LJUBLJANA, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The Slovenian government adopted on Thursday a new national energy scheme on alternative fuels, under which it will terminate the registration of new diesel and petrol cars after the year of 2030.
The government has avoided an outright ban, but instead put a ceiling on a car's carbon footprint at 50 grams of CO2 per km, which currently only electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids conform with, the Slovenian Press Agency reported.
The strategy, according to the STA report, also calls for the construction of infrastructure for alternative fuels to expand the current network of charging stations by nearly 100 times from the current 227 to 22,300 by 2030.
Slovenia started its adaption to alternative energy cars about six years ago, when it set up about 100 charging stations across the country in 2011.
The government expects that the number of new energy cars, electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids, can roughly reach 200,000, or about 17 percent of the total number of cars running in the country.
Statistics Office data show that around 1.47 million road vehicles were registered in Slovenia at the end of 2016, 2 percent more year-on-year.
In 2016, about 74,000 new cars were sold in Slovenia, registering a new high.
But sales of electric and hybrid vehicles still represent a tiny proportion of overall sales despite acceleration.
The latest data from car dealers show 900 electric or hybrid vehicles were sold in the first eight months of the year, almost triple the number sold in the same period in 2016.
Slovenia has one of the highest car ownership rates in the world, 523 cars per 1,000 population as of the end of last year, the National Statistic Office stated in their website.
