Electric cars
To E or not to E? Conor Faughnan recently found himself answering the question. I did something for the first time last year that most people would have thought I’d have done long ago. At 52 years old, I bought my first car. I spent my whole career in company cars but when I finished with AA, I found myself needing to buy a set of wheels. Do I go new and snazzy, do I go old and practical, or do I get with the future and go electric? Not only will this give me impeccable green credentials, thinks I, it will also give me a shiny new gadget to play with that comes with loads of technical goodies. So first, up, here is the positive case. Electric cars are fantastic. The driving experience is smoother, calmer, and more powerful and if it’s your sort of thing then faster as well. I have driven a few of them though not as many as I’d like. Twelve years ago, I had a Mitsubishi iMiev for two months as a trial with ESB. Twelve years is a long time in E-car technology. So long, in fact, that when they installed an electric charge point in my garage wall they actually used a three-pin socket; the modern standard version didn’t exist. The charging network barely existed either and all of my juice came from home for the trial. I loved it but. I will come to the buts in a minute. It was a wonderfully comfortable small car and drove beautifully like a conventional automatic. I’ll also confess that it did indeed have the capacity to take off like a rocket from the lights, leaving any conventional car that fancied itself embarrassed in the smokefree wake. The other thing you will know about electric cars is how quiet they are. The first time I drove one it was almost spooky; it literally made no noise at all. Pootling through the city I would regularly see pedestrians catch me out of the corner of their eye and jump in fright. We have all been brought up listening out for cars as well as looking for them (I bet you do remember the Safe Cross Code). This is serious enough for European law makers to consider compelling manufacturers to put in fake engine noise, which seems daft but the problem is real. The fuel saving is real as well. It was less than quarter of what petrol would have cost. But battery life was poor. It melted on motorways and I had a couple of dodgy moments nursing my 10 Senior Times | May - June 2022 | www.seniortimes.ie
Pioneering E-Car: Twelve years ago, I had a Mitsubishi iMiev for two months as a trial with ESB way desperately along the M50 trying to squeak as far as my exit. It convinced me that e-cars were the future but also that it hadn’t quite arrived. Twelve years on is it here now? New models The new models of electric car available in 2022 would make you think so. The technology is improving as least as fast as it is with smartphones. Gone are most of the problems with that early version Mitsubishi. Instead, we have plentiful offerings from all the main car makers in most if not all of the most popular categories of car. SUV, sports car, saloon, nippy city-car. They are all there. They all share the basic characteristics of an EV. The fuel cost savings are even better now. Servicing is about €100, which is as little as a fifth of the cost of a conventional car service. There are no oils, clutch, timing belt, head gasket, or similar 20th century nasty bits to check. Road tax is for most is €125. Best of all they are fantastic to drive and so smooth and responsive as to make all but the highest end combustion engines feel like the clumsy old technology that they are. The enthusiasts certainly seem to adore them. They will tell you so themselves; when you get them going its hard to stop them. What's not to like? Which brings us to the buts. First of those is the price. Electric cars are expensive. Across the board, they are just a bit pricier than conventional cars. Not just a bit: they are a lot pricier. The Irish Government charges less purchase tax on them, made up in the form of various grants, but what matters to the consumer
