Europe’s Big Bet on EVs and Hybrids

If you build it, they will come.

That’s the bet behind an ambitious plan to boost the number of electric vehicles and hybrids plying European roads by making electric charging stations nearly as common as gas stations.
The European Union wants to build a half million charging stations by 2020.
”We can finally stop the chicken and the egg discussion on whether infrastructure needs to be there before the large scale roll out of electric vehicles. With our proposed binding targets for charging points using a common plug, electric vehicles are set to hit the road in Europe,” the European commissioner for climate action Connie Hedegaard told the press on Thursday.
While electric vehicle charging stations are clearly the most ambitious part of the plan, the eight-billion-euro “Clean Power for Transport Package” also includes standards for developing hydrogen, biofuel and other natural gas networks.
“Developing innovative and alternative fuels is an obvious way to make Europe’s economy more resource efficient, to reduce our overdependence on oil and develop a transport industry which is ready to respond to the demands of the 21st century,” said European Commission Vice President Siim Kallas.

Why Pope Benedict XVI Says He Will Resign?

Speaking in Latin to a small gathering of cardinals at the Vatican on Monday morning, Benedict said that after examining his conscience “before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise” of leading the world’s one billion Roman Catholics.

The statement, soon translated into seven languages, ricocheted around the globe.

A shy, tough-minded theologian who seemed to relish writing books more than greeting stadium crowds, Benedict, 85, was elected by fellow cardinals in 2005 after the death of John Paul II. An often divisive figure, he spent much of his papacy in the shadow of his beloved predecessor.

Above all, Benedict’s papacy was overshadowed by clerical abuse scandals, a scandal of leaked documents from within the Vatican itself and tangles with Jews, Muslims and Anglicans. In the case of his handling of the sex abuse crisis, critics said that his failures of governance were tantamount to moral failings.