‘Time for the Electric Car?’
– with Dr Lara Dungan
Synopsis: Society is now at the cusp of benefiting from accelerated technology innovations in electrifying transport, with tech that makes cars more efficient, reliable, and longer-lasting. This kind of roll-out is essential to Ireland lowering its emissions to meet EU-mandated targets, but uptake has been exceptionally slow.
The government revised its targets from 230,000 to just 20,000 EVs on the roads by 2020 last year, with a pledge that all new cars and vans sold would be “zero-emissions capable” by 2030. Lara will investigate why electric vehicles are not yet being purchased in significant numbers, and what can be done to encourage uptake.
Lara will test the technologies of 2019 to see what the opportunities and obstacles are for the average driver to go electric and what it would take for all of us to switch to this technology. She will investigate the state of Irish infrastructure, look at incentives, and look at the cutting edge technology that will transform this mode of transport in the next ten years, including a project undertaken by TCD scientist Valeria Nicolosi to lengthen battery life to help these kinds of vehicles last longer on the roads.