What are the Government really doing, to help the country move away from Diesel vehicles etc. ?

PGF2016 said:
... Time to get rid of the diesels in cities unless absolutely necessary.
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That won't be easy, given how willing we've been to let people import trends of thousands of them from the UK in recent years.

The Government should immediately increase the cost of motor tax on diesel engine cars, to make them more expensive than petrol cars to tax. Likewise, diesel fuel costs should be increased significantly (with some sort of tax rebate for commercial users, for the next few years).

Banning the importation of second hand diesel engine cars, while very late in the day, would still be a good idea.
 
Unless the whole world ban diesel cars what difference is this little country of ours going to make by banning them . I have not been convinced about electric cars . There seems to be a lot of pros and cons. I have not seen very many in my area except the odd one at a charging point.
 
I was in Dublin last week and I had no problem with the quality of the air . There is without doubt no problem in any towns that I am in regularly .
I have yet to be convinced about air problems in Ireland.
 
joer said:
I was in Dublin last week and I had no problem with the quality of the air . There is without doubt no problem in any towns that I am in regularly .
I have yet to be convinced about air problems in Ireland.
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Fortunately the test of air quality has not been to sniff the air and see if it catches the back of your throat since the 1800s.

The EPA regularly release reports on the air quality in Ireland, for example this one - https://www.epa.ie/pubs/reports/air/quality/Urban_Environmental_Indicators_2019.pdf
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is an air pollutant associated with urban areas. It is strongly linked with traffic emissions. High levels affect our lung health. In previous EPA annual air quality reports, we have noted NO2 levels in urban areas approaching the EU limit value. This publication provides new evidence on levels in Dublin. It looks at the main findings from assessments of NO2 levels using techniques that allow us to look at a wider area, beyond the national monitoring stations. It also suggests some next steps. Our findings represent an early warning of potential exceedances of EU limit values in Dublin – long-term exposure to these levels of NO2 is a cause of concern for people’s health and action needs to be taken now to address these findings.
...
If further assessments confirm that the levels of NO2 have been exceeded, local authorities in Dublin and its suburbs under EU legislation will be legally required to prepare air quality action plans to address the causes and provide solutions in the affected areas.
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If you're not convinced by the scientists from the EPA here and in hundreds of scientific bodies in other countries, I'm not sure what woudl persuade you...
 
What makes you actually think that the air quality in our towns and cities is bad at times , is it that the powers that be say so or from personal experience ?
 
joer said:
What makes you actually think that the air quality in our towns and cities is bad at times , is it that the powers that be say so or from personal experience ?
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Scientists are not really 'powers that be', they're the antithesis surely.

The powers that be (governments, fossil fuel lobbying industry) have mostly been trying to have us continue buying petrol/diesel cars either because they don't want to spend money encouraging greener alternatives or because they want to keep making money on fossil fuel revenues. There is little incentive for the powers that be to be telling us now that fossil fuels are harming us.

As for EVs, again little incentive for the powers that be to push these. You can stick a solar panel on the roof of your house and never visit a petrol station to pay money to huge fossil fuel companies or excise duties again.
 
joer said:
What makes you actually think that the air quality in our towns and cities is bad at times , is it that the powers that be say so or from personal experience ?
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You know everyone who dies from carbon monoxide also believes the air is fine too. Humans are completely unable to detect poisonous levels of a wide range of airborne toxins.

Around 1,200 people a year here die prematurely due to air pollution issues.
 
joer said:
I was in Dublin last week and I had no problem with the quality of the air.
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I'd rather take my air quality assessments from scientific measurements done by the EPA (and others) than what you think you're picking up by having a sniff of it during your trip last week.

Sorry, but your nose isn't a reliable judge of particulate matter.
 
joer said:
That is a matter of opinion....
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Well, when it comes to the educated opinion of experts using verifiable and published evidence versus your opinion, I know which I'd choose.

Of course if you have any evidence you can point to to back up that opinion, I'd be interested in seeing it.
 
It is just my opinion and like I said time will tell. I must not be the only one or surely there would be a lot more electric cars about, dont you think I do not see any evidence of that , at least down the country.
 
joer said:
It is just my opinion and like I said time will tell. I must not be the only one or surely there would be a lot more electric cars about, dont you think I do not see any evidence of that , at least down the country.
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Time has already told joer. People have been suffering the effects of air pollution since the industrial revolution. It’s not as bad now as it was then, but the figures clearly show it is far from nil.

As for not seeing EVs meaning people share your view on air pollution, surely you cannot believe that causal link makes any sense!? There are only a limited number of EVs being built, they don’t suit loads of use cases, they’re expensive, years of oil industry lobbying has people worried about various myths etc.
 
Zenith63 said:
...they’re expensive, years of oil industry lobbying has people worried about various myths etc.
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It's not just the lobbying. If anything, there's more evangelical zeal pushing a pro-EV case than there is propaganda against it.
Range anxiety is real and is still a massive problem. Until there's a doubling of existing range and a huge increase in rapid charging points, EV will remain niche for those who's requirement is regular short journeys and return to base for charging. That's typically the profile for the second car in a two-car family. But the EV price is prohibitive for a second car, so back to square one and wait for the technology to improve.
 
Baby boomer said:
It's not just the lobbying. If anything, there's more evangelical zeal pushing a pro-EV case than there is propaganda against it.
Range anxiety is real and is still a massive problem. Until there's a doubling of existing range and a huge increase in rapid charging points, EV will remain niche for those who's requirement is regular short journeys and return to base for charging. That's typically the profile for the second car in a two-car family. But the EV price is prohibitive for a second car, so back to square one and wait for the technology to improve.
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Afraid you're talking to an EV zealot right here, but you might humour me all the same :).

I was providing that list of issues with EVs to explain why you don't see many on the road today, most of them have been overcome so will not explain why you don't see more EVs on the road tomorrow. And this is borne out in the numbers - full EV sales in Ireland in July 2016: 55, full EV sales in Ireland in July 2020: 771, a 1300% increase in 4 short years and we're in the middle of a global pandemic and a recession is on the horizon. In 2016 there were only 5 different models sold here, this July there were 18.

Range anxiety really should not be a concern for people today; the smallest cheapest EV on the Irish market today (the Renault Zoe) gives you 400km range on a charge. The likes of the eNiro, a larger family car will do similar range if you need the space. Driving even 400km in a day already makes you an edge case, needing to do significantly further and being unable to stop for 15-20 min to eat/drink/rest/charge makes you an extreme edge case. Statistically, needing 800km range in a car without stopping is the niche.

The ESB have started rolling out more chargers recently, as have EasyGo, Ionity etc. However as somebody who recently moved from an older generation EV to a newer one, you realise that as you can drive Dublin->Cork without stopping (it might have taken 2-3 stops in my last car) the need for fast chargers is actually decreasing significantly as the range of these cars increases. We need more chargers certainly, but the number will not need to scale linearly with the increase in EV numbers on the road.

The cost can be an issue certainly. As you say if you're dropping €40k on a second car that gets little use, that is not good economic sense. However prices are coming down, the big range increases mean an EV doesn't need to be your second car, there's good value in the secondhand market as always, extra taxes on petrol/diesel cars (carbon tax, NOX tax etc) is driving up the price of these cars etc. Also if your employer gets you the likes of the eNiro as your company car you'll pay 0% BIK, making driving an EV very significantly cheaper.
 
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This is not relevant to the current discussion but I happened on a YouTube video of the Shengdu EV show. The range of vehicles, designs and style is astonishing and I was convinced that the EV will become a major part of the transport industry very soon. The cost of the basic EVs was under €10k. https://youtu.be/rCNjDTiq4Rc
 
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