ELVITEN: Integrating light electric vehicles in Europe

The EU project ELVITEN (Electrified L-category Vehicles Integrated into Transport and Electricity) will demonstrate how to integrate light electric vehicles into existing transport networks. Pilots are running in six European cities such as Berlin, Malaga and Rome.

Namely, ELVITEN opted for the Italian cities of Rome, Genoa and Bari, the Greek town of Trikala, Malaga in Spain and lastly Berlin. The project mostly builds on existing LEV structures, that is systems using e-bikes or electric scooters for example, in all these cities and aims to optimise current offers or else install new ones.

In Rome, for example, the plan envisages an e-bike-sharing system. Starting with 78 pedelecs, the pilot includes the installation of charging and docking stations called e-hubs, in eight areas in the municipality. The first installations will begin in May so that the service will be operational by June to run for 12 – 14 months. An app enables booking free of charge but requires a helmet and license.

Bari already has an e-bike sharing system, and ELVITEN plans to open and build a bicycle network for tourists in the port town. Moreover, the municipality owns two electric shuttles and expects to grow the fleet of e-bikes.

As in Bari, also Genoa already has 100 EL-Vs as the project calls the light electric vehicles and 16 public charging points. The city also has 140,00 non-electric scooters running all over town, and ELVITEN will create an extensive charging network as well as incentive tool and monitoring apps. The partner will provide EL-Vs for free and hopes to convince owners, sharers and deliverers to switch.

Over to Berlin – here ELVITEN will tackle the integration of an existing charging station network of 147 stations.

Lastly, Malaga and Trikala. Both towns do not have a current LEV offer, and so the EU project will install small e-bike sharing pilot with use again being free of charge. In Trikala, the network will include five electric tricycles and five electric quadricycles thus aiming at logistics. Citizens in Malaga can expect to see 40 electric bicycles available to share as well as monitoring apps.

Overall, the project unites 21 regional partners including universities, municipalities and industry such as Hubject, and will run throughout November 2020. The budget is 9.5 million euros with 7.8 million euros coming through EU funds within the Horizon 2020 framework. ELVITEN aims to analyse 84,000 trips made by 5,000 users with 383 light electric vehicles so far.

elviten-project.eu (about), elviten-project.eu (all cities), themayor.eu (Rome)