Unless they're recharged on renewable energy.

"businesses buying EVs will be able to write off the entire cost against their tax bill"

Buy electric vehicles instead of paying taxes export the cars ASAP. Similar deals work for Microsoft. Microsoft Ireland Research paid €460,000 in tax on profits of €1.2 billion last year.

http://www.rte.ie/business/2008/0502/mibusiness.html

what it should do is give millions to some dodgy bloke who could set up a factory in ireland to knock out electric cars...

or has that been done before....

"electric "filling stations" with battery-swap facilities."

Note to Eamon Ryan;

It's just not quite as simple as filling up with petrol/diesel/LPG, this "battery-swapping" malarkey. Besides from the access to the batteries, the likelihood of manufacturers adopting a 'standard' battery pack is, frankly, pretty slim.

Then, even if they do, how exactly do you guarantee that the 'refill' the customer is purchasing is charged to a given level. (I'm presuming this is the sort of 'filling station' concept they have in mind).

And of course, there's similar issues for 'rapid charging', particularly some sort of standardised connection. Which, given the electrical current levels likely to be required, is going to have to be pretty heavy duty.

It all sounds great. In theory. In practice, however?..

While every Irish family remains utterly convinced that they

have to change their car for a new one every 8 months, this

kind of policy is doomed to fall at the first hurdle ...

Look, nobody in Ireland really cares about electric cars and the stupid green hippy party.

They can mouth off all they want about initiatives like this but in reality we're going through a recession and there'll be very few willing to buy a new car anyway.

Same thing with their initiatives on 1,000 Euro bicycle schemes for workplaces, they all seem to conveniently forget that the roads are badly policed, too many women drivers driving in what very few cycle lanes there are while doing their makeup/hair, not to mention of course that it rains here 360 days of the year and most people working in Dublin live 20+ miles outside of it due to property greed in the past.

Stupid, hippy green party muppets !

Oh and they'll be out of government next year anyway when the whole Irish government collapes here soon so who cares either way.

I'm all for leccy cars, but given the ever decreasing margins between supply and demand in the generating market, we could all be left stranded quicker than you can say "Somali pirates have got all the oil!".

Or will we all be building nuclear power plants?

Mine's the one that smells of horses.

Judging by the past actions of the current (and eternall) ruling party fianna fail,

I would expect fund missapropiations , scandals , brown envelopes and the few rich a**holes who sell electric cars and vote the right way to make a lot of money.

The rest of us hoi polli will , of course, be stuck to foot the bills of what promises to be

another truly shambolic endevor by an increasingly irelavant govermnet and their green poodles.

With all the rain, why not turn those downspouts into hydroelectric plants? :)

Cheers,

John

I mostly agree with you. Ireland has, for the past two decades, been living

in cloud-cuckoo land. It has covered nearly all of its once green and pleasant

countryside with grotty little concrete bungalows, indulged a voracious

appetite for personal credit which has left it with the worst performing ratio of

unsecured debt to GDP of any country in the EU (10.9:1), and has slavishly

mimicked every tawdry trend perpetrated by the international drivel that is

television, to the detriment of its own, now nearly forgotten, cultural heritage.

-

Irishmen driving electric cars ? About as likely as the pope celebrating Yom Kippur.

-

C

The entire island has a population of only 4 million. Can we have some fact checking done here?

if all car in the planet were powered by leccy, has anyone calculated the impact on the environment it would have to produce all that leccy to constantly recharge all those cars every 100 Km? its a well known fact that electricity is the most in-efficient means to power transport.

So, the main possible source of leccy will end up being nuclear power (as stated in an earlier post)???

so, take the next leap of faith... nuc power stations have become taboo and un popular, a puplic menace, a safety threat.

Whats the bets that the people behind the FUD of Climate Change ( note, its no longer Global Warming, because Climate Change can be true whether it gets cooler or warmer..handy that!!!) are the same people with a financial interest in nuc power... plays into their hands nicely....

bugger, lets go mental and thing about the possibility that if everyone cycled instead of driving then the extra CO2 we would exert from physical activity might be worse than the cars???

or maybe i am just an idiot....

oh, and read this

http://www.china.org.cn/environment/pics/2008-09/08/content_16409867.htm

the intelligent among you will know what it means... ;-)

this year , i will be mostly driving a V12.

Fianna Fáil - the finest politicians money can buy.

;-)

C

Rubbish! What a load of tripe. In comparison to an oil-powered vehicle that requires between 2 & 10 thousand more parts, the making of the electric vehicle is a huge improvement over its predecessor. Yes it will take more electricity to run the vehicle & to charge it is possibly going to require 2 to 3 times the amount of power provided for each community but the deal is to improve the way that electricity is produced.

The progress in the building of electric cars on a factory-base is happening & the overall move in this area has all pundits working toward a common goal. The best part of this is that so far no corporate "creepo" has control of the development. What the end result of this is that we will be able to create our own energy to supplement our needs at home.

Wake up Mr because you're obviously just another naysayer.