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Swiss-led team drives electric vans from Geneva to Doha

A Swiss-led team has driven electric vans across Europe and the Arabian Peninsula to Qatar to showcase zero-emission battery powered vehicles, organisers said Sunday.

Published: 1 October 2023 15:06 CEST

Swiss-led team drives electric vans from Geneva to Doha

A Volkswagen ID. Buzz Pro electric van at the International Motor Show (IAA) in Munich, southern Germany, on September 5, 2023. Photo: CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP.

The five-strong Swiss and German team set out from Geneva on August 28 in two electric Volkswagen vans on a 6,500 kilometre (4,000 mile) journey that ended in Doha on Saturday.

“The motivation was really to do something unusual,” the group’s leader Frank Rinderknecht told AFP. “Certainly we did have the risk of not arriving — technical issues, health issues or an accident.”

The journey aimed to raise awareness about the environmental benefits of electric vehicles, he said. “If our trip put just a little bit of rethinking, of initiative, into people’s minds then I am not unhappy.”

The journey started with a crossing of the Swiss Alps and included what organisers believe was the first west-to-east crossing of Saudi Arabia with electric vehicles.

The team’s ID. Buzz VW vans — modelled on the German manufacturer’s Combi campervan — travelled across 12 countries, reaching Aqaba in Jordan from Turkey by ship.

However, the trip highlighted shortcomings of the charging infrastructure, Rinderknecht said, comparing the mismatch of technologies to the “early days of telecommunication”.

In Europe, the team had to use numerous apps to pay for charging points across different regions. In Jordan, they had to adapt their European systems to the Chinese hardware they found.

The journey to Doha was completed in partnership with the Geneva International Motor Show, which is being held outside the Swiss city for the first time since its inception in 1905.

The 10-day motor show to be held in Qatar from October 5 will feature 31 automotive brands and overlap with the October 8 Qatar Grand Prix at the Lusail International Circuit on Doha’s northern outskirts.

Saad Ali Al Kharji, deputy chairman of Qatar Tourism, said holding events like the motor show was part the gas-rich Gulf state’s “strategic vision of becoming the fastest-growing destination in the Middle East by 2030”.

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Switzerland's renewable energy plan to be tested in referendum

The country has said it wants to rapidly accelerate the development of renewable energy sources as it strives to meet its target of carbon neutrality by 2050.

Authorities want to use a new climate bill approved last year to boost wind and solar power’s current miniscule contribution to Switzerland’s energy mix.

But that plan could hit a snag: the bill is being challenged by a national referendum on Sunday, potentially blocking its implementation next January.

While most environmental organisations back the law and its ambitions, a few smaller groups secured enough signatures to trigger a referendum under Switzerland’s direct democracy system, amid fears it will fast-track large-scale energy projects and cause “unnecessary destruction of landscapes”.

Switzerland’s largest party, the hard right Swiss People’s Party (SVP), has also backed the vote, warning that implementing the law could threaten Swiss energy security.

“It is not with renewable energy produced on mountaintops in the Jura that we will manage to guarantee supply security,” Yvan Pahud, an SVP parliamentarian, told AFP.

The SVP supports more nuclear power instead.

Sacrificing nature?

Pierre-Alain Bruchez, who instigated the referendum, balked at the idea of installing large numbers of solar panels high up in pristine mountain landscapes.

The retired economist said he launched his battle after learning with “horror” of the Grengiols-Solar project, aimed at installing around 230,000 solar panels in the mountainous Wallis canton, at an altitude of 2,500 metres.

“We must not sacrifice nature on the altar of climate change,” he told AFP.

Vera Weber, president of the Franz Weber Foundation for Nature and Animal Protection, which also called for the referendum, agreed.

“This law weakens the protection of nature in Switzerland,” she told AFP.

Despite such arguments, overturning the law could prove difficult.

Sunday’s vote will take place less than two months after Switzerland became the first country ever to be condemned by an international court for not doing enough against climate change.

The verdict by the European Court of Human Rights appears to have jolted the Swiss public, with 73 percent of voters polled recently saying they backed the law.

More positives than negatives

The bill is aimed at rapidly increasing hydro, wind and solar production, and it clears the way for a simplified approval process for large-scale projects.

As for solar power, the main aim would be to install panels on building roofs and facades.

The Swiss government, which supports the law, has acknowledged that court appeals against renewable energy projects “will probably be less likely to succeed than before”.

However, it stresses that large installations in “biotopes of national importance” and in migratory bird reserves will remain banned, albeit with some exceptions.

WWF, which is among several environmental groups that support the law, highlighted that the bill calls for “over 80 percent of planned renewable energy development to go through solar on existing buildings”.

WWF expert Patrick Hofstetter added that “effective measures against electricity waste are finally being introduced”.

“From our point of view, the benefits of the project clearly outweigh” the negatives, he said. – Overcoming fossil fuel dependence –

Greenpeace’s Swiss chapter said the law could help Switzerland “overcome its dependence on fossil fuels like oil and gas, which often come from bellicose states”.

Jaqueline de Quattro, a parliamentarian with the Liberal party, agreed.

Switzerland, she pointed out, spends eight billion Swiss francs ($8.9 billion) a year “on undemocratic fossil imports like Russian gas, or oil from Arab countries”.

Given how reliant the Swiss are on the comforts energy brings, she told AFP, “we must also accept from time to time to see a wind turbine on the horizon”.

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