Ireland launches commercial EV fleet trial nationwide
The Department of Transport and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) have launched the Commercial Fleet Trial as planned. Businesses will be trialling fully electric vehicles to see how they can work for their business to save money and emissions.
SEAI has selected 200 businesses nationwide to receive an EV for three months at no cost to them, along with the option to install an EV charger. 50 fully electric vehicles are available; 30 M1 passenger cars and 20 N1 light commercial vehicles (vans) so businesses will have to switch over eventually.
The first batch includes 14 businesses across Sligo, Limerick, Louth, Wexford, Dublin, Wexford, Cork, Waterford and Galway. They received their cars by the end of November. So far, there has been no mention of the models made available, nor have the businesses been listed.
The Zero Emissions Vehicles Ireland, an office of the Department of Transport and SEAI, coordinates the trial.
The Irish DoT had first mentioned the commercial electric vehicle fleet trial when launching the latest initiatives to increase EV uptake in July this year. Already then, the scheme was oversubscribed, so applications closed soon after.
A draft of the first national EV Charging Infrastructure Strategy also published earlier this year attracted over 14,000 responses from both individuals and organisations.
“Businesses up and down the country are already telling us that they are keen to make the switch to more sustainable practices, but they also need to know that the switches they want to make are going to be good for their bottom line,” said Minister for Transport, Eamon Ryan today. “The findings from this trial will give us real-world feedback and provide us with the evidence to encourage even more businesses to switch to electric.”
William Walsh, CEO of SEAI, added the trial would “showcase the financial and emissions savings achieved by a variety of different businesses by switching to electric”.
Ireland’s Climate Action Plan 2021 targets to have 945,000 electric vehicles in the Irish fleet by 2030.
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