In a car park near you….

Was up in Westport, a rather pleasant tourist town in county Mayo over the last few days. Taking ‘North’ and Mrs S out for a pub lunch and wander around the shops.

We’d parked our old diesel powered jalopy in a local car park and were strolling out to the pedestrian exit when I heard the owners of two Electric vehicles complaining that two cars were hogging the car parks charging spots.

Now this comes as no surprise to me, as I consider purely electric vehicles virtue signallers toys, only fit for certain high density urban environments, and doing any serious journey, say over fifty miles or seventy five kilometres from home base, is not a great idea. Especially during Irelands predominantly cold and wet weather, when load from a vehicles internal vehicle systems (Heating, demister, radio, lights etc) takes more out of the batteries on your journey than advertised. And especially when you can’t be certain of recharging said batteries during said peregrination.

Here’s an actual owner of an electric vehicle doing a test run of a Tesla and sharing his misgivings. All that fuss and bother to get fuelled up? No thank you.

What he doesn’t say is that electric vehicles are generally far heavier than diesel and petrol equivalents than and produce more road wear. Then there’s the charge times which frustratingly increase journey times to that of public transport. And having had to make extended commutes using public transport, I can attest that I’d far rather have my own vehicle.

What experience dictates is that the charging network, at least in Ireland, is inadequate for more than a few EVs on the road at any one time, and that the Irish electric grid, as run by ESB, is inadequate for such industrial level use.

Me, with my sad old diesel based out here in the wilder west, don’t have to top up every day or so. I can fill my tank in ten minutes and I’m good for the week. You couldn’t do that with an EV. Especially not with the skyrocketing costs of electrickery.

Right, I’m off out to LocalTown. Errands to run, people to see. Catch you later. The price of Diesel is slowly dropping, and not before time.

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