THE WORLD LOOKS on as global leaders suggest ways to reduce carbon emissions. When all the climate action plans trickle down to the family level, I discover that unless we change what we drive and how far we travel, it's all just talk.
Excerpts I read in The Irish Times [1] and Sunday Business Post [2] suggest “core measures” of Ireland's Climate Action Plan involve changes to some previous targets for a variety of climate measures. Some of these changes include increasing the amount of car kilometres to be delivered by electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030 to 40-45 per cent of total car transport, up from 35-40 per cent in the 2019 plan. Another facet of the government plan proposes a 25 per cent decrease in the kilometres traveled in cars alongside a wider modal sift involving public transport and a condensed development strategy.
I reckon there are mountains of public opinion to shift before the public endorses the mileage targets by changing their modes of transport.
We need to transition into an EV
For the past four years, whenever we've talked to EV owners, the conversation bottomed out around the real world range of the cars. Our use case requires a round trip at night to the Dublin Airport. According to our odometer, we log 418 km on this journey. Both the Skoda Enyaq and the Hyundai Ionic 5 could theoretically complete this round trip. But not while running during the night at motorway speeds. So we will continue parking our faithful Skoda Yeti in the driveway until EVs like the next generation Skoda Enyaq [3] can meet our use case requirements.
Pretending to be EV
Since we realistically cannot afford to buy a new car until 2023, we pretend we're in EV car space by occasionally asking our phones for the location of the nearest superchargers. I have three EV charging apps on my Samsung Note 9 and have pre-loaded €20 of EV charging on the ESB ecar connect app. Hopefully, a supercharger will be within 5km of our home by 2023. In the meantime, we'll get into a routine of stopping on the motorway or in a town only where a supercharger sits. From the looks of the charging map, we'll be shopping more in Cork.
Getting Ready
We will need a charging point in front of our home so I'm looking at how to configure an most environmentally friendly setup. If you've set up your own charging station, please let me know the snags you encountered. And if your home charging station is connected to a power vault that's charged by solar energy, I want to be your friend.
We need to get started by pretending we're part of the EV crowd.
More:
1. "Shortfall in Ireland's carbon reduction plans expected for 2022", Irish Times, November 2, 2021.
2. Daniel Murray -- "Climate Action Plan aims to reduce cars' travel distance by 25%", Sunday Business Post, October 31, 2021.
3. Ryan Motor Power Skoda Enyaq iV
[Bernie Goldbach needs bike racks on the rear and on the top of an EV.]
