Blog 26_ Chasing Cars
"We need to reduce emissions from Transport but sales of new electric car sales have dropped, so where do we stand now?", asks one concerned voter. Yes, in 2024, new electric car sales fell from the 22,852 registrations seen in 2023 to 17,459 cars in 2024, a 23.6% decrease.
New registrations of second-hand car imports held some surprises also. Imports from Japan alone exceeded 23,000 cars last year, almost all were petrol cars as diesel is used less commonly there. Why Japan? In Japan they drive on the left so only minor adjustments necessary to use the cars here. In addition, Japanese drivers replace their cars very frequently so there are too many second-hand cars for their own market to absorb. Hence they need to export them. It's amazing however that a low mileage two year old car can be bought in Japan, transported to Ireland, eye watering tax paid and still be sold for around EUR 20,000. Many of those cars too were made in Europe - VW Golfs and Audis, exported and sold in Japan only to be returned to Ireland as second-hand cars. There are a lot of emissions in that supply chain!
The message from that is clear - price is a factor . Electric cars are too expensive for ordinary drivers at present and there has been no time for a second-hand market in these cars to emerge. This has not been helped by the Government decision to reduce the new electric car maximum grant from EUR 5,000 to EUR 3,500. Perhaps we need to increase that again? The other factor of course is that, as with all new technology, firstly the early adoptors will buy just to have the "new new thing". Once that wave breaks, however, selling to the rest of the market is always tougher.
There is the promise of much lower priced electric cars entering the market from China and some have started to appear. However, there is already talk of applying EU tariffs on those cars to protect the European car industry which can't compete at Chinese price levels. It seems inevitable that European car manufacturers will threaten mass unemployment unless action is taken. Our access to these lower priced vehicles may prove to be short lived.
I go way back with electric cars myself. I recall, as a postgraduate engineering student in UCD, many years ago, being on a stand in the RDS at the "Spring Show" with an electric car. My job was to explain the advantages of the car to the general public. The car had been designed and built in UCD and had many of the modern features of today's cars, such as regenerative breaking etc. The big problem at that time was the battery - we had to wait for battery technology to develop before electric cars would become viable.
Electric cars are a fantastic technology. I don't have one myself as I'm a big user of public transport, being lucky to live within walking distance of Bus, Luas and Dart. However my brother and a number of my friends have taken the plunge and they highly recommend going electric. It helps if you can charge the car at home especially, using your own solar panels or with low night-rate electricity. Many people only drive an average of 20-50km each day and electric cars are ideal for that. If it fits your lifestyle and you can afford one, it is a great investment.
Some have resisted buying an electric car because of "range anxiety" fearing that they could be left standed on a long journey with a flat battery. True we don't have anywhere near enough public chargers. It took around 100 years to get the petrol garages in place and it will be some time before the electric chargers catch up but much more effort is required. An improvement in charger etiquette is needed also. A friend told me she was driving to Donegal recently and having forgotten to charge overnight, she was worried about being stranded so she stopped at the half way mark and plugged in, going off to have a coffee. She returned about 40 mins later to find another car had pulled up alongside, plugged her charging cable out and plugged his car in - not nice!
There are many good reasons to buy an electric car but buying one solely because it is cheaper to run might not be a good one. The state collects more than EUR 2 billion in tax from motorists every year, largely coming from tax on petrol and diesel sales. If people switch to electric cars, these receipts will fall and that tax will have to be made up somehow. In many USA states and in some European countries, they are already increasing the annual road tax substantially on electric cars to restore the tax take and we can expect that to happen here also. Apart from tax loss, the other argument used is that the road tax is intended to be ring-fenced for road repairs and electric cars, being much heavier due to the battery, cause more wear and tear on the road surfaces.
Electric options for commercial diesel powered vans, lorries and trucks are not mature yet but one interim step might be HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil). This biofuel is a renewable resource and produces a 90% reduction in emissions. It is starting to appear on fourcourts around the country. HVO is more expensive than diesel at present but a simple tax change could fix that. Many of the existing diesel vehicles are alreay suitable to use HVO but of course check with your local Garage before switching.
Finally, to get emissions down, we need to give people more public transport options. I was in Bordeaux France last year. It is a city slightly bigger than Cork and they already have five light rail lines criss-crossing the city, with a sixth under construction. It is so convenient you would only exceptionally need to use your car. We are simply not serious about public transport in Ireland. Can you imagine Cork with six light rail, or even one? We need new Luas lines for Cork, Limerick, Galway etc. and more for Dublin and we need them operating in the next five years. We have the money, all that we need now is the political will.