Irish Examiner View: Concerted effort needed to revive sales of electric cars

Better charging infrustructre is needed to attract more buyers to the market for electric cars.

We all know that ambition and forward planning can be powerful tools in any endeavour, provided they are harnessed to achieve positive results from potentially negative scenarios.

It would appear though that the current administration’s stated ambitions with regard to the swift creation of a new, clean, national electric car fleet — the Government wants to see 950,000 of them on Irish roads by 2030 — is being stymied by over-ambition and a severe lack of forward planning.

Key to the Government’s aims is allowing the clean environment appeal of electric vehicles (EVs) to woo people into buying them and, thus far, that is a thrust which has borne considerable fruit. What’s lacking is the necessary infrastructure to make EVs a workable proposition for a majority of road users — be they private or business.

As a result, purchases of new electric cars have flatlined and what should have been a period in which EVs are selling hand over fist, now sees sales either decreasing or only showing minimal gains. Overall, the sales figures for February this year show just shy of 2,000 sold, a 15.5% drop on the same period last year.

In total, and by comparison, some 6,000 EVs have been sold this year — a 1.4% increase on last year. Neither of these figures match the expectations of Government.

The news that Cork City Council is set to invest €22m in 700 publicly available charging stations across the city by 2030, with 60 in place by the end of next year, is very welcome.

However, as was highlighted in yesterday’s Irish Examiner, it is the lack of a charging infrastructure in rural Ireland that is holding businesses and private buyers back.

Some early EVs adopters have gone back to petrol or diesel because of this, and also because Government incentives have been either removed or greatly reduced. Joined-up thinking and co-ordinated action by Government, local authorities, energy suppliers, businesses, and users is needed here if the fading dream of 2030 is to come to pass.

Putin already breaking promises

Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged, without prof, that Kyiv aided the Moscow attackers. Picture: AP

The failure of Russian president Vladimir Putin and his massive state security apparatus to prevent the massacre of at least 137 people at the Crocus City Hall concert centre near Moscow last Friday is a fiasco the administration will find hard to dodge.

Only a week after he was once more crowned the unopposed leader of the vast country, Putin’s inability to protect his citizens from what was effectively a terrorist attack broke one of his most fervent election promises: That the Russian people would be safe and secure under his leadership.

The denials coming from the Kremlin about the warning provided to it by US intelligence of a specific terrorist threat aimed at theatres and the window-dressing court appearance of four tortured Tajik men accused of the crime hides only the state’s incompetence in the matter.

That Putin himself tried to draw Ukraine into the firing line by alleging that Kyiv aided the attackers and was planning to help them escape — allegations which came with no evidence to back them up — smacked of desperation.

Growing evidence that the Afghan holders of the Islamic State franchise — Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP or Isis-K) — were the perpetrators of this horror, have been dismissed by the Kremlin but few others.

It appears the group has links to the attack on the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015, where 90 died, and the suicide bombing at a 2017 Ariana Grande concert in Manchester which killed 22, but this does not seem to count for much in Moscow.

US and Western counterintelligence sources say a number of other European attacks have been thwarted in recent years and months and have pointed out that the Putin regime has also incurred the wrath of this group because of its activities in Syria and Chechnya.

But whatever about Russia’s refusal to recognise the threat posed by ISKP to the state and its people, at least its Western counterparts are alive to it. Ahead of this year’s Paris Olympics, they are going to have to be doubly alert.

Tight contest in Senegalese election

Senegal's President Macky Sall. Picture: AP

Although the eventual outcome may have to wait until a run-off is completed, the election on Sunday in Senegal is nevertheless a hugely significant one in terms of the health of democracy in the wider sub-Saharan region.

The former French colony is widely seen as being the breadbasket of democracy in Africa and, until recently, a standardbearer for many of its neighbouring countries, several of which have seen military coups in recent months, including Mali in 2020 and 2021 and Guinea, also in 2021.

More recently, there have been coups in Burkina Faso in 2022 and Niger last year. Even in Senegal, however, there have been blips and especially so when two-term president Macky Sall announced he was delaying this election indefinitely, until his plan was stymied by the country’s constitutional court.

The election eventually took place last Sunday, less than a month after it was originally scheduled, and the top two candidates in the 19-strong field include Sall’s hand-picked candidate and former prime minister Amadou Ba, as well as Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who was only released from jail recently and has the backing of Ousmane Sonko, a popular rival of Sall’s but who is barred by the courts from participating.

Sall has become an increasingly divisive figure in Senegal and the wider politics of West Africa and few are surprised, therefore, that Faye holds an early lead in the voting and looks certain to go into a run-off against Ba.

A tight contest and a recognisably representative result can only benefit the country.