Chris White Tech Reporter
December 30, 2019 11:49 AM ET
Font Size:
Ireland is fast-tracking legislation that will effectively ban all gas-powered vehicles within a decade, leaving customers who are buying cars in January confused about what to do next, local reports show.
The country’s Climate Action Minister Richard Bruton plans to publish the Climate Action (Amendment) Bill 2019 enforcing such a ban, the Independent.ie reported Monday. The ban was officially announced in June, according to the report. One of Ireland’s political parties is pushing back.
“Fianna Fáil is mindful that families and businesses remain extremely reliant on petrol/diesel cars and that any phase out must be combined with greater investment in EV charging, public transport and cycling infrastructure,” Fianna Fáil climate spokesman Jack Chambers told the Independent.
Chambers noted that any phase out of fossil fuel-powered vehicle required an immediate transition to electric vehicles. The country’s automotive industry also suggested fast-tracking such a proposal, which was designed to eliminate carbon emissions, could create a lot of confusion.
“This only adds to the confusion, at a time when people are buying new cars. January is the biggest selling month for new cars,” Brian Cooke, director general of Society of the Irish Motor Industry, told reporters.
He added: “There are around 35,000 new cars sold in January, so it’s the key month for us.” (RELATED: Schumer Announces Plan To Nix Virtually Every Gas Powered Vehicle In The Country)
Ireland’s push is similar to one that U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York proposed in October.
“That’s why I am announcing a new proposal designed to rapidly phase out gas-powered vehicles and replace them with zero-emission, or ‘clean,’ vehicles like electric cars,” Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, wrote in an editorial that month after suggesting scientists agree that climate change represents an imminent threat to the U.S.
He added: “The goal of the plan, which also aims to spur a transformation in American manufacturing, is that by 2040 all vehicles on the road should be clean.” The plan would remove more than 63 million gas-powered cars from the road by 2030, Schumer estimates.
The senator’s office expects the proposal to cost roughly $392 billion over a decade. The Washington Post referred to the idea as “essentially ‘Cash for Clunkers’ on steroids,” referring to a policy from the Obama-era encouraging Americans to trade their old vehicles for fuel-efficient cars.
Cash for Clunkers was the mechanism allowing the federal government to offer incentives of between $2,500 and $4,500 to citizens who traded in their older vehicles for newer ones. Critics called the idea, which received generous media fanfare, a failure even if it was designed with the best of intentions.
Schumer has not responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Remember, Ireland held a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in 2008, which in effect was to hand power over Ireland to the EU, and it was rejected. The referendum was held again in 2009 because the EU didn’t like the 2008 result. The result in 2009 was the result the EU was wanting and they got it. Now there is an ever shrinking native Irish born population.
They also forget we will still need to pump, mine, frac, or some how bring these fossil fuels or raw materials to the market.
You cannot build any of their unicorn and rainbow utopian world with out these resources. Going to a plant base economy will increase the industrialized footprint and land usage.
article: Ireland’s push is similar to one that U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York proposed in October.
It is not often that a political party openly promote the destruction of the economy. And pretend to save us.
Not often?
I have an acquaintance who is an executive in information technology for a large international commercial institution who personally supports trashing the ICE market in just 5 years (here in the U.S.), making fuel and all combustion vehicles unaffordable. He calls it the Big Math. For “progress”.
Seems like there’s an admission of inferiority (technological and personal) hidden deep below the BS.
The country’s automotive industry..does not even exist in Ireland
The company I work for here in Belgium recently stopped all new orders for company cars. In this country a high percentage of company employees – and of the population – drive company lease cars (taxes are high but are less in lease cars than salary). Fortunately I had recently ordered my own car and the leases run for 4 years. The reason given by management was that in 2020, rules and prices for leasing will change in a big way in favour of electric cars. They will need a “pause” to re-adjust.
Countries like Belgium will find it easier to change what cars people drive when a large fraction of vehicles are company lease cars. But I see serious problems with this attempt at overnight forced change to electric. The infrastructure for charging is not there. And electric cars will not be a viable business for the lease companies whose business model will be destroyed. Most of their profits are in car resale at the end of lease. The rapid fall in value of electric cars and especially their batteries, will wipe this out. Only huge, permanent and unaffordable government subsidy will keep the majority of cars electric. Some painful lessons are about to be learned by the more green-ly ideological governments.
At least in Belgium, you have access to the EU’s largest lit road network, so driving at night is safer.
A UK announcement on the same day,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-50957470
We lose as soon as we participate in the discussion about the pros and cons of electric cars to reduce emissions. The response to the topic should be “Why the hell do we want to reduce emissions of CO2 when our emissions are doing so much good!”
The upside of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is far, far greater than the downside. If we were not emitting CO2 ‘accidentally’, we would eventually have to burn fossil fuels just to return some of the CO2 to the atmosphere from which it came, in order to save all life on Earth.
It is not easy to find analogies of this level of stupidity in all of human history. The practice of bloodletting may be the closest, but even that was not as stupid as proclaiming the ‘gas of life’ a problem that must be eliminated!
A handful of master manipulators have sold the world on an alternate reality where small quantities of atmospheric CO2 pose an existential threat. This is the exact opposite of reality, where our CO2 emissions are literally strengthening the biosphere and staving off the very real threat of a massive CO2 starvation extinction at some point in the future.
Many of the discussions here at WUWT, like this one, take place in the alternate reality; passively accepting the false premise. It is like having arguments about the most efficient way to practice bloodletting on people with cancer!
Exactly. From all things that humans done on Earth, viewed from the ‘Gaia’ point, releasing CO2 was the only one that helped.
It did increase significantly the biosphere.
There was a study discussed here at WUWT that compared the biosphere during the ice age with the biosphere in Holocene and found about 1/3 increase due mostly to CO2.
Another similar increase was between the LIA and current period, actually easy to understand if one compares what plants do with 280 ppm CO2 and with 400 ppm CO2.
If the increase since LIA to now was only 15% at 7 billion people that would make food for 1 billion.
Senator Schumer, electric cars failed in popularity at the end of the 19th century for the same reason they will fail today, RANGE! As has been said by an expert on electric cars, “it’s the battery stupid.”
The difficulty with selling electric cars is that gasoline cars are so cheap and reliable. Here in Canada you can probably buy a safety-inspected gas car for $3000. There is no way new electric cars can compete with that price. Teslas are cutting into the market shares of Cadillac, Porsche, Mercedes and BMW. Those are niche markets to begin with, so Teslas are niche of a niche.
Every article I have seen predicting the coming market triumph of electric cars contains the phrase, “when battery costs come down.” which of course presumes that battery costs will come down. And of course, a vast outlay will be necessary to build and install charging stations. All this to replace an existing system that benefits millions of people who would be shut out of the new system because they couldn’t afford to buy into it. Electric cars must fail, unless government coercion that will severely harm must voters in enacted into law.
There is always the Isle of Man…..
The usual results from not thinking actions through and a raft of unintended consequences will follow.
Just happy we arent the crash test dummies for this one, although somebody will probably bleat the “we are falling behind” It always seems to be a race for some reason.
Ireland used to be such a nice place
Talking about EV’s and costs, here in Australia a Nissan LEAF owner had to get the battery replaced. The car was out of warranty IIRC and was quoted AU$32,000 for a new replacement battery, fitting and GST for a car that was worth not more than AU$10,000. The owner had the vehicle from new. That version of the LEAF didn’t have an active cooling system for the battery, unlike a Tesla, so was unable to control the battery temperature properly. This was vaguely documented in the owners manual, but you had to go search for it in what would be considered the “fine print”. That is shockingly bad customer care by Nissan. No point trying to claim this failure on warranty because as soon as you drive off the lot, the car is used, and unless you can prove a manufacturing fault, the warranty is worthless.
Maybe the legislation could require all government ministers and their support staff to use EVs exclusively for the five years up to the final changeover. You might find there would be intense pressure to get the project details sorted
They’d have to take away our fossil fuel powered rifles first…
In my opinion after 30+ years in the industry, No automotive warranty has ever been worth F-all.
It used to be AP were world famous for this in Leamington spa.
If a clutch was faulty, you could NEVER get them to admit liability, it would always be faulty fitting or some other lame excuse.
I recall just ONE trader, managing to collar an AP manager, and force them to watch fitment then of course almost immediate replacement of one of their brand new faulty clutches,- even that was a struggle, but when you p..ss people off that badly it will end badly.
So, sadly AP went under as a result of their incompetency, – couldn’t happen to nicer people!
AE was the same,I remember one occasion, they churned out 65000 faultily machined pistons and refused to admit any liability-same reasons until eventually they were taken to the cleaners by some competent German engineers and lawyers who proved the “kolbenfresser” part 100% had this fault.
The result, they paid off 1 third party and continued to sell the rest of the stocks regardless.
This attitude really p..ss..s me off, because usually the customer has to make up the slack, and the trade has to do the work for free.
Ireland, they don’t even make cars, never mind have the cash to decide anything, so if they want what industry they have left to leave, they are going the right way, – just migrate it all across the border to Northern Ireland.
In fact you can imagine with such a law, people will just register all new ICE in the North and carry on as before….
Another one:-
If you see what happened with the Apple I-phone, where they deliberately degraded older models as they got older, so they ate their batteries, you have a nice taste of what is to come with any EV.
The technology is the same, the barons of industry, like the weed smoking Musk, are even more cynical than our good old – once mighty British car industry, and is as heavily tax subsidised as good old bankrupt British Leyland ever was…
Thatcher took them to task, but Blair deliberately destroyed the good bits of whatever was left, selling out huge slices of good British industry to the lowest bidders.
Socialism dies hard, but the smoke and mirrors, PR, marketing, the mass media – BBC and all the other in the trough feeding make sure the ploys are even more powerful than ever before.
Thank goodness Britain dodged the next bullet with that loony Corbyn, who wanted to nationalise everything again.
history teaches us that history teaches us….. sweet ZILCH.
They can just export young people like they always do when things don’t work out.
A lot of pointing out the unintended consequences in comments to this article and like topics. Just remember the consequences are not intended. They are what it’s all about and always have been.
Do they mean ALL gas powered vehicles? The Irish are mad about their motorcycle roadracing. Some events have been held nearly every year for over a hundred years. I don’t think everyone’s going to be in complete agreement with getting rid of these events.
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/sport/motorcycling/updated-all-the-irish-road-racing-dates-for-2020-enniskillen-absent-from-calendar-1-9129805
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/31/ireland-fast-tracks-law-effectively-banning-gas-vehicles-within-a-decade-is-the-us-next/