Slovenia sets tough emissions limits for cars

“From 2030 we will not allow the registration of traditional fuel cars like those that are in use today,” Bojan Zlendar, infrastructure ministry spokesman, told Radio Slovenija.

Only those with a footprint of 50 grams of CO2 per kilometre will be allowed to be registered by then, a level currently reached only by electric and hybrid cars, he said.

Ljubljana is “convinced that, by then, the car industry will have made an extraordinary technical development and boost the sales of electric and other cars with a much lower carbon footprint,” he added.

France and Britain both aim to end sales of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040.

Norway hopes to end sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2025, and others such as Sweden and Denmark and Finland have expressed similar ambitions to phase out fossil fuel engines.

China issued plans last year requiring that 12 percent of cars sold be battery-powered or plug-in hybrids by 2020, while India has said it wants to replace all vehicles with electric vehicles by 2030.

Slovenia’s plans are part of a strategy adopted on Thursday foreseeing improved infrastructure for alternative fuels, including 22,300 charging stations by 2030 from 230 currently.

With over 500 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, Slovenia has one of the European Union’s highest levels of car ownerships. Almost 45 percent are diesels.

In the first nine months of this year, some 900 electric or hybrid cars were sold, three times more than in the same period in 2016, Slovenian news agency STA reported.