Electric Vehicle Association of Ireland
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Latest File
Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security First Report
DRIVE FOR ZERO ELECTRIC VEHICLES ARE A WINNING PROPOSITION
Latest File
Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security First Report
DRIVE FOR ZERO ELECTRIC VEHICLES ARE A WINNING PROPOSITION
A driving Force for the Future of our Island
technology and vision
Many people are not aware that Electric Vehicles are real today. They are more than just a future promise. The Electric Vehicle Association of Ireland supports these drivers and liases with EV stakeholders.
Contact us at info@evai.ie or call 01 210 8134 to find out what EVAI can do for you.
For detailed information on EVs, including governemnt policy to planned infrastructure, consult our library. The EVAI blog keeps up to date with EV issues pertinent to Ireland.
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An electric vehicle uses an induction motor rather than a combustion engine for propulsion. The former can offer superior performance as long as there is an adequite power supply. The Tesla Roadster Electric Sportscar, for example, accelerates from 0 to 60mph in under 3.9 seconds.
Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) are distinguised from Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) in that the latter uses a small combustion engine to recharge the battery. The idea of a hydrogen car is similar. PHEVs might be commercially available in Ireland by 2012. It is widly acceptaed that the hydrogen car will always be the car of the future. The are not expected to be on the market for decades, if ever.
BEVs are far simpler have been on the roads for many years, usually driving off lead-acid or nickle based batteries. Large scale lithium ion battery packs now allow manufacturers to match the performance of a fossil fuel car while offering a range of 120-160km per charge.
Their great advantage is the simplicity of the recharging process. Plugged into a standard domestic socket, overnight the battery will be repleneshied and ready to offer 80-160km of driving at a cost of in and around 1 cent per km. The range of the car depends on its battery pack.
Worldwide, governemnts are rolling out public charging infrastructure and specially designed high-voltage charge points will offer the possibility of rapid replenishment. The is not the distant future. The ESB has committed to the installation of Ireland’s first public charge points in early 2010.
Contact us if you would like to suggest a location for a charging point.
I’ve looked up the performance figures for lots of electric vehicles and they seem to be consistent with this summary: electric vehicles can deliver transport at an energy cost of roughly 15 kWh per 100 km. That’s five times better than our baseline fossil-car, and significantly better than any hybrid cars. To achieve economical transport, we don’t have to huddle together in public transport – we can still hurtle around, enjoying all the pleasures and freedoms of solo travel, thanks to electric vehicles.
MacKay (2009) Sustainability Without the Hot Air
Freedom from the petrol pump is a fulfilling endevour but it will become a necessity as fuel prices grow increasingly volatile. The combustion engine will only go so far in terms of effeciency and in Europe, emissions standards are reaching a plateau. Most major OEMs have an electric vehicle R&D program in light of this very simple fact.
Electric cars are in a different league in terms of their energy consumption and they allow us to maintain largely similar transportation patterns. Today, the benifits can be summarised as follows:
Electric vehicles were mentioned by Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, in his speech introducing the 2010 Budget:
The Government wants to encourage the increased use of environmentally friendly electric cars and the development of new technology in this field. To that end, the VRT exemption for electric vehicles and the VRT reliefs of up to €2,500 for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are being extended by two years until 31 December 2012. We will also provide support to offset the initial battery costs for such cars. This will help in fulfilling our ambitious goals to reduce transport related emissions.
EVAI has entered into discussion with Sustainable Energy Ireland and all other relevent state and semi-state bodies. Full details will be published here as soon as agreement is reached.
The economic and the environmental meet in the CO2 emissions that fall outside the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). There are around 50 million tonnes of non-ETS emissions that Ireland has to take care of and its inability to do so leads to an annual penalisation of millions of euro under ther Kyoto Agreement. The target for 2020 is a 20% reduction, brining us to atotal of 37.9 mt CO2e but baseline predictions indicate a climb towards 55mt without policy measures. Transport accounts for over 25% so it should be the target of significant policy measures over the next decade.
Aside from direct and obvious economic coincidence, the problem of carbon is itself an urgent matter. Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) displace the burden of a carbon society directly to the power-station. While the energy that powers a BEV does have to come from somewhere, it can at least be said that the source of the problem no longer lies in a scattered and chaotic mass of individual vehicles.
The notion of a significant fleet of electric vehicles implies that the drive towards renewable energy sources will come under greater focus. BEV drivers generally want their vehicles to be powered from a clean source but the presence of energy demand and storage at off-peak times (precisely when wind blows its hardest) has positive infrastructural implications for the switch to a clean, albeit intermittent, domestic wind generation network.
2020: Ireland has established itself as one of the most significant first movers with regard to electric vehicle technology. A fleet of over 200,000 EVs is supported by an infrastructure of charging stations and is embraced by the public. As a result, this country is the preferred testing ground for new vehicles. A large amount of research and development is done here, keeping the national economy in a commanding position as the electric vehicle market expands to realise volumes in the hundreds of millions.
Ireland found itself in a unique position. Its size allowed it to be one first countries to demonstrate that new battery technologies imposed no geographical limits. At a time when North Americans and continental Europeans were still talking about ‘range anxiety’, Irish people were criss-crossing their nation with impunity. Initial government subsidies did not need to be renewed as Ireland became among the first to benefit from economies of scale and innovation. EVs are now significantly cheaper than convention fuel vehicles.
In line with the electrification of transport, the ESB spent a decade in relentless pursuit of its stated goals:
Success in this regard has made Ireland one of the cleanest and most secure countries on the planet. A world leader in energy policy, it is living example of a nation determined to take hold of its own destiny.
