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

roker said:
The railways, HGV and industrial equipment like diggers uses far more
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Cars account for over 2/3 Ireland’s CO2 emissions from road transport, the rest being goods vehicles. Railways are barely a rounding error, which makes sense as we have a tiny rail network. http://www.epa.ie/pubs/reports/air/airemissions/ghg/nir2019/Ireland NIR 2019_Final.pdf

But regardless of that, it’s cars that are used most on city streets where pollution is worst, and we have a ready means of significantly improving car emissions today (electrifying them) whereas electrifying the likes HGVs and intercity trains is not as easily done. So why not start with cars...
 
MrEarl said:
I would question the environmental value of punitive measures against already manufactured diesel vehicles.

Yes in hindsight it may have wrong to promote diesels , and so possibly remove incentives for ones to be manufactured .
Considering the CO2 emissions to manufacturer, ship , sell, service etc a vehicle in the first place , would it be greener to scrap or devalue otherwise functional vehicles
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Zenith63 said:
Cars account for over 2/3 Ireland’s CO2 emissions from road transport, the rest being goods vehicles. Railways are barely a rounding error, which makes sense as we have a tiny rail network. http://www.epa.ie/pubs/reports/air/airemissions/ghg/nir2019/Ireland NIR 2019_Final.pdf

But regardless of that, it’s cars that are used most on city streets where pollution is worst, and we have a ready means of significantly improving car emissions today (electrifying them) whereas electrifying the likes HGVs and intercity trains is not as easily done. So why not start with cars...
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In order to electrify all our cars we'd need to about double our electricity generation capacity.
This is where I have a problem with the whole EV thing;
  • It is relatively unimportant in terms of global climate change so concentrating on it instead of all the much bigger contributing factors does more harm than good.
  • It is a fantasy to think that we can electrify our internal combustion engine fleet without a massive investment (tens of billions over decades) in electricity generation and distribution
  • Good public transport and a pollution charge are a better way of forcing people to keep their cars out of towns and cities
  • Good town planning and a higher density of housing is a better way of making public transport economically sustainable
  • The best way of reducing pollution from cars is to design our higher density areas so that we don't need cars all the time
  • The existing battery technology isn't good enough, isn't clean enough and doesn't last long enough and the minerals to make enough of them to replace the existing global fleet are controlled by China which is a massive geo-political problem.
 
I wouldn’t disagree with much of that to be honest, however if you ask me which is more likely to happen: rapid densification of our housing and unprecedented investment in public transport, or some tax tweaks to incentivise driving cleaner cars, I’ll take the latter every day of the week. I just want cleaner air as quickly as possible, I don’t want to pin my hopes on massive government spending that is unlikely to materialise.

The cost of buying EVs will be mostly borne by citizens, the charging network will mostly be private after initial seeding (same as petrol stations) and upgrading generation/distribution will be somewhat compensated for by electricity companies seeing their revenues tripled or more. Public transport is all cost to government, not too hopeful on that front.
 
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I remember at a place that I worked had about 6 electric forklift which were hooked up to chargers every evening. Someone in their infinite wisdom purchased larger chargers for each forklift to charge quicker, the result was that the existing supply cable wasn't big enough for all the charges at once requiring new cabling and auxiliary equipment.
This is a simplification of what will happen with electric cars. All those fuel tankers delivering fuel, the equivalent energy will have to come down a cable
 
roker said:
I remember at a place that I worked had about 6 electric forklift which were hooked up to chargers every evening. Someone in their infinite wisdom purchased larger chargers for each forklift to charge quicker, the result was that the existing supply cable wasn't big enough for all the charges at once requiring new cabling and auxiliary equipment.
This is a simplification of what will happen with electric cars. All those fuel tankers delivering fuel, the equivalent energy will have to come down a cable
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Yep it's a massive opportunity for EirGrid and the electricity providers, they'll see their business double or triple in the coming couple of decades as all transport and domestic-heating energy usage transitions from direct fossil fuel consumption to consumption via their electricity infrastructure. And all at a very predictable pace to allow them build out the network as demand increases.

Some really interesting documents from the various providers on what they are doing to model and plan for the transition -
(EirGrid) Tomorrow’s Energy Scenarios 2019 Ireland Planning our Energy Future - link
(ESB Networks) PREPARING FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES ON THE IRISH DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM - [broken link removed]
 
Let us hope the infrastructure is ahead of the demand otherwise we will be queueing up to charge our cars
 
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Interesting piece on The Pat Kenny Show about DieselGate and diesel cars.
I’d assumed the dodgy emission data was out by a few percentage points. Alas, a car such as a VW Passat was out by 40 times the permissible level!

It was the EU that pushed the take-up of diesel cars rather than the Irish government.
But, as ever, we complied. Sales of diesel cars shot up from 30% to 70% around 2008-2009.
 
The government is increasing the ethanol content of the diesel to reduce emissions, in the UK it's 10% it was 5% in Ireland..it has now gone up here in Ireland aswell..this results in advanced wear in the fuel pumps and injectors which cost big money to repair. This info is readily available online!!. The EU are doing the same with their diesel. Ethanol is a solvent and is causing premature damage to fuel pumps and injectors, Please use Diptane or Lucas fuel lubricant additive to stop this expensive wear and it cleans and reduces emissions aswell. As I have a friend in the fuel definery business I know this is fact!
 
Don't foget lots of cuts to incentives

LEVTI gone from jan
charger grant reduced
EV grant reduced.

Only saving grace is if you can get a good EV home rate for charging.

Depreciation a scary kicking coming in the future

Still happy with my EV great power and easy lazy uatomatic with adaptive cruise is fab.
 
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