Every new car offered for sale in Ireland by 2020 should be an electric vehicle, a new parliamentary report has recommended.
The all-party Oireachtas Committee on Climate Change has also recommended an "aggressive drive" to ensure that all vehicles in Ireland will be electric in 20 years time, and that diesel and petrol vehicles will have become obsolete.
Fine Gael's spokesman on energy Simon Coveney, the committee's rapporteur for the report, said that the Government's target to make 10 per cent of the car fleet electric by 2020 was not ambitious enough.
Mr Coveney said that at least 20 per cent of the fleet or 350,000 cars should be electric by 2020. He also said that all cars on sale by that year would be electric. He said that if the average replacement rate for cars is followed, it will mean that all private cars in Ireland should be battery electric vehicles by 2030.
The Government's current target is to have some 230,000 electric vehicles on the road within the next decade.
"For all sorts of reasons this is a no-brainer. The world is moving towards electric vehicles. Do we want to follow what they are doing or should Ireland lead the way?" said Mr Coveney.
"Electric vehicles are a seventh of the cost [of fossil fuel cars] to run. Our children will be looking at us wondering why we used combustion engines," he said.
The report - entitled
Drive for Zero: Electric Vehicles are a Winning Proposition- was launched in Leinster House today by Sean Barrett, the Fine Gael chair of the committee.
The report also recommends the establishment of a task force to make the transition to electric cars a reality. As well as facilitating the introduction of electric cars and commercial vehicles, the task force would also look at ways in which Ireland could benefit from the electric car revolution.
The committee has identified two key areas where the State could benefit: the promotion of Ireland as a research and development centre; and as a location for testing new
technologies.
There are current incentives in place to encourage electric cars including very low vehicle registration tax rates. Mr Coveney said that more would be needed. He said that the committee did not want to be prescriptive but he mentioned the emergence of congestion charges plus other measures to discourage fossil-fuel cars and encourage the
use of electric vehicles.
He accepted that the price of such cars was expensive at present but said that it would fall once auto manufacturers went into full production. "I do see that happening very quickly. The auto industry needs to find new ways to persuade people to buy new cars. It's now a golden opportunity to do that," he said.
Ciaran Cuffe of the Green Party said that there had been a sea-change in the auto industry. "The Pontiac [an American vehicle that is known as a 'gas guzzler'] is being withdrawn. There's a dramatic change of direction when you see a million Toyota Prius have been sold."
Senator Joe O'Toole said the implications of this policy initiative were wider than simply electric vehicles. He pointed out that the renewable energy sector was increasing but there was no way of storing the electricity generated, especially at night. "We need to encourage electricity use during the night. We need to move into this area," he said.