Sir, – I share Finbar Kearns’s frustration regarding public electric car charging points (October 26th).
In July I switched from a diesel SUV to a petrol-electric plug-in hybrid. On a recent journey from Leopardstown to Carlingford, I stopped off in Balbriggan for lunch. To my annoyance, both of Balbriggan’s charging points were being used by cars whose traction batteries were already full (one can tell from looking at the dashboard).
Instead of going from petrol/diesel to all-electric in one step, your letter writer should consider a plug-in hybrid. A home charging point only costs about €300 (net of an Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland grant) and very quickly pays for itself. My own daily commute entails a 70km round trip. The first 50km is powered by the traction battery (6kWh of electricity costing about 80 cent) and the final 20km by the combustion engine (0.8 litres of petrol costing about €1.20). – Yours, etc,
RONAN SCANLAN,
Leopardstown,
Dublin 18.