Motoring: How we can all get a bit more from our fuel |
WHATEVER YOUR VIEW on the tactics used at Whitegate, Foynes and Galway this week, the fuel blockades have done one useful thing: they’ve made visible something Irish motorists have quietly been living with for years. Our relationship with fossil fuel is not just expensive, it’s fragile. Cut off half the country’s distribution network for 72 hours and forecourts run dry.
I just went down to my local filling station in east Cork, and they don’t have any diesel. It is not a pleasant sight or sound hearing the kind forecourt operator trying to explain to an octogenarian that they don’t have fuel for them. There are much bigger topics at play here and let me be clear that I don’t wish to trivialise the real issues. But if all of this does anything useful, it might be that we pay a little more attention to how we use our fuel, because it teaches us all how disabling it can be when it is in short supply.
The electric vehicle drivers, for what it’s worth, have largely been gliding through the week unaffected. Even the most ardent EV naysayers must be starting to flinch a little as a result. Certainly it is being borne out in demand for the vehicles.
At DoneDeal Cars, we have seen a more than 100% increase in EV-specific searches in the weeks since the start of the Iran war.
Dealers are reporting a buoyant trade in used EVs as a result.
For the majority of Irish drivers, the ones with........