Drivers of electric cars who have become accustomed to parking without paying in blue zones are losing the privilege due to a change made by the Prague City Council.

This advantage is scheduled to end at the beginning of next year, with the revised parking system in the capital changing to benefit local residents.

“We have a coalition agreement that we will reform the entire system in order to calm traffic in the city center,” Prague’s deputy mayor for transport Zdeněk Hřib said on TV Nova’s Napřímo program. The detailed code for parking is still being fine-tuned by the municipality together with the city districts.

“We will have to stop supporting electric cars that park for free. Because this is a thing that made sense in the past, but now it no longer makes sense. An electric car takes up space like any other car,” Hřib added.

“I am aware that the city council is now calling the districts and consulting with them on individual steps,” says Richard Bureš (ODS), a Prague 1 councilor and former councilor for transport. “I personally would have abolished it a long time ago.”

Hřib said that the parking reform could realistically be completed by the end of this year, with an effective date of approximately January 2024.

For example, Prague residents living in the area where the blue zones apply would receive a 120-hour annual credit for discounted parking at CZK 10 per hour, which they could donate freely,” Hřib said, adding that even those who do not have a car would be entitled to the credit.

The intention is to solve the situation with businesses, who usually charge expensive parking to the customer on top of the price of the service.

According to Hřib, the reform should also unify the visitor parking system because the current arrangement is not clear. Individual districts will have the freedom to set the amount of payment for residential cards, so parking in the center may cost more than on the outskirts of Prague.

The upcoming reforms get rid of the free parking privileges motorists with electric cars have become accustomed to. For many of them, this advantage may have been the main motive for their purchase.

Prague has also apparently backed away from its intention to introduce a preferential parking rate for electric cars, as was planned by the previous coalition, in which Hřib was mayor and Adam Scheinherr was in charge of transport. When asked about the discounted rates, Hřib says that the city “continues to support the development of electromobility through the construction of public slow and fast charging infrastructure.”

The idea of free parking for electric cars was born during the era of Mayor Adriana Krnáčová (ANO), who promoted the idea of introducing emission-free transport in the capital by 2025.

However, when the regulation came into force in 2019, electric cars accounted for just a quarter of one percent of new car sales and 636 cars were sold that year. Since then, their share of the new car market has been rising, with 2,359 finding buyers across the country in the first five months of this year alone, taking their share to 2.48%.

However, according to the motor vehicle register, there are around one million passenger cars in Prague. Several hundred electric cars, which will theoretically stop commuting here from other districts, have no chance of visibly improving the parking situation in the capital