Iceland News talked to Sturla Sighvatsson of Northern Lights Energy to find out more about electric cars in Iceland and their 2012 initiative.

- On the streets of Iceland next year? CREDIT

2012 – New Beginning, announces the arrival of the electric car. Our goal is to implement a system in Iceland, which will enable the Icelandic public to convert their whole fleet, in to electric cars.

IN: How did you come to start the 2012 initiative separate Icelandic New Energy?

Sighvatsson: One and half years ago we decided that it was time to bring the electric car to Iceland. We said “Okay it’s time to do it, so how do we do it?” It’s the chicken and the egg problem. You know, no infrastructure, no cars. Nobody is building the infrastructure because there are no cars. So we set out and said we’ve got to build the infrastructure. The cars will then come. But once we started digging into this we found that it was not going to be so easy. Because we were looking product road maps of all the major manufacturers to see what was going on. See what models were coming out and we soon figured out that it would not happen that way. We went abroad did meetings with many of the major manufacturers.

By the end of 2012 (we want to) have the island covered in charging stations. As a consumer you must be able to drive wherever and be secure about knowing a charging station or a fast charging station is near you so you can continue your journey. As I said we soon found out it was not just building the infrastructure. There’s a great deal of bringing stakeholders together, stakeholder management, talking to the government, the municipalities and everyone that has any control of either the supply of cars to Iceland. Then there is the education of people about the uses of electric cars. So basically we just initiated the 2012 project. We’re still in the preparation phase. When we do the agreements with all the stakeholders and once we have that all in place we will start the roll out of charging stations.

IN: Why do you think Iceland is ready for the electric car?

Sighvatsson:Well, as you probably know Iceland was hit pretty bad the credit crunch and the financial crisis. It might be something related to that. People are really ready for something new. We have great sources of energy here in Iceland. Renewable energy in the form of geothermal and hydrothermal power. Everyone basically feels that it is nonsense that we, being the small volcanic island here in the middle of the Atlantic, are importing energy in the form of oil.

I think the general public has been early adopters of technology and new trends. We are one of the highest users of mobile phones in the world. I think we have the most high speed internet connections in the home. We are just a nation that is very quick to adopt new trends. We intend the electric car to be a new trend here. As the island is small and has renewable energy sources we think it’s a perfect test case or showcase to see or to demonstrate what the future city and community can be like.

IN: When you were making your decision to do this was there a big decision to make between electric cars and hydrogen based cars?

Sighvatsson:There has been some initiatives here in regards of hydrogen for the past nine years. The first public hydrogen station in the world was setup here in Iceland back then. There are some players testing their vehicles here. Daimler and Ford. We feel that, technology wise, the advancement in battery technology is simply now. The density of the batteries are increasing 14-20% every year. It doesn’t matter if it’s Chinese, Japanese, or in America or Europe. Everyone is putting money into batteries and not into hydrogen. For the past ten year or fifteen years there had been a lot of research towards hydrogen. It simply has not succeeded. Hydrogen fuel cells are still outrageously expensive. You will not see any viable cars at reasonable prices. You won’t see hydrogen fuel cells anytime soon. So we think this technology is coming out on top.

There’s also the issue with the energy loss. Hydrogen is simply an energy carrier. If you have about 60% loss of the energy first of all converting electricity into hydrogen and then converting it over again I think it’s just a no brainer.

*For more information on the 2012 Initiative CLICK HERE.

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