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 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

Pioneering E-Car: Twelve years ago, I had a Mitsubishi iMiev for two months as a trial with ESB

Opel Corsa-e SC €27,322

is final price paid and for EVs that’s still too high in my view. People may also be a bit put off by re-sale. You don’t really want to spend a lot of money on something that is going to be obsolete in a few years. Actually, there is a re-sale market for EVs and in my view, it will become a healthy one, but for now, it might be a factor holding you back.

The other big worry that people talk about time and again is ‘range anxiety’. I put it in quotes because the aforementioned enthusiasts will jump on me. It has been an issue with EVs from the start but to be fair it is much less of an issue now. Ranges available on a standard EV like for example the VW ID3 (the electric equivalent of a Golf) are up to 450 kilometres. If you are treating yourself to something like a Tesla Model S Long Range, you can get up to 650 kilometres. You quickly realise that real-world driving and long motorway runs will eat into that mileage.

WhatCar in the UK have done excellent real-world testing of EV ranges. As a rule of thumb you can knock 25 per cent per cent off the claimed range for starters and then another 25 per cent for winter driving conditions typical in Ireland. Ten per cent more again if you’re being heavy on the electrics for heaters, air-con or demisters. That may seem disappointing compared to the brochure but it was the same with the ‘miles per gallon’ claims of years gone by. It still leaves ranges that are very satisfactory.

It is certainly enough for all but one or two journeys most of us will do in a year. They can be managed with a bit of planning and use of the charging network. When EV drivers talk about that it seems that it can be a bit of an adventure.

For me this time that was probably what swung it. I do make one regular drive down to Enniscrone in Co. Sligo, a 500 kilometre round trip with no charger at the far end. That was the deal breaker. I am afraid I got very boring. I took an old fleet car with me from the AA; a 2 litre Skoda Superb diesel estate. It was second-hand and cheap, it carries the kitchen sink and refuelling will only ever be a financial adventure. It’ll do for now.

My next car will be an EV but in the spirit of St Augustine, not yet.

There is a middle ground if you are wavering. Plug-in hybrids are exactly what they sound like. Its an EV most of the time especially in cities and will potter around silently with the rest of them but it also has a small conventional engine and fuel tank that can both charge the battery and kick in when its needed. No range anxiety here.

But only half the green points, in the eyes of enthusiasts. It still uses fossil fuels and it still emits carbon, and it may even delay the full roll out of proper EVs.

My decision was a personal one as I weighed up what I need from a car. Others will do the same. Maybe you are the type of person who must have the latest iPhone, or maybe your idea of a phone is something that will do calls, texts and Whatsapp and who cares after that.

Societal effects

Each to his or her own, but all of our individual actions add up to our societal effect and that is what Government has to think about when it is designing policy. The Irish government is hoping to have 935,000 EVs on the road by 2030.

Peugeot e-208 50kwh: €29,105

BMW i3 €39,695 I won’t knock them for ambition but they are going to miss that target by a country mile. At the moment pure electric and plug-in hybrid account for less than 10 per cent of sales between them. That share is rapidly growing but not fast enough for those numbers. The Government will have to think hard about what else it can do to push things along if they are serious.

We know that as a world we have to wean ourselves off oil. There is no point pretending that we have a choice. It took the planet 300 million years to create the global supply of oil. Humanity has been using it for less than 200 years and half of it is gone. That half has been burned releasing many millions of years of stored carbon into the atmosphere with disastrous consequences. Anyone who still doubts this should firstly kick themselves in the backside and stop claiming the world is flat, and then secondly realise that international treaties we’ve signed will punish us financially if we do not do enough.

We have to move to electric cars running on plentiful, clean electricity and we have to do it fast. That is the scale of the government challenge.

The car industry may help them because with every year, indeed with every month, more and more advanced EVs are being announced. Tesla’s rise has been phenomenal and has made the rest of the industry wake up and smell the emission-free future. Volkswagen for example announced in 2020 that it would invest €73 billion in digital and EV technologies over 5 years.

Pretty soon, every car on the road will be electric because it will be all you can buy. There are problems that they won’t solve, like congestion. We will also need to make a lot more clean electricity as a turf powered Tesla doesn’t do us much good in the long run. But they hold out the prospect of cheap, clean and completely non-polluting personal transport. They are not just the future, they are here now.

Some Sample Electric Car Prices In Ireland

(in ascending order)

• Opel Corsa-e SC €27,322 • Renault Zoe Ze50 Play 56kwh €27,750 • Nissan Leaf XE 40 €28,145 • Peugeot e-208 50kwh: €29,105 • Hyundai Kona 67kwh €30,995 • Mini Cooper SE €31,715 • Volkswagen Id 3 Life €32,966 • Kia Soul €37,513 • BMW i3 €39,695 • Volkswagen Id 4 €45,110 • Tesla Model 3 €51,574 • Audi Etron 50 €74,990 • Tesla Model S €117,000

Prices from late 2021 AND they include €5,000 SEAI grant for private customers and any Government VRT relief. SOME OF THESE PRICES MAY HAVE CHANGED SO CHECK WITH DEALERS

Driving Life Podcast

Conor Faughnan’s podcast series Driving Life is on Seniortimes.ie. You’ll find chats with some wellknown voices like Shane Ross, Teresa Mannion, Brian O’Donovan, Ivan Yates, Nuala Carey, George Hook and others. Get under the bonnet to find out a little bit about their driving memories and their takes on life. Running Costs

So how big are the savings? Conor spoke to Tim O’Brien, Irish Times journalist and electric car enthusiast, on his real-world experience comparing his MG ZS electric car to the other car in the household, a large and handsome conventionally powered Audi Q3. ‘The EV gets cheaper tolls as well as the fuel savings.’ Says Tim

‘We went to Crissakiel, Kells at the weekend in the Q3. €2 to cross the M50 bridge €1.50 to cross each toll on the M3 and the same to get home. That's €10. And €30 - €40 in diesel.’ ‘The ZS EV would do that for €5 in tolls and about €17 max in fuel. The Q3 cost €30,000 in Dublin when it was about 14 months old. The MG cost Stg £18,500 (then €21,500) in Leeds UK when it was nine months old. No import costs at that time.

‘Servicing is the EV is about €100, which is as little as a fifth of the cost of a conventional car service. Road tax is €125. The electrics in the MG far outweigh the Q3 with lane assist, cruise control and MG pilot which allows you to follow the car in front, braking when it does, accelerating when it does. It really is a no brainer.’