by Laerke Christensen, reporter

The Dutch city of Rotterdam has been working with BMW to learn more about how to encourage Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) owners to switch to electric in the city centre.

The scheme, which ran from September to December last year, worked through an app which sent a message to the car’s dashboard when it entered an Electric City Drive area, encouraging the user to switch to electric. In the short and middle term, BMW hoped to implement the app in the car’s software and map out Electric City Drive areas in cities across the world.

Drivers were rewarded with points according to four different factors:

• how often the car is charged per 100 kilometers driven;
• the number of kiloWatt hours (kWh) per 100 kilometers loaded;
• the percentage of zero-emission kilometers inside and outside the Electric City Drive area;
• the percentage of journeys made with the Electric City Drive app.

BMW and Rotterdam Municipality also hoped that the scheme could help them identify which challenges PHEV drivers face in the city and where to place charging stations to benefit the largest number of users.

Incentives to encourage low emission driving in the city already exist in other countries. In Norway, hybrid and electric car owners save on heavy import or purchase taxes, VAT, road tax, road tolls and parking. Whilst that has proved incredibly efficient, it is also an expensive way to encourage low-emission driving.

In the UK, buyers of eligible fully electric cars can claim the Government’s Plug-in Car grant of £3,500 towards a new car. There is also a £500 grant towards the cost of installation of an authorized home charging unit and in London, electric car drivers are exempt from the London Congestion Charge, saving up to £11.50 per day.

But what’s the landscape in the UK like for electric cars and their owners?

Poppy Welch, the Head of the Government and Industry campaign Go Ultra Low said that electric cars were definitely on the rise.

“We are at around 200,000 or just under 200,000 registrations here in the UK. So the market is still small but it’s growing really rapidly every year. So if you look at the year on year increases in registrations they are definitely going in the right direction.”

She was positive about implementing a Rotterdam-style system in London, but said that ultimately, getting drivers to use their cars to the best of their ability was about choosing the right car in the first place:

“It is important that people do use that electric range- as I mentioned we are keen to encourage people to do that zero emission driving. I think it’s all very much dependent on your driving habits, how you use your vehicle- it’s important to choose the right vehicle for you essentially and that’s different for all sorts of different people. It’s important that people use them in the right way.”