2025 Irish EV Sales

It is a tax avoidance exercise. On the website configurator the PHEV version is +35k cheaper vs diesel versions from the start. But that's the VRT difference from 7% (official CO2 of 21-19 g/km) for the PHEV to 41% for the Diesel version (official CO2 200-189 g/km). Considering the big push for diesel in 2008-2014 was that it emits lower CO2 than petrol, it will be interesting to know what is the true CO2 emission of the PHEV when using only petrol to power it.

The German BMW website lists the fuel consumption of the PHEV version at 10l/10km when the battery is discharged and a G class for CO2 (>176 g/km)

With the current tax system it is a no brainier to get the PHEV vs Diesel but there is no incentive to ever plug in.

I'm assuming you're argument is from the basis that people shouldn't buy phevs in the first place and that everyone bar the very extreme edge case should biy an EV.

However, once the purchase decision has been made IMO its better to plug PHEVs in than not from an env position if not a financial position. I agree though, from a financial position, it only makes sense to plug in at home

Before I had any knowledge or experience of EVs I thought a PHEV was a good best of both worlds solution.

But now with a little more knowledge and experience I think PHEVs are both the best AND worse of both worlds. It's different for everyone.

Also theres currently no major legislative disincentives to drive a non hybrid diesel (or petrol). So if you want one theres no reason not to.

The problem Fits is that when away from home and doing longer trips it's a royal pain in the arse and it takes a lot longer than just filling up with petrol or diesel. Sure, I racked up the kms from doing the usual daily commutes but the facts remain, charging away from home is a bloody pain in the arse.

It can be a pain in the arse, it isn't always a pain in the arse, just like getting petrol is a pain in the arse when there's a queue and some twat is doing a 5 point turn in the middle of the forecourt (which I have seen before)

I've been doing weekly trips to Athlone recently and with the cold weather I need a bit of a top up. Normally I charged at Kilmartins service station when I got lunch which was grand since they've a decent deli and I could sit and eat while charging

Didn't work out last time as I was too busy so I charged at Kinnegad instead. No queuing, but I did get struck by Ecars stupidly short cables and had to almost mount the kerb. I didn't want any SuperMacs so sat in the car reading for 15 minutes

That was a bit annoying, I wouldn't still call it was pain because if I'd needed petrol I'd have still been stuck in the same service station with the same facilities on offer

There's always good and bad places to charge, my main gripe is the best chargers are usually at petrol stations where there's just greasy fast food on offer and the facilities are crap

Want Be careful with diesel. It's cancerous. It has a higher change of causing cancer then petrol if it gets on your skin.

Not really sure how true this is but my Dad said he heard that on the radio one day.

🤣😁

I find the diesel supercharger network to be incredible. I easily get 1000km of range in 3-4mins, about once/month

😉

Subsidised petrol and diesel ? the amount of tax on liquid fuels is completely unjustifiable.

Powerful accelerating cars ? ICE cars are powerful enough if you get the right one, thing is , straight line EV acceleration gets boring after a while, well it did for me once the EV novelty wore off and while I'm not in a very exciting powerful petrol I really do enjoy the sound of engine and changing gears and using the clutch, in other words, I like actually driving the car rather than a more appliance like experience in EV and having a car full of tech to entertain me , I mean that's fine if that's what someone wants, the latest tech, cars have become like Iphones, everyone wants the latest model with more features and all that and while I have all the tech sometimes I want separation from it and one reason I love motorbikes, just man and machine and the freedom, I'm not into speed on bikes either or mad acceleration, the bike accelerates to 100 in 4.9 seconds and is considered a slow bike by many motorcyclists, but each to their own.

The Weight of EV can also dull the experience a lot from my experience but , I suppose a lot of people won't notice that or care.

Do you actually get a 1000km from a tank? I see this said a lot but don't ever recall getting range like that.

A buddy has a passat diesel and does about 50k to 60k kms a year as a rep. He regularly gets 1,300km per tank and once got 1,500kms but that was deliberately hyperlinking to max range.

My smax is a big heavy lug of a thing and would easily get 900km on a tank and again due to deliberate hypermiling I got just over 1,000 km from a fill. So absolutely believable that a modern diesel can get over a 1,000km per tank as long as there is a reasonable proportion of motorway driving and you don't exceed the limit.

bought an EV two years ago without subsidy. While I think it was a stupid move by the govt it’s prob turned out not to be such a bad thing as sales dropped. It allowed the charging infrastructure to catch up, not that they planned it that way but it was a typical govt move to drive people into a space with incentives where there was no infrastructure and without that “pause” we’d be in big trouble now as regards public charging. Still not perfect but it’s much better.

My own personal experience after 2 years, and this whole debate is about what works for you, not convincing others what they should do, is that I have no range range or concern about a charger when driving long distances. Have a charger at home which is a must have. My car tells me where chargers are and looking at inbuilt google maps on the touch screen when driving around, chargers are now everywhere in urban areas. Still too expensive but now there’s plenty of them I think we might see more competition on the pricing. Hopefully. 40 cents a kw would be fair imho.

While I won’t be trying to persuade people about the fuel choices they make, I think the uninformed blatant nonsense people trot out about EVs due to the fuel industry misinformation campaign a couple of years ago does need to be challenged whenever it comes up.

Urban short trips are the worst possible use case for diesels. As I said for me the range, where the majority of distance travelled is on motorway, can exceed 1,000km but could drop to 700km if majority was urban short journeys.

Which is the reason why people driving smaller cars predominantly in urban settings should never have opted for diesel and probably never would have except for the CO2 based taxation system introduced in 2008

We all know your dislike for fossil fuelled cars but temporarily reducing taxes (not tax exempting or subsidising the market rate) is not the same as subsidising motor fuel.

Now offering an €8k subsidy/vrt exemption on new EVs is a different thing entirely. Not that I'm criticising that decision or anything but let's call a spade a spade