Climate change affects people’s lives and livelihoods globally and poses direct and indirect effects on human societies related to agricultural production, water resource availability, pests, and disease prevalence across the globe. The changing rainfall patterns, increasing temperatures, and increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events negatively affect agriculture and food security, water resources, ecosystem functioning, infrastructures, and human health. Climate change in Europe has resulted in an increase in temperature of 1.9°C (2019) in the EU compared to pre-industrial level. According to international climate experts, global temperature rise should not exceed 2 °C to prevent the most dangerous consequences of climate change.

Vehicles with internal combustion engines can significantly impact the global and local environments due to the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and associated urban smog and pollution. Carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles with internal combustion engines are due to the direct combustion of the carbon content in the fuel. There are a number of additional emissions from the combustion process: Particulate matter (PM), Carbon monoxide (CO), A GHG, Carbon dioxide (CO2), Nitrous oxide(N2O) and methane (CH4), Nitrogen oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and Total hydrocarbons (THCs). Some emissions causing ground-level pollution and others contributing to the greenhouse effect. Today, transport emissions represent around 25% of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and these emissions have increased over recent years.

As a response to the threat of climate changes, the European Commission (EC) officially adopted the European Union (EU) Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change in 2021. The Strategy sets out how the EU can adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change and become climate neutral by 2050. In addition to the Strategy, European Green Deal (2019) is also a response to these challenges. The European Green Deal is part of the strategy of the EC for the implementation of the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and aims to transform the EU into a prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy, which will have no net GHG emissions in 2050 and where economic growth is separate from resource use. In order to achieve this goal, the Green deal predicts a 90% reduction in transport-related greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Particularly, The European Commission proposes more ambitious targets for reducing the CO2 emissions of new cars and vans: 55% reduction of emissions from cars by 2030, 50% reduction of emissions from vans by 2030, 0 emissions from new cars by 2035.

Electric mobility (EM), and in general low-carbon mobility, is one of the main targets of the European Union’s policies dedicated to a green transition. EU policies is a promotion of sustainable mobility, and EM in particular. The European Union has long identified EM, in the wider context of sustainable mobility, as one of the priorities for the decarburization of transport in all Member States. EM has considered as a key transition to overcome the fossil fuel dependency of the EU’s transport systems.

In accordance with the undertaken initiatives and strategies, the process of EM based on renewable energy sources and the replacement of dirty technologies in the transport system is progressing in the EU countries. At the same time, the level of air pollution is increasing in the WB countries due to the increase in the number of old fossil-fuel powered vehicles. Important factors that contribute to the behavioral change in order to adopt the concept of EM are solving the issues of the lack of infrastructures’ availability, attitudes and skepticism of the general public and, more broadly, the lack of awareness among public and private sector and citizens in general regarding the EM. In the light of this, insufficient availability of the appropriate infrastructure and the poor user awareness are considered as the key barriers to be addressed.