Unhappy with owning an EV in Ireland

If you can't run an EV for whatever, that's fine. Just post over on the ICE forums. Rubbishing on about price and range to an EV owner is the same as an EV owner jumping onto a post about diesel cars saying "diesel cars are too expensive and stopping for petrol doesn't suit my lifestyle." The thing is, EV owners don't do that. It's the anti-ev crowd who get triggered on every single YouTube video about a new EV and drive us all demented. I picked up a new EV a week or two back. It's not my first. You'd swear I bought a world war two German tank the way some of my ICE mad friends and family members went around it. Apparently buttonless cars are being made illegal and heavy EVs are going to collapse Brown Thomas car park in the next 5 years. It's hilarious.

Agree that EV drivers should call out anti EV rhetoric but I really do think that EV drivers slagging off ICEs as industrial tractors that would leave you physically and mentally wrecked after driving for a few kms doesn't really contribute to a balanced discussion.

Personally I will miss my ICE when it moves on predominantly because I really like a manual gearbox which I consider far more rewarding to drive that an auto, despite the fact that many EV drivers may despair at such sentiments

I get where you are coming from but personally I think that changing gears and the whole ICE experience is better suited to something like a Porsche 911. Most of us on here are running family cars and the EV adds a lot to the driving dynamics of a 40-60k car.

I'm a bit biased I will admit. I commute Wexford to Dublin so I gave up on manual gearboxes years ago with all that traffic. My last few ICE cars were automatics. Wofting is my preference. 😉

There won't be enough of them to go around in 2030. A 2020 Model 3 long range with a good battery will be hard to come by. It'll also be 10yrs old and things will be starting to fail. It'll be interesting to see how Tesla manage repairs and spare parts on aging cars. Will Joe's garage down the road be able to program them? Will Tesla still disable some of they have a crash.

People will also want to strip these cars and use the motors and battery for something else, like resto projects and conversions, even home storage, like some of the off grid folk are doing with leaf's.

The government really needs to incentivise a lot more buying of new ones. I'd be in favour of 0% bik on any EV until 2030, business will lap them up and they're going to provide half of the second hand national fleet in the future.

I agree on the BIK, looks like that ship has sailed though. Could easily have paid for it by jacking up the VRT on CO2 emitting cars each year until 2035.

That way it doesn't impact people that can't afford a new car like it did back in 2008 with the motor tax change or putting the extra tax all on fuel.

There should be no secondary market for home storage.

Excess PV should be fed to the grid and returned to user at the same rate, no taxe etc.

This would drive people to put up more panels rather than install more batteries.

The government making a balls of it again.

All the excess PV being soaked up where it's needed - in car batteries.

Small EV's only though.

Does battery storage not smooth out the peak as the sun isn't shining then for a large chunk of the year

EV's are expensive, if you only give bik breaks and loans for cheap small EV's your going to end up in 10yrs with a load of crap in the second hand market.

Just watching Nobby on cars with a 70k Skoda, stopped watching as thought why am I wasting my time, I won't be paying 70k for a skoda, 0% interest and 0% Bik in play I might have continued watching.

Why not increase BIK on diesels or is it the case that penalties should only apply to private buyers. Just like exempting commercial vehicles from Nox levy, is it appropriate that businesses should only be incentivised to move to EVs?

Why not indeed, the whole BIK system is a bit of a mess.

Lower BIK the higher the mileage only encourages people to clock more miles. I know people who actively changed their work schedules to ensure mileage was kept over the threshold, e.g if two clients in Donegal would drive up to one then home and back to the other one a few days later rather than meet both in one trip.

At least they have finally moved (slowly and not far enough) on business mileage as was always a higher payment for a larger (more polluting) car.

These are all low hanging fruit and could be changed easily enough.

Some people need bigger cars. I get that back in the day someone's dad was shoved in the back of a Austin Metro with his 10 brothers but that wasn't really safe was it?

Opinions around cars getting too big differs among generations. If I was being cynical, I might argue that the bigger the EV, the more it rubs people up the wrong way.