Ireland's Approach to Electric Cars Makes Sense

Andrew Price
on April 14, 2010 at 3:20 pm PDT

Just a few days ago there were reports that Dublin's bike sharing program was one of the most successful around. Now there's an announcement that Ireland is committing to a huge, comprehensive program to get people into electric cars. The plan incorporates government incentives to get people in electric cars, a plan to create a huge charging infrastructure, and a deal with Nissan and Renault to supply the cars themselves.

If you're looking to buy an electric car, the Irish government will give you €5,000 (about $6,800) and waive the Vehicle Registration Tax. At the same time, the semi-state controlled utility, the Electricity Supply Board, will build 3,500 charging outlets by the end of 2011. Some already exist in Dublin and others are planned for Cork, Galway, Waterford, and Limerick. Nissan will bring the Leaf to Ireland by 2011 and two Renault models, the Kangoo ZE and the Fluence ZE, will also be introduced.

The hope is to have 2,000 electric cars in use by 2011 and to have EVs account for 10percent of all Ireland's vehicles by 2020.

This is really smart. There's a chicken-and-egg problem with electric vehicles. It's hard to commit to the charging infrastructure when people aren't driving the cars, but it's hard to sell the cars if they aren't convenient to charge. By ensuring that there will be affordable electric cars and an infrastructure at the same time, this allows for a much smoother transition to cleaner transportation.

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Reno Ong 3 months ago
The problem with committing to infrastructure to deal with electric vehicles is that this involves dramatic changes not only on the level of outlets or recharging stations, but also to the power grid and the power source.

Sure, it would be okay if a nation gradually eases in to the use of electric vehicles. That way, the system can adapt bit by bit to the energy needs (this of course involves investing in sustainable methods of generating power, without which the whole argument for electric vehicles collapses) until such a time when electric vehicles can come into play in a dominant manner.

Maybe for a country like Ireland, this might be more easily achieved. But on a larger scale say, in the United States, this will be very difficult, if not outright impossible. Still larger, on a global scale, developing nations will find it a challenge to make such a dramatic shift, when they already lack the funds for the most basic of infrastructures. You can't talk about improving power grids and energy production when good power grids and sustainable sources of power aren't established in the first place.

When it comes down to it, electric vehicles are a decent enough idea, but I don't think they are the cure-all in themselves. They can alleviate the dependency on traditional fuels, but I can scarcely believe that they will take over as the main mode of transportation, at least not in the near future.

Comment

Small landlocked countries are the initial aim of A Better Place electric cars, like Israel and Hawaii. San Francisco is also very involved in this process. You can go from one side of the country or city to the other on one charge.