Low income and isolated households need help to access electric car market

The Government has long mooted the ambition of one million electric vehicles on the road by 2030, but the purchase cost remains prohibitively high for such vehicles.

The Government needs to specifically step up efforts to allow hard-pressed families to change over to electric vehicles (EVs) if so-called 'carbon budgets' targets are to be met.

That is according to an EV expert, who echoed the Climate Change Advisory Council's technical report accompanying its successive five-year carbon budget proposals to reduce emissions.

The council said that low-income isolated households that can’t afford EVs must be assisted in the switchover from petrol and diesel cars in order for 'climate justice' to apply.

The report said that while future regulations could force early scrapping of fossil fuel-powered cars, unless carefully designed it could end up focused on generally poorer households.

"This would be difficult to achieve and could be widely seen as unfair," the council said.

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Editor of IrishEVs.com, Tom Spencer, said that current incentives were not sufficient. The Government has long mooted the ambition of one million EVs on the road by 2030, but the purchase cost remains prohibitively high for such vehicles.

Mr Spencer said: "The report covers the potential impact of scrapping internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles on lower income families, and it is in this area where we believe the government needs to step up.

"It does so either by supporting ICE to EV conversions to reduce waste and ensure a supply of affordable EVs, or to commit to supporting second-hand EV imports to meet the demand for truly affordable battery electric vehicles."

Mr Spencer said that without greater incentives in this area, lower-income people will be increasingly impacted by carbon taxes, which must rise in the face of the climate crisis. 

"However, prioritising bottom-up incentives and lessening the taxes on second-hand EV imports would quickly increase adoption and avert an increase in energy poverty - if the Government is willing to prioritise the needs of citizens over the wants of car manufacturers," he added.

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