charge your car up to 300km in just 15 minutes.

You mentioned that charging infrastructure is the most needed for EV adoption in Vietnam. How can Vietnam solve this problem?

It is a chicken-and-egg issue: One might wait for the EVs to come to start installing charging infrastructure, while the other might wait for the availability of charging infrastructure to buy EVs. In the Netherlands, we chose to roll out the charging infrastructure at an early stage in 2009-2010 when the EV sale was only a few hundred a year.

The Dutch roll-out strategy for charging infrastructure evolved over the last decade. The first charge points were installed at popular locations such as supermarkets, car parks and shopping centers. This practice gradually shifted to installation at the request of EV drivers. Then the nowadays approach is increasingly data-driven, i.e. on the basis of predictions about where electric cars will be charged in the future, so that the installation of all these chargers is optimized. The Dutch government formulated the integrated approach to realize fast upscaling of charging infrastructure in the National Charging Infrastructure Agenda adopted in 2019.

Who would invest in charging infrastructure? Dutch municipalities have collaborated with the private sector in public-private partnership contracts where one or more parties are given the right to install and operate charging stations in public spaces with little or no additional investments from the government. We are also providing some financial incentives for investments in charging infrastructure – same as other environment investments. But let me highlight that, building and operating charging stations is a business itself, and a healthy business does not need substantial subsidies.

As a result, currently no other country has the same density of charging stations as the Netherlands: a total of 97,571 public and semi-public charging points by end of March 2022, including 3,234 fast-charging points, in such a small-sized country. It means almost one charger for every 2km of road. It made the Netherlands the global leader in charging infrastructure!

Earlier you mentioned government incentives for EV ownership were the second most selected answer by your webinar participants. What are the current incentives in the Netherlands? 

The Netherlands is among the top 5 early EV adopters. By end of March 2022, there are more than 411,000 EVs on the roads in the Netherlands. In 2021, nearly 30% of all new passenger cars are EVs. With EVs, I mean the total of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs).

The Dutch government offers strong incentives to reduce the cost for buyers and owners of EVs. Owners of BEVs benefit from waivers on the one-time registration tax and annual ownership taxes or receive a reduction in the case of PHEVs. In case of BEVs, either new or second-hand, the buyers can also receive an in-cash bonus from the government – equivalent to about 10% of the average after-tax purchase cost.

What are the supports from the Netherlands to Vietnam in this area?

We are happy to share with Vietnam our experience, best practices and also less-best practices in policy and strategy formulation in e-mobility transition. We can bring in expertise to help Vietnamese government agencies, network operators and companies from policy design and the substantive preparation of tenders for charging infrastructure – including roll-out strategy – to the realization of innovations in the field of smart charging.

We would like to emphasize the importance of open protocols and open standards. The Netherlands developed the open protocols to have communication between vehicles, chargers and electricity systems. It is now possible to charge at any public charge point in the Netherlands with a single charging pass, and the Netherlands is advocating interoperability elsewhere in Europe so that the ‘borders’ for EVs will disappear. We call it EV roaming. More and more countries are adopting this standard, including South Korea. It would be very useful for Vietnam to adopt this standard as well since it has proven to accelerate the adoption of EV’s elsewhere.

Going green with the latest technology may seem expensive at first, but it is actually more cost-efficient in the long run. The Netherlands has strongly invested in developing new technologies. Many foreign-built charging poles have Dutch technology inside, and Dutch fast charging technology excels worldwide. Also, Dutch companies in the automotive supply industry are increasingly aiming at e-mobility. A Dutch-Vietnamese cooperation example is the use of Dutch in-car navigation in VinFast’s smart electric cars. In addition to passenger electric cars, use of light EVs, electric buses, vans and trucks is growing steadily in the Netherlands. Many parties in battery technology are developing processes to provide a second life for used batteries as temporary storage. The Embassy is happy to open our network of these Dutch leaders in EV technologies, make connections and facilitate the cooperation of businesses and knowledge institutes of the two countries to accelerate the transition in Vietnam.

Thank you for your time!

EVBox electric car charging station in Rotterdam.