EV revolution is gathering pace

ESB ecars’ public and fast charge points for EVs have 82% national coverage.

The electric vehicle revolution is gathering pace in Ireland, with the State recently having been selected as the first country to trial a pan-European IT platform for EVs that will allow international roaming and seamless charging across Europe.

Ireland is one of 10 demonstration regions within the EU’s Green eMotion project, and was chosen to test the new system due to the advanced state of its national charge-point network, which already covers 82% of the main cities and towns.

The new IT platform will enable international payments to be settled via your home account in a system similar to that for mobile phones.

Green eMotion is focused on achieving mass-market adoption of electric vehicles through the development of standards, policies and interoperable systems so that motorists can easily charge anytime and anywhere in Europe.

At the recent Fully Charged international conference in Dublin organized by ESB ecars, Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said the key objectives were reducing battery costs and developing infrastructure and policies to support the agency’s target of electric and plug-in hybrids to reach 50% of global sales by 2040.