Three out of four vehicles will be affected by the Climate Change Law and the establishment of traffic restrictions in municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants
Spanish cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants -and in some cases in municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants- must have a Low Emissions Zone (ZBE) in 2023, with the aim of complying with the Climate Change Law, which will affect, at least 149 Spanish municipalities.
However, 3 out of 4 cars in these municipalities are combustion, without any type of electrification, as reflected in the MSI data for
sumautoa specialist in vertical automotive portals that integrates
AutocasionAutoScout24 and
rentingcarsamong others, announced on the occasion of the first edition of the MOBS mobility event, which at its opening was attended by the Mayor of Madrid,
Jose Luis Martinez Almeida. “Unfortunately, Madrid continues to breach air quality limits,” Almeida recalled, “although we never breached so late, we never breached so little.” 50% of these emissions derive from mobility.
Almeida has detailed that his government has adopted “restrictive measures” in this regard. In addition to the Central District, the city council has established a calendar of progressive limitations until 2025, when all vehicles without a label – gasoline before 2000 and diesel before 2006 – will be banned.
This panorama leaves in the air what will happen with the free urban movement of cars with labels A, B and C that mostly circulate daily through these municipalities, where more than 25 million people reside, that is, 53% of the inhabitants of our country, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
On the other hand, in the absence of knowing the regulations of each municipality, a priori only one in four cars could have facilities to circulate through the central almonds. Specifically, hybrids in their different forms account for 18.4% and, with much more residual shares, electric ones are 3.9% and, lastly, LPG/CNG cars, 2%.
With a view to increasing the accessibility of citizens to the central almonds and their ZBE, the long-term vehicle rental modality (renting) is proposed as one of the formulas with which the electrification of the fleet can be accelerated and its aging reduced (average age 13.5 years) and with it the emission levels.
In this sense, more than 600,000 vehicles from renting circulate on Spanish roads, thus leading the contribution of ‘ECO’ vehicles to the park with 15.5% of the total. At the same time, this booming long-term rental modality is also the leader in the average emissions classification with 119.8 g/km of CO2, which is below the average (138.2).
The rental alternative
One in four registrations in our country come from renting, according to the AER, and MSI forecasts suggest that it will be the access route to mobility that grows the most in 2022, with an increase of 17% compared to 2021 The final decision on the application of the law will be the responsibility of each city council, although the legal text indicates that access, circulation and parking restrictions will be applied according to the classification of the vehicles by their level of emissions, so that those of combustion will be fully impacted.
In addition, as a note, the legislation opens the door to measures also applicable to municipalities with 20,000 to 50,000 inhabitants when the limit values of regulated pollutants are exceeded, so their scope may be greater.
According to
Inigo Brena, director of Rentingcoches.com, Sumauto’s rental portal, «renting is going to play a fundamental role in the consolidation of the electrified vehicle in our country. The accessibility, flexibility, comfort and tax advantages offered by this modality constitute a perfect formula to deal with access and movement restrictions such as the ZBE. However, this change has to be accompanied by infrastructure improvements, such as recharging, since it is estimated that almost 40,000 places need to be electrified in municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants.
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