Now that the government has opted to adopt the electric car in Ireland , there is  buzz of hype around it. It would appear that the only good thing about installing 3500 charging points is the hope that  there will be more electrical use in the country.

There are some good points and some bad things about being an early adopter of technology especially in cars, like the mobile phone, there is still no  common charger and considering that the mobile has being around for 20+ year now, there was ample time to agree on  a common charger.

With  petrol and diesel cars there’s a common connector, the common chargers that the ESB plans to install , 3500 of them,  will  likely have a common 3 pin plug that can be used to connect up using what ever charge cable that came with the car.

The fast charges are a different story as each manufacture will probably  use different battery technology, it will be based on lithium ion or better, but to fast charge (10 -  20 minutes) there will be a custom charge cable as to get 100KW to 200KW of power transfered in 10 – 20 minutes would take quite a chunky cable and all the necessary electrical equipment to allow this to work correctly.

The problem I see is that there are going to be alot of different car manufactures competing to get their car and their technology at the top ( patents and licensing = money ).

Ireland runs the risk of having spend alot of money on infrastructure to support just a minority of car companies and their version of the electric car.

Before we sink money into a project there should be a debate on what is the best strategy for Ireland to take in electrifying our car culture before we waste more money that we cannot afford to loose.

If we are to benefit from being guinea pigs, then Irish firms should at least benefit from the cash injection that OUR government is putting into this, we have no car manufacturing plants in Ireland and Eamon Ryan’s idea about us developing the software to run on these cars is a load of hot air, the software is not going to off the shelf, its going to be custom build for each car, the development of the software will be by a dedicated software development team usually based close to the manufacturing plant.

I suppose it’s another way for Eamon to waste another  200 million ( 3 broadband).

And update:

I read an article about the roll out and a great quote:

“Given the dire state of the public purse, it would be better to let others pay for the demonstration of all-electric vehicles and roll them out in Ireland when, and if, the technology is ready,” said Tol, who believes it is too early to know if we are getting Betamax, an early version video cassette, or VHS, which won. “It’s a gamble and it’s not smart,” Tol concluded.

Had the plan for this road gone through the city of Kilkenny would have being effectively cut in two. As Malcolm pointed out in his brief to “An Bord Pleanala” there is more effective ways to reduce traffic.

• Public transport.
• Encouraging the use of bicycles and the provisioning of cycle lanes.
• Park and ride facilities to reduce cars that come into the town.

Also with the down turn in the economy we should be trying to reduce the amount  project which consume money that could be better spend elsewhere. I think Investing in the future is what we need, and reducing our reliance cars, if only for town trips, would be a start.

A friend of mine as been running his van on rapeseed for the last 2 years. He is now finding it harder and harder to get rapeseed as a lot of local farmers have run out. It seems that supply cannot keep up with demand and its going to get to a stage that it might only be a few cents cheaper than Diesel….

According to an article in the Irish Times we use “183,000 barrels of oil per day”

I wonder how much land it would take to generate 183,000 barrels of oil a day, so that our economy can keep on ticking.

Considering that “One acre of rapeseed yields 115 gallons of biodiesel” That equivalent to 1591 acres, roughly 6 square kilometers. It take between 6-7 months to grow, (plant in march and harvest in September/ September to march). It is a very bad idea to have a mono crop so the land would have to grow other crops for the rest of the year. So we use on average 66,795,000 Barrels of oil a year. (70% for transport).

So to supply all the Biodiesel for Ireland for one year, if we could! it would take 2350 Km/2. But because we can only grow the crop in rotation and some time the land would have to be left idle(good farming practice, IANAF). so 3 to 4 times this amount of land would have to be set aside. So taking maybe 3x2350km/2 = 7051km/2 which isn’t a small patch of land by a long shot, Cork County is 7457km/2 in size. So providing Irelands need in Oil for one Year using Biofuel is huge undertaking and I don’t think that it is even possible to do.

What’s left for Ireland to do? Reduction would be a start! Increase the use of public transport, that is alot easier to say than to implement. I think for the foreseeable future Ireland will depend on Oil. Unless there is a radical shift in Goverment policy!

The Train:

Dublin -> Galway €24

Galway ->Dublin -> Cork €53.50

Cork -> Limerick Junction -> Waterford €31

*There is no direct connection from Galway to cork.

Cost: €108

Let do the same journey by bus.

Dublin -> Galway €13.50

Galway -> Cork €15.30

Cork -> Waterford € 15.50

Cost: €44.30

Now by Car (Rented).

A Opel astra cost €167 (5 days)

As the cost of travel is depending on distance.

Dublin -> Galway 215~ Km (12 litres)

Galway – Cork 209~ km (12 litres)

Cork -> Waterford 109~ km (6 litres)

Add another 20 litres for good measure ( driving around time)

* The Car has a fuel consumption of 6 litres per 100km

Total cost for 50 Litres would be $66 Euro at €1.32 litre.

Cost: €233

So my simple comparison looks like this.

4 people travelling by train: €424

4 people travelling by bus: €177

4 people travelling by car: €233

There is a lot of things that I am not taking into account.I made no attempt to compare like for like just the cost. I did not for instance compare comfort/ convience /time etc. I just looked at cost for 4 people make a simple tour around Ireland. I would think that the vast majority of people in Ireland know what our public transport is like and I don’t want to be seen taking a pot shot at public transport.I’m sure there is a more indepth report on this somewhere, and would love to see if there is a Government report on it.

Conclusions: It’s cheaper to get the bus, the car comes in second,and last is the train.