(MENAFN- Muscat Daily) Muscat- Due to effective planning and best practices adopted by the authorities in Oman, the barriers or hurdles preventing people from switching to private electric vehicles (EVs) from gasoline-run cars will be completely removed in the next few years, a senior government official said on Sunday. Speaking at the inauguration of eMobility Forum Oman at Hormuz Grand Hotel, Qais al Zakwani, executive director at the Authority for Electricity Regulation (AER) said that a report commissioned last year has identified key barriers to the adoption of electric vehicles in Oman.
Last year, AER had contracted the US-based consultant E3 along with Baringa to prepare a report after consulting various stakeholders about the best practices which can be adopted in Oman to give a push to electric vehicles. E3 started working on the report in mid-2018 and submitted it in November 2018.
The report, which was made available on AER's website, suggested that electric vehicles could be economically beneficial to the sultanate due to a number of reasons.
The report also identified major barriers needed to be removed for facilitating adoption of private EVs in Oman. 'The barriers are lack of suitable private EV models given the observed preferences of Omani drivers, insufficient provision of electric vehicle charging infrastructure along with customer range anxiety about the impact of higher temperatures, and air conditioning requirement on battery performances and limited awareness and enthusiasm in Oman,' Zakwani said.
Moreover, upfront cost premium of private EVs and lack of dealer incentives are the other two major barriers which are preventing people from adopting EVs, he said.
'According to forecasts in our report, most of the barriers to electric vehicle adoption can be expected to reduce or disappear during the next few years. This means that we must now seriously begin to consider how to reduce the public, rather than private, or home, infrastructure charging barriers,' Zakwani said.
He said due to the amount of research and development efforts, the capital cost premium for electric vehicles, which is principally driven by battery costs, is likely to disappear sometime around 2025.
With more than 20 speakers and over 120 attendees including representatives from various government departments and private sector, eMobility Forum Oman aims to brings together transport, mobility thought-leaders from business, government, industry and civil society to consider, collaborate, co-create and consolidate efforts for accelerating the transition to electric mobility.
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