Faster chargers, less fuel

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About 1.5 percent of Swiss motor vehicles are already fully electric. But despite the significant increase in the number of new electric vehicles (about 18 percent last year), this also means that almost 95 percent of the 6.3 million vehicles in the country continue to use gasoline and diesel, including about 4.7 million cars in the country. The Swiss association of mineral oil importers Avenergy Suisse has now calculated how much fuel passed through the engines last year.

A total of 6.09 billion liters of fuel, namely diesel and gasoline, was burned in motor road traffic. This is 1.8 percent less than the previous year. The minus was different: gasoline consumption fell by 2.4 percent and diesel consumption by only 1.3 percent. The market share of diesel vehicles in new car sales has dropped from 42.4 percent to 12.4 percent in 2022 since the VW diesel scandal in 2015. However, it still applies to commercial vehicles.

Gas station country Switzerland

Also surprising: Roland Bilang, Managing Director of Avenergy Suisse, attributes the decline not to the increase in electric vehicles, but to the price situation in the fuel market after the Ukraine war. Italy, France and Germany would cut fuel taxes in mid-2022 to reassure consumers: “Tourists and commuters, in particular, preferred to refuel their vehicles abroad. Some of the domestic gas stations near the border had lost sales, which threatened their very existence,” says Bilang. On average across the country, sales ultimately remained at the same level as the previous year.

The gas station network in Switzerland is dense – but the trend is declining. In 2012 Avenergy still had 3,595 gas stations. Ten years later, it’s almost eight percent less at 3314. The network of hydrogen filling stations increased from eight to eleven in the previous year. Liquid gas and natural gas filling stations remained unchanged with 58 and 102 locations, respectively.

2022 is the record year

Drivers of 1.5 percent electric cars in the fleet benefited from the expansion of the charging infrastructure: the number of fast charging stations increased by more than 50 percent to 58 locations. Charging electric cars has long been part of the strategy of fuel suppliers. Shell (Switzerland) AG has recently acquired Evpass, Switzerland’s largest charging station operator, with around 3000 charging points in 33 percent of all Swiss municipalities.

It also surpassed 2012, the previous fuel price record, last year. The average liter of diesel is 2.18 francs, and the average liter of gasoline is 2 francs. While the two-franc limit for gasoline was exceeded for the first time, this was already the case for diesel, which was 2.03 francs per liter in 2008.

Source: Blick