Is buying a diesel car now silly?

Had a 1.0 tsi Ateca.

Talking 35mpg at motorway speeds.

45mpg max.

42 or 43mpg generally.

Was perfect for us with lots of short trips, written off unfortunately.

Had a 2.0 TDI Kuga.

Very very similar.

40mpg at motorway speeds.

50mpg max

45mpg generally

Compared to our 2 cars today.

1.6 tdi CRV and 2.0 tdi Leon.

Both do over 50mpg all the time.

That 2.0 ford diesel was poor for economy especially with the shape of the Kuga.

Those 1.0 petrols are for short trips and probably cars below Ateca size.

We are talking about visiting relatives.

In the real world -

How many people that you visit have a 7.2Kw home charger that you can charge one when you call in?

You will most likely be charging at 2kw max when you call to someone elses house and bum a charge off them.

And we are back to this again :)

EVs are great, but from experience, only as second cars.

They are fantastic if you dont need to go long distances.

But most people do have to travel beyond the return range of their EV often. Its no use trying top tell everyone that they wont. And thats what puts hassle and time onto a trip with an EV. Again, they are perfect when you are within the return range.

In your case, while there might be charging point near your house (My aunts is the same, you are not really going to be charging at them as you will be charging at home. Why on earth would you drive to a charger when you have one you can use overnight?

Now if you go visit a friend or an aunt (There are chargers 4.5km in the town near where she lives) 130km away in a car that will do 150km on a full charge, you have to use a fast charger on the way somewhere.

From experience, a lot are broken when you need them,, but more often than not there is at least one, sometimes more people charging or waiting to charge at fast charger when you arrive. So there is a wait involved. You can go on to the next fast charger, but usually same problem. Eventually you will have to wait at one to charge.

Instead you could try and charge at your aunts house with the granny charger (or maybe its just me, but some people seem to think everyones houses that they visit has a 7.5kwh charger in it just for visitors) at 2kwh.

So to get home you will need to put a minimum of 110km in the car (if you are happy a squeaky bum the last few kms).

And thats assuming you dont need to take her out for a drive somewhere or maybe drop down to the shops for her while you are there, because she has no car.

That will take about 11 hours at your aunts house.

You could drive into a town near your aunts house (4km away from my aunts house) and put it on a charger (if you can find one not occupied). So assuming you do find one.

If you leave it there for 3 or 4 hours you'll probably have enough to get you home.

But now you are thumbing from the chargers back to your aunts house. And when you are going back to your car you are thumbing back too :). You could walk for an hour and a half each way i suppose.

The only option on that trip is a fast charger. And as i've said, they add more time than they need to to what should be less than 1.5 hour drive.

The MG5 EV Long Range (LR) From €29,645 (including grants) is an extremely spacious vehicle and has an incredible electric range of 403KM*. The MG5 EV LR has a 61.1 kWh battery and features fast charging capability with the ability to reach an 80% battery charge in just 40 minutes via a 100kW CCS rapid charge point.

It does look quite similar to a whole load of other (petrol and diesel) cars, all right. Misery? Hardly, unless you're used to a Ferrari.

I think its a general trend of continuous price creep of established brands, where the basic spec is pretty bland and costly. Then you have yesteryear tech like in Dacia priced at what latest models should cost.

That might be true, but only if the infrastructure will allow for as easy use as regular cars, which unless the range doubles or some kind of new never seen before tech emerges in the aformentioned 5 yrs, might be hard to achieve.

Also I find it hard to envisage that cities will switch all the public, construction, commercial fleets to pure electric.

I'll take "things that never happened" for 500

That’s not really true now. I think most sensible people realise that a move to public transport in cities would make life better for almost everyone.

id much rather park outside the m50 and get in quickly on a bus corridor then be sitting in traffic the days I’m in Dublin.

On my engineering course 20 years ago we spoke about the need for park-and-ride sites at the m50 and QBC style transit into town.

With logical links at say north/south circular / canals etc.

Once in place congestion charges and BIK on parking to follow

Seemed incredibly logical.

200km for aircon? lol

A quick look at google gives an average of 33% drop in range (that would be 100km in this case) when aircon is running. Now, I am just going by anecdotal evidence regarding the ID-3 - I don't know if there are official figures there. Still, a 33% drop in range is far from insignificant.

yet

One of these things is not like the other...

Genuinely puzzled why you'd say full electric is pointless, given you're effectively never or rarely using petrol, except for (presumably) an occasional long trip?

This is already enshrined in legislation and has started, look at an post for an example

I'd love a full electric, don't get me wrong. Something that can charge as fast, with the same predictable range as a tesla, but at a more reasonable price!

In the context of Diesel or Fossil vs Electric, until the country is saturated with chargers there is not a lot of option. Like everything else infrastructure in this country is very dublin centric. Diesel will be around for a long time as a result. I live in a relatively new estate where half of the houses have no driveways and a footpath between the house and car, so charging at home is not even a possibility for a lot of people.

The power infrastructure just isn't there outside the main cities to charge a full electric fast enough to make it practical. Basically wherever there is a large petrol station, there would need to be something similar to a tesla supercharger to make it work for every type of person. Couple that with mandatory requirements for buildings with car parks to have chargers then we are headed the right direction

From a numbers perspective, in 2017 the whole country was using 71MW a day of power, right now if you were to charge 50,000 teslas for an hour it would use 25MW at 50kwh chargers. Tesla have chargers that will do 250kwh. (someone else can check my maths!) We have 2 Million cars in ireland at the moment. Until we are at a point that we are pumping in huge amounts of Nuclear, the numbers just don't add up..

Think your numbers are a bit off. Not an expert on it but think this is some way accurate.

Average mileage in Ireland is approximately 40km per day, we'll take 10kwh as a high average for this (would be around 6 in my car).

Target for 2030 is 1 million BEVs (won't hit this target).

So this means we would need a max of 10,000MWh per day. We have a peak demand to trough difference of 3,000MWh at night (6,500 vs 3,000)

So 3 to 4hrs at night would charge all 1 million cars, assuming no charging done during the day or evening (peak is at 17.30).

This is without any of the planned solar, offshore wind and wind energy coming on line before then, or the French interconnector coming in 2026.

Assuming we miss the 2030 target, with new sales of 100k and imports around the same it would take until at least 2035 before we hit 2million EVs. Gives more time to increase electricity generation.

The bigger picture is to have less private vehicles, more active travel, more public transport, car sharing etc..

Charging with no driveway but a designated space on the road isn't necessarily an issue, plenty of examples of people with chargers installed on a pole in this situation.

Hopefully you're right, but I think it'll depend on the area, to a huge extent, on whether that'd work. There are some areas with a higher than average proportion of scumbags who'd steal the cable, or just unplug it "for the laugh".

Worse. A whole row of houses near me had the chargers stolen in one night. Taken straight off the walls of the houses.

What would the basis of the tax be now though to increase tax on diesel cars?

On modern diesels they are as clean as petrol.

Maybe on loder Diesel cars you could tax them on some polutant, but definitely not modern ones.

I'd say a lot less stolen than catalytic converters!

No point in increasing the motor tax on cars already on the road.

Where are they going to go?

Any disincentives should be applied to new purchases.

That's why you'd put the tax on usage e.g. congestion charges, more fuel tax, increased tolls for example. Encourage people to drive polluting cars less, walk cycle for short trips, bus or train for trips into cities etc..

Ah, now we are back to everyone living in a city and within cycling range :)

There is a whole country full of people outside Dublin you know who donmt have the services required to travel without a car :)