Is an electric car good enough for the public, but a 20 minute charging stop too much for a commissioner?
Europe’s green transition just acquired another small but revealing crack. Not because electric cars are bad. The problem is rather that, in Brussels, the electric car becomes a sacred object very quickly, as long as someone else has to use it.
Politico reported that some European Commission officials are unhappy because their electric official cars need a charging stop on the journey between Brussels and Strasbourg. Roughly 440 kilometres, often after a long working week, sometimes late at night, and then somewhere in Luxembourg the cable has to go into the socket. This is not quite a tragedy, of course. An ordinary driver who takes an electric car from one city to another and discovers that the charger is occupied, broken or works only through some third app would quietly laugh through the tears at this point. Welcome to real life.
That is the point. For years, people were told that the electric car is inevitable. That the combustion engine belongs to the past. That the market must be reshaped, taxes reset, manufacturers pressured and consumers guided in the correct direction. When ordinary people hesitate, they are told it is because of fear, habit or misinformation. Yet when the architects of the same system have to stop for 20 to 30 minutes in the middle of the night to charge, the matter suddenly becomes a “user experience problem”.
None of this is the fault of the electric car. Many electric cars are excellent: fast, quiet, comfortable in town and entirely logical for someone with a home charger. But a politician who makes one technology compulsory for everyone must also be honest about that technology’s limits. The electric car is not yet a universal replacement for every car, in every country, on every route and for every budget. It is a fine tool where the conditions are right. Bad policy begins the moment a tool is declared a creed.
In fairness, the European Commission should adopt one very simple principle. Before the market is distorted even more forcefully, politicians should live by the rules they write for everyone else. Not for a week as a demonstration. Not for a press photograph. Properly. Official cars should be electric, charging should take place on the public network, no exceptions should apply, no reserved charging spaces should exist and, when a charger does not work, it does not work. Exactly as it is for the ordinary citizen.
Better still, a commissioner should use the car under the same conditions as an average European. No separate driver to absorb the inconvenience. No backup car waiting round the corner. No quiet logistical magic that smooths away the problems before the senior official even gets into the vehicle. If the policy is good, it will survive real life. If it does not, the fault lies not with the people, but with the policy.
At the moment, the impression is that the electric car is ideal for Brussels as long as its drawbacks land on the shoulders of the taxpayer, the car maker, the small business owner or the person living far from a major city. The Commission wants to speed up fleet electrification, tighten emissions rules and send the market a clear signal. Yet the Commission’s own documents admit that charging infrastructure, price, residual values and user habits are real problems. They do not disappear with a slogan. Nor do they disappear because an official says “green transition” in a sufficiently solemn voice.
The most cynical part is that, for ordinary people, a car is not merely a moral statement. It is money. It is getting to work. It is taking children somewhere, driving at the weekend, going to the countryside, towing a trailer, dealing with cold weather and sometimes finding that the charging station is simply in the wrong place. For a Brussels commissioner, a charging stop is an inconvenience. For many Europeans, a badly timed or unaffordable electric mandate could become a problem worth several thousand euros.
So the rule could be simple: do not take choices away from people before your own choice works flawlessly. Do not force the market into a single channel before the infrastructure, prices and user experience are mature. And do not lecture the public about patience when a 20 minute charging stop on the way back from Strasbourg is enough to unsettle the offices of power.
Electric cars are coming anyway. They will become cheaper, better and easier to live with. The market will do its job if it is given time and sensible conditions. But a policy that expects enthusiasm from citizens while politicians themselves cannot bear the inconvenience is not a green transition. It is a moral parking ticket on wheels.
If the European Commission wants people to trust electric cars, it could start with something simple. Drive them. Charge them. Put up with the same inconveniences. And when one day its officials can honestly say that the system now works well, then it may be fair to expect the rest of Europe to say the same.
