Ireland Declares Climate Emergency

[SmokyMo]

I am not sure if people know SmokingTyre guy on you tube, Mat Farah. He was on JRE talking about how he is currently building storage facility in LA and basically the challenges going electric, in terms in charging points and electricity. Thats in a context of LA, where Tesla is essentially based and does all trials. Politicians needs something abstract to cling on to wave it as pretense to mask their inability to solve current problems with long term solutions.

[Big H]

The minister should be sacked and put away as far as possible from decision making process for being this dumb. Scary to think these are the people who are in charge of legislations.

Don't be naive - minister knows full well that this is unfeasible, but has to have some proposal to keep the green agenda and the Eurocrats off his/her (delete as appropriate as ministers come & go) back....

Remember, no matter what way you look at it, Capitalism & Environmentalism can't exist side-by-side....

[CitizenKane]

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/poli...-usc-1.4279318

Haven’t read anything in detail yet but the main thing coming out of this to hit drivers seems to be bigger annual carbon tax increases. The proposal of banning new petrol/diesel car registrations in 2030 was already introduced by the last government so nothing new, the only difference being it’s probably even less likely to be possible now given the backwards economic steps 2020 will bring.

[CitizenKane]

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/...ange-1.4634250

“The OECD was of the view that Ireland should consider congestion charges. It was outlined that congestion charges should not be seen as a charge on all private vehicles, rather it is to make drivers pay for the negative externalities they are producing.”

Of course. Won’t make a bit of difference to climate change because we have no public transport system that’s fit for purpose so everyone will still need to drive, but at least we’ll make people poorer.

“The level of taxation on conventional cars is also insufficient to encourage a shift to EVs.”

Yeah to be fair if there’s one thing we can all agree on it’s that road tax in Ireland is too low. You could also try encouraging people to switch by lowering taxes more on EVs, but that would result in making less people poorer.

[CitizenKane]

https://m.independent.ie/news/enviro...-40855333.html

“The report also says the Department of Finance needs to look at targeted taxation that would act as a disincentive to buying an ICE car.”

Realistically how long do you think we have before it becomes unviable to continue enjoying our cars? If I’m being honest, reading stuff like this with ever increasingly regularity is making me contemplate packing this all in and finding a new hobby!

[dergside]

That's a bit of a kick in the teeth for people contemplating a change of car and whose needs aren't yet met by full EV car options. I suspect it will actually have the effect of displacing PHEV sales back to petrol or diesel options rather than towards full EV options.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/...rids-1.4704526

[kdevitt]

That's a bit of a kick in the teeth for people contemplating a change of car and whose needs aren't yet met by full EV car options. I suspect it will actually have the effect of displacing PHEV sales back to petrol or diesel options rather than towards full EV options.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/...rids-1.4704526

Its ridiculous - for a lot of people, a plug in hybrid is a full on EV for the majority of its journeys.

[Big H]

Its ridiculous - for a lot of people, a plug in hybrid is a full on EV for the majority of its journeys.

On the contrary - a guy I know has a 152 reg X5 (40E - the 2.0 PHEV one) with 65k miles bought in the UK late last year.

He says 63k of those miles were with the engine alone (I assume the ONB somehow gives a breakdown of this ?) - like many of the UK sourced PHEV's, they were bought solely for the very low company car BIK with little intention to actually use the electric part of it......

[kdevitt]

On the contrary - a guy I know has a 152 reg X5 (40E - the 2.0 PHEV one) with 65k miles bought in the UK late last year.

He says 63k of those miles were with the engine alone (I assume the ONB somehow gives a breakdown of this ?) - like many of the UK sourced PHEV's, they were bought solely for the very low company car BIK with little intention to actually use the electric part of it......

On the contrary what? I didn't say all people, I said a lot of people.

Kia Ireland - "Our feedback from PHEV customers is they are doing the vast majority of their daily motoring on full EV power and only using the petrol engine at weekends or for longer journeys.”

[Big H]

According to Which in the UK, the quoted efficiency figures (using the WLTP test cycle) seem to point to wishful thinking on some manufacturers part (BMW especially gets hammered)- https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/03...figures-claim/

In saying that, one must assume with the way petrol prices have gone over the past few months, every last mile would be eeked out of the PHEV batteries by owners nowadays.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46152853 - backs up what I stated previously. Ireland of course may have had a different relationship originally with PHEV's. Ranges for one thing have come on a long way in the past 3-5 years in fairness.