'Ambassadors' will promote electric cars in real life

The ESB has presented 21 'Ambassadors' who will drive electric cars for the next year to show how they fit into a variety of 'ordinary' motorists' driving needs, write Brian Byrne & Trish Whelan.

They were selected from 12,000 applications made through a Facebook promotion by ESB subsidiary eCars.

All the cars used by the 21 Ambassadors in the Great Electric Drive are owned by eCars, and many have been used in other evaluation programmes with companies.

The Ambassadors will regularly post on a communal blog which will be set up on the handover day, and each car will have direct electronic links to eCars where location, charge and discharge rates can be monitored in real time.

The event is designed to see how electric cars work out for 'real' people in their daily lives, and the information gathered will add to the ESB's data and be used to further improve the charging infrastructure around the country. But it will also be another step towards increasing public awareness of EVs and how they can fit the needs of Irish motorists.

"We have held other events, including the recent EV Conference, participation in the Cannonball Run charity drive, and the Irish Times Motor Show," says head of the eCars programme Dermot McArdle. "We do surveys after the events and find that awareness is raised further each time."

Although the number of electric cars registered is still very low—so far this year 122 registrations are recorded, representing 0.17 percent of the total number of cars sold in 2012—they are becoming visible.

"We do need to keep them before the public's imagination," says McArdle. "We see our role as not just putting in infrastructure, but also generating awareness around the concept."

He said that eCars were expecting about 1,000 responses in the short window of opportunity on the Facebook competition, and were very surprised when more than 12,000 would-be Ambassador requests came in.

The subsequent selection process was designed to spread the allocation of the cars right around the country and across a wide range of age group and work/leisure backgrounds. Such as Beatrice Whelan (right) who will use her Nissan Leaf to drive to and from work every day between her home in Monasterevin and City West near Dublin.

Or Tom Fortune from Gorey, pictured below with his wife Julie in the Mitsubishi MiEV which he will drive for a year. Tom actually built a toy electric car for their son many years ago which was for a long time a feature in Gorey's St Patrick's Day Parade.

"We want the general public to see ordinary motorists driving electric cars in their everyday situations," McArdle says, adding that he is confident that the target of 10 percent of the car parc being electric by 2020 will be achieved, and if it happens a couple of years on either side of the target date, that's not an issue.

"Back in 2008 when we rolled out this programme, nobody saw the deterioration in the economic situation," he responds to a suggestion that early forecasts for EV takeup in Ireland might have been too optimistic. "But fuel prices are going to keep rising, and the financial argument for electric cars will continue to get stronger."

The two big perceived issues with EVs are the so-called 'range anxiety' and the cost. The Great Electric Drive may well help to eliminate the range concern if the 21 Ambassadors show that their electric cars work for their particular varied lifestyles.

The high cost is another issue, though one for which argument can be made if buyers can take the longer view over full-life costs of the car.

It's a long game, and the stakeholders here, including the ESB, are playing it that way.