Daniel Sánchez is among the luckier electric auto owners in Spain. Having a complimentary recharging station under a kilometer from his home just north of Barcelona, he could keep his Tesla prepared to roll.

“I can’t imagine stopping at a petrol station ,” that the 41-year-old transportation company owner said. “We feel just like those men and women who got a horse-drawn carriage and grown to a vehicle. There’s not any going back”

Additional Spaniards are less enthused. The dearth of places to plug in, when compared with northern and western Europe, and also the cost of electric automobiles have abandoned Spain aggressively as the continent races for greener.

The government wants to usher the whole nation to this new paradigm.

The judgment left-wing coalition intends to utilize a chunk of this 140 billion euros ($166 billion) Spain is set to get from the European Union’s pandemic retrieval program to kickstart its electrical automobile market.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen seen Madrid on Wednesday, at the onset of her tour of member nations to endorse their strategies to set up the huge windfall made to erase the financial pain of this outbreak.

Spain made 2.2 million trucks and cars at 2020, second only to Germany in Europe. But just 140,000 of them were electrical or hybrids, based on ANFAC, the Spanish Association of Automobile and Truck Manufacturers.

“What we’re doing is accelerating a shift that’s already happening,” Blanco said. “That is a exceptional opportunity. The automakers are on boardand you will find tools to perform the investments”

A pioneer in highspeed electrical trains, Spain would like to place 250,000 more electrical vehicles on its streets within a couple of decades, adding to the present 96,000.

“Spain can execute these industrial tasks with solar energy,” Blanco said. “In comparison to other states of eastern and central Europe that still rely upon fossil fuels, or other nations which use atomic, Spain can rely on renewable energies because it’s solar and wind.”

The environmental group Greenpeace supported the drive for electric vehicles but contended that the EU funds shouldn’t be used to maintain clogging cities with automobiles.