For the Italian automotive industry, focusing only on electric power as a tool to decarbonize road mobility is a mistake: it is necessary to look at a plurality of technologies with a neutral approach, focusing not only on batteries, but also on alternative fuels such as biofuels and hydrogen, which could give extraordinary results in the future.
This is the opinion of two of the main industry associations in the sector – Anfia (National Association of the Automotive Industry Supply Chain) and Unrae (National Union of Foreign Motor Vehicle Representatives) – whose representatives spoke about this issue with the AGI news agency at the end of the Transpotec Logitec fair held in Milan.
Patrizia Vigo, Anfia’s head of institutional relations, while reiterating agreement on the goal of decarbonization, stressed to AGI that it “can be achieved with different technologies. Today we see a very strong transition on electrification, but the electric infrastructure system, such as charging stations, is not yet developed enough.” Therefore, according to Vigo, “we cannot focus on a single technology. You cannot have electric trucks for the long haul, you have to rely on bio-fuels and in the long run on hydrogen.”
On the other hand, the president of Unrae’s industrial vehicles section, Paolo Starace called for more public support to incentivize the sector’s transition: ” We have green solutions, but there is a lack of investment in infrastructure and serious incentives for the purchase of less polluting vehicles. Countries such as Germany and the Netherlands have contributions that cover 80 percent of costs, in Italy we are under 10 percent, plus there is a lack of infrastructure such as charging stations.”
Starace, too, went on to reiterate that electric, although “at the moment its grounding is complicated, not so much because of autonomy, but because of the lack of infrastructure,” will be able to find good application in a number of fields, adding, however, that this is not the only solution available, on the contrary: “Interesting future prospects are bio-fuels, along with solutions of a hybrid nature. Then in a few years hydrogen vehicles, which in the long term are the best solution. In the medium to short term certainly electric will take the lion’s share.”
