The governmental programme Moves Flotes excludes more than 99% of Spanish light freight transport
On the 9th of January came to force a new scheme of aids called Moves Flotes (Moves Fleets) promoted by the Ministry of Ecological Transition for light vehicles electrification. The term to apply for the aid finishes on the 8th of March.
What does the programme consist of?
The programme, designed to contribute to the electrical transition of the transport sector, foresees three kinds of subsidable actions:
- Electric vehicles and fuel cell purchase.
- Electric vehicles recharge points installation at the company’s car park.
- Supporting actions in the process of the fleet transformation towards electrification, such as management systems implementation or training courses for drivers.
Why Moves Flotes does not comply with its objective?
The problem is that the programme excludes more than 99% of Spanish light freight transport as the established requirement for the applying self-employed or companies is to purchase a fleet larger than 25 vehicles.
The scheme approved with a budget of 50 million euros is supposed to embrace all kinds of companies, the self-employed and micro-companies included. However, in practice only large companies and multinationals can access the aid due to the requirement mentioned above.
According to Fenandismer (National Federation of Spanish Transport Associations), the scheme proves complete lack of knowledge of the real situation of the sector in Spain, mainly composed of the self-employed and micro-companies.
Actually, the companies which own a fleet larger than 20 vehicles comprise 0.25% total number or transport companies, contrasting with about 89.6% of professionals or micro-companies which own 2 vehicles maximum.
Moreover, the Moves Flotes programme inefficiency clashes strongly with the transporters’ need to adapt to requirements established to access city centres and their low carbon emission zones; the requirements imposed by the administration on both national and local scale in last years and which set an important challenge to the goods delivery vehicles in the city centres.