With the high price of oil, the cost of a litre of gásoleo or gasolina in Portugal went through the roof. Drivers near the border with Spain were flocking to petrol stations (bombas) in Spain, leaving the stations in Portugal deserted. Now the price of a barrel of oil has come down, and although the major retailers Galp and Repsol have reduced their prices, it still costs a lot more to fill a tank with petrol than it did just a few months ago.
With the holiday season in Portugal in full swing, Portuguese who work outside the country have returned home for the summer. A lot of them have had a shock, with basic essentials far more expensive than they remembered. One emigrant (as they are called), commented that the price of petrol was over 120 times more expensive than was paid when they were last in the country in 2004.
So it was interesting to find an article which seems to have been missed by much of the Portuguese media:
When fuel was at it's most expensive, in around the middle of July, José Socrates, the Portuguese Prime Minister, signed an Article of Understanding with a Nissan-Renault alliance to produce an infrastructure for the production and charging of electric cars. Socrates is reported as saying that the government wants Portugal to be:
"a laboratory for future electric cars... So that we are not at the mercy of others."
After a four-month discussion phase, the intention is that Portugal will develop a national network of recharging stations, and the cars will be available in 2001. No details were readily available of the cars themselves, aside from it being a five-seater vehicle with a top speed of 90km/h and a capacity of 160km on a full charge.
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