Irish people must embrace electric cars

Irish people have taken some green measures to their hearts. We’ve embraced recycling, got rid of plastic bags, are taking pride in clean towns and villages, and see potential in wind energy. However, it seems we’re not yet ready for the electric car.

One in five new cars sold here must be electric within four years if we are to reach the country’s renewable energy targets, according to the Sustainable Energy Authority. In 2015, however, electric car sales accounted for 0.23% of all new sales, or 562 vehicles. Some chance of a sea change in attitudes in four years.

As in many other areas of life nowadays, the tendency is to look to the EU to see what’s happening there. While use of electric vehicles is increasing, they make up only 1.2% of passenger car sales in the EU. Also, electric cars only account for 0.15% of Europe’s total car fleet. This trend is bucked somewhat in countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands.

Here, there’s a €5,000 purchase grant and a €120 tax band for electric vehicles, but they are still more expensive than conventional models. And, people complain there’s still a limited range of battery-only cars on the market.

There are optimists who believe up to half of all vehicles in the EU, will be electric vehicles by 2040, but others say the number could be as low as a quarter if oil prices remain low for many years. A fall in the cost of batteries would surely lead to better demand.

From speaking to experienced people in the motor industry, there’s seems to be a lack of enthusiasm for electric vehicles in Ireland. One dealer told us the need to charge batteries often does not suit rural drivers who also don’t have enough places in which to charge.

Policies conceived in Brussels regularly tell us we must reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and reach renewable energy targets by 2020. All of which would be boosted if we had many more electric cars on our roads — 20% of all new cars by 2020 in the unlikely event of targets being reached.

An extra benefit would be cleaner air in our cities arising from lower levels of air pollutants coming from vehicle exhausts.

However, according to the latest European Environment Agency assessment, widespread use of such vehicles would pose challenges for Europe’s power grid in meeting increased electricity demand.

A large number of electric vehicles would not be enough, in itself, for the shift to a low-carbon economy, nevertheless.

On a practical level, more public charging points would be key to the success of the plan, as well as increased power production to handle a larger European car fleet.