Forget electric cars – convert to LPG instead

ENERGY Minister Eamon Ryan, in his bid to promote electric cars, says we’re “one of the first countries in the world with a national network, with a large amount of renewable power that we can use to power our cars… ”

This is untrue. Only a small proportion of energy is generated by renewables – all it does is displace fossil fuel consumption. Electric cars still use fossil fuels, mainly natural gas, but indirectly and less efficiently.

It would be better to convert normal cars to run directly on LPG than go to the complication and expense of replacing them with electric cars, along with batteries, chargers and the additional generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure that would be required and in which there would be additional power losses.