Electric Cars - are you plugged in yet?

Government support for electric cars is quite considerable and includes a 5

,000 incentive and VRT exemption. The running costs are also considerably lower. ESB (Electric Supply Board) have estimated that running an electric car costs 3 cents per mile, which compares to 15 cent per mile for a standard car. However, the initial cost of purchase is still a major obstacle. There must be clear incentives set out which will benefit the electric over the standard car driver such as use of bus lanes, priority parking etc.

It is still early days and many challenges lie ahead but the ESB, along with the Government and manufacturers have set up ambitious plans, which they believe are achievable. The government aims to have 2,000 eletcric cars on the road by the end of 2011 abd 6,000 by the end of 2012. The aim is to have 10 per cent of the fleet electric by 2020, about 250,000 cars.

One of the major arguments against early rollout of the electric cars is the ability to have full infrastructure and systems in place before these cars go on sale to the public. Last December, ESB installed the first on-street charging points in Dublin. Today there are four in the country. By next year, they aim is to install 2,000 home charging units (free of charge), 1,500 public charge posts and 30 fast charge posts by 2011. These 'fast chargers' will be located along major urban roads, 60km apart and nine will be up and running by the end of this year.

It is expected that the majority of drivers will use home charging which will allow the car owner to charge his/her car 100% over a 6-8 hour period. It is estimated that the cost of this will be in the region of 2-3. Destination Charging is set to achieve an 80% charge in 1-1.5 hours and en-route charging, similar to filling up at a petrol station can charge the battery in 20 minutes.

The technology is certainly in its early stages but, undoubtedly, using Irish companies to develop these technologies will benefit Ireland in the future, enabling us to sell this knowledge on to other countries. Challenges such as how much to charge your car if you live in an apartment, or if you don't have on-street parking are obvious issues.

We don't know yet how motorists will be billed for the use of the chargers, I would expect a system similar to a mobile phone top-up will be used on conjunction with other methods. All of this technology is in the testing phase.

Electric Cars - are you plugged in yet?

By: Roadrunner

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