Electric vehicle (EV) sales are plummeting in Ireland. New EV registrations are down about 40 percent from this time last year, according to the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI).
However, the Irish establishment has promoted EVs as part of their larger climate change agenda. Green Party leader Eamon Ryan promised just last year a €100M plan to promote EVs. How can EV adoption in Ireland be diminishing when the propaganda and subsidies are all pushing for it?
The bottom line is that EVs are expensive, unreliable, and costly to maintain.
Over the past two decades of EV market expansion, costly EVs were only accessible to the rich. Tesla’s first cars were priced at $100,000. While EV prices have moderated, it is no surprise that the average EV owner is richer than the average consumer in general. A research paper from The Energy Institute at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley found that “only 10% of U.S. households with an EV are single-vehicle households, compared to 37% of all U.S. households. Thus, households with an EV are almost four times less likely to be single-vehicle households.”
The paper also found that 89% of those households that owned EVs owned a non-electric vehicle too. Most of those dual owners drove the non-EV cars more miles per year. This indicates that EVs are a luxury status symbol for richer consumers that act more as an accessory like a Rolex watch than something bought for its functional utility. While EV adoption increased for a few years, there are only so many rich people that can afford to a buy a new EV as a luxury. Most consumers prefer to buy affordable cars that get them from A to B.
A caveat to this is that used EV prices are coming down. A used Tesla’s price was reportedly down anywhere from 29 percent to 53 percent. Here is why that’s still problematic.
In general, used EVs depreciated much faster than non-EV cars of the same age. 64 percent of consumers felt that the resale value was important to their car purchasing decision. The idea that any term of ownership can result in massive depreciation is off-putting. This is especially true of ordinary consumers that see their car as an asset they can sell in the case of extreme life circumstances. If the car is financed, this can also result in the debt being worth more than the car.
A reduced resale value is also associated with poor quality. For all the hype about EVs being a sophisticated technology, the product experience is often plagued by malfunctions and shoddy manufacturing. Consumer Reports found that EV owners had about 80 percent more problems than non-EV owners. As EV adoption increased, these problems have been showcased across social media and have racked up millions of views. Issues concerned the battery, charging, software, and even basic things like doors not being fit properly.
If an EV needs repairs, EV owners are confronted with even more hassle. Mechanic shops are often not specialized nor prepared with the necessary parts to deal with the niche issues of EVs. This leads to inflated repair costs and long delays.
For example, a car repair professional interviewed for this article suggested that tire replacement is a surprising problem EV owners face. EV tires are different than regular tires because they must handle the additional weight of the EV battery. This means the availability of EV-specific tires is in a much shorter supply and at higher price points.
The mechanics themselves are cautious on EVs. There are not a lot of qualified technicians to service EV specific issues and the costs of training up ones are still too high. Not only that but Reuters reported that many are scared of these risky high voltage EVs that “could electrocute and kill unwary or untrained technicians in seconds…Along with electrocution risks, the risk of EV fires – which are notoriously hard to put out – also has to be taken seriously.”
Taken together then, the high costs, long delays, and safety risks make the prospect of EV maintenance very unattractive.
These negative issues contributed to the overall decline in future EV market expansion. Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin have all recently announced halts or delays in future EV plans. Hertz, one of the largest car rental companies, just had its CEO resign because of his aggressive EV strategy. It resulted in high repair costs and low demand which caused Hertz to sell at least one third of its EV fleet and replace them with non-EVs. Hertz incurred quarterly losses and lower share prices because of this.
Now EV believers might counter that if only there was proper government support for charging infrastructure this would save EVs and dull the other pain points. It is unclear that, after so much subsidy has already been given, things would change in the future. In addition, what hope is there to count on the government to even deliver on these promises?
The U.S. government allocated $7.5B to build 500,000 charging stations. In just over two years, only 7 stations have been built across 4 states. That’s a .0014% completion rate (yes you read that right).
Just look at the Irish government’s handling of the MetroLink. A plan initiated in 2005, revised in 2015, and hit with delay after delay. The opening date was most recently pushed all the way back to 2035. On top of that the original cost estimate of €3B ballooned to €9.5B to €23B. There is no reason to think, based on the track record of the MetroLink, that the current Irish establishment could successfully deliver the necessary quantity of charging stations.
This circles back to the big picture that Irish establishment is in crisis. Extreme immigration has rocked Ireland, and three fourths of the country think it’s too much. Neglecting the property sector has resulted in housing crisis that has radicalized young people into fearing they may never own a home. In the recent referendum, middle Ireland rejected extreme distortions of the meaning of family, marriage, and motherhood the Irish establishment desired to insert into the constitution.
The establishment politicians themselves are even bowing out in mass. Leo Varadkar resigned from Taoiseach with nearly a dozen of other Fine Gael politicians stepping down. From this time last year to now, polls revealed every party has either declined or remained the same besides the growth for Independents and Aontú. Given this contingent represents the most prominent challenge to the Irish establishment, it’s clear people recognize the crisis and those to blame.
While EV promotion isn’t the reason politicians are resigning, they are part and parcel of the flawed ideology of these politicians. If nine out of ten ideas are seen to be bad, why would the tenth idea be any better?
In my view, the regressive policy of EV extremism should be rejected by the Irish public. Irish consumers should not be forced into a backwards technology that’s expensive, unreliable, and a tax drain. Ireland has given EVs a fair play, let it return to common sense before the country gets fried.
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I have worked as an engineer in the EV industry and it is fundamentally flawed as it stands.
That’s because they are a scam. Buddy of mine bought one, can’t even make it to Dublin without a charge. Another fella bought a macky, realized it was shite, paid 80k for it and could not even sell it for 60k near new. They are control cars and are made with slave labor and child slave labor with that. They are also more polluting than a normal car too. Complete hoax. They are now moving to hydrogen, I’ll see how that goes but I’m not holding my breath. Climate change is a hoax anyway and most people know it too.
James May of Top Gear and Grand Tour recently gave EV’s a fairly damning report . He has owned 6 over the last 10 years and is unconvinced by them and especially the network to power them in the UK. Overall he say’s ownership is a pain in the ass. Would you listen to his advice and experience or Eamon Ryan?
I think the EV manufacturers need to go back to the drawing board and come back in a few years with a much more advanced and reliable product. EV’s are just not as good as Diesel or Petrol for the foreseeable.
Myself and missus Mortal are currently looking for a new car, EV’s are 100% off the table for all the reasons above and more. Eamonn Ryan can stick his doomsday ideology where the sun doesn’t shine.
This is hilarious, the absolute idiocy of mainstream society blindly following and complying with another fraudulent globalist scam ie green agenda, run out and by a product with out any due diligence undertaken just because those same corrupt, unscrupulous and disingenous globalist owned decision makers say so, remind you of any other scam maybe ………….#Covid………….the Irish people and western societies in general are really failing the IQ tests.
BTW if you stick you hand into a fire remember it will not hurt……….cause the govt and policy makers say so.
Mechanic workshop will need to be refitted to accommodate risk of cars going on fire. Insurance for these garages will rise substantially. Costs will rise . Who recycles the batteries. Many more questions.None of this was fully thought out.
Toyota don’t believe EVs are the way forward and they are making big bucks with hybrids.
EVs could be the best performing, best looking, least expensive cars ever made and the market for them would still be stagnant because our political elite are trying to eliminate private car ownership altogether in favour of the cult of the cyclist and public transport. Any potential car buyer is going to look at a state that seems downright hostile to them and conclude there is little point trying to do their bit buying an EV if they get punished anyway.
A wise and prudent engineer will not launch a huge production scheme but rather set up a small project developing a prototype and ironing out the problems. When he has done this and the technology has matured enabling him to produce an affordable and reliable product, then he is reaching the point where he can consider mass production. But even that, in itself, is not sufficient. The public need to give sufficient support or else he will fail.
There are products, that the public do not buy into, that fail when on the face of it the developer would expect them to be a great success. Governments push and invest huge sums in schemes and products that invariably fail. Just go and look at the graveyards of failed green schemes that go back twenty to thirty years, when they were praised to high heaven. Let the private sector and a free market pay for the projects and bear the loss if they fail – not the taxpayer!
From an engineering perspective, EV’s are a very, very mature technology with over 120 years of research and development. EV’s big problem is that they have never been competitive with ICEV’s. Ever..
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Government mandated technology choices rarely work. Two reasons, at least:
1. Very, very few engineers or scientists in Government. The schoolteachers, lawyers and others do not understand the technologies they are mandating
2.Due to their lack of technological expertise, they are very easily influenced by interested that will profit hugely from the mandates, irrespective of their merit.
He got the maths wrong, it’s 0.00004% not 0.004%.
From the guy who wrote: “Drill Boyo Drill: The Case for Ireland’s Oil and Gas Potential”
This is just a list of worn out myths combined with outright lies. Not sure how you convinced Peter Ryan to put his name to this, but He should be very ashamed.
I own a VW ID4 – the tyres have had to be replaced after 35, 000 (approx) kms – do you want me to produce the documentation ? NewsTalk – Saturday or Friday last (it was some sort of business programme) – had 2 EV owners (one of them the presenter of the programme) talking about the drop in sales and aspects of EV ownership. A definite negative from their point of view – and I can confirm this – is the lack of a large scale public charger network. It’s extremely risky taking an excursion of over 130 kms in this country (you’ll probably have charged the car up at home) because of the scarcity of public chargers. The EV owner on the NewsTalk programme who was interviewed gave an account of the rigamarole he went through travelling quite a distance to – I think – his son’s wedding in this country. Another fact – and again I can produce the documentation – is that my VWID4 broke down less than a year after its purchase. Another fact – I think at this stage Les your “list of worn out myths” is becoming a bit threadbare – is that in January of last year with 8% of battery charge showing on my display – it was about 1 degrees centigrade on the day in question – I didn’t actually have enough charge to get my car back from a place in Stillorgan to my residence in the Monkstown/Deangrange area. Google the distance that would have had to be travelled for that – 4 kms at most. Finally – back to that NewsTalk programme – having discussed a number of negatives that might explain the fall in EV sales – the 2 EV owners ended the discussion on a “positive note” – all of the problems will be sorted out as time goes by. That’s obviously a matter of opinion but I think this Gript piece is within the acceptable bounds of opinion (and some of the matters cited as “fact” – will – if you’ve come this far with my reply – do, indeed, seem to be very much based on reality).
Internal combustion engines were found to be superior first time round,one hundred and twenty years ago.
A long piece of writing is spoilt by not having paragraph breaks. These make it much easier for readers. What appears to be a paragraph when we write on this site is not unless we add in an extra line space. Hope this helps.
I’ve got an id4 with 49k km on it,still on original tyres, charging never bothers me,I don’t tend to do over 400km per day,but I do 1000km per week,quite easily, and for about €70 less than diesel was costing me. It takes a bit of getting used to,but as someone who works in the motor industry I’ve got no problem with any form of propulsion tbh. Electric works for me and my wife,you just couldn’t seem to get used to it,that’s fine,buy a diesel so. But believe me,modern diesel engines are absolutely rubbish.
I love how the indoctrinated make these statements without a single reference or logical argument. Just arguments from emotion and a desire to be seen to be virtuous. Les, if you were really worried about the climate and it’s inevitable changes, you would be raising hell about the Americans, Indians and Chinese as they are responsible for the VAST majority of global emissions, instead you choose to attempt to bully and shame your neighbor. If you wonder why you’re loosing this fight…. look in the mirror.
He is way off concerning many aspects of EVs. “Trust me bro, I saw it on social media” is not evidence.
Have a look at my reply to “Les Hardy”. Also, if NewsTalk have a facility similar to RTE’s – to “listen back” to a previous programme – I suggest you listen to the item on the programme mentioned by me. Unlike myself – who has a certain knowledge /experience of EVs – an uninformed person listening to the NewsTalk discussion would, I think, be left feeling “non the wiser” at the conclusion of the discussion – a series of “negatives” outlined by the 2 people concerned – and -yet – the discussion ends on an an upbeat note. One must almost be tempted to say NewsTalk – like RTE and much of the MSM – dare not “sully the name of EVs” too much !