Barry is retired and lives with his wife in County Donegal. He has two adult children and five grandchildren. Barry is a long-time motorist and has been an electric vehicle driver for the past few years citing environmental and cost benefits among the reasons he decided to make the switch to an electric car.
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1.
What vehicle are you currently driving, and what are your thoughts on it?
Peugeot E2008 – it is very nice to drive but did not live up to advertise range unless we just do urban driving which is rare as we live in Donegal. We do manage quite well it was just a case of adjusting to new practices.
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2.
What do you consider to be the benefits of driving an Electric Vehicle?
We mostly charge from home and have PV panels which greatly reduces the amount of energy we draw from the network from March to end of September. No toxic tail pipe emissions is a big plus especially in urban areas. So easy to drive that it has to enhance road safety. -
3.
What do you consider to be the challenges associated with EV ownership? If any...
At the moment its expensive to use public chargers and unhelpful the fact that there is not enough fast charging hubs yet. -
4.
Have you calculated any cost savings since switching to an Electric Vehicle?
There is no doubt that running an EV is much cheaper than ICE cars but only if you can avoid the public chargers. -
5.
What does your average journey look like?
I don’t have an average journey but I would travel to Dublin from Donegal about once a month. -
6.
What are your thoughts about the existing infrastructure to support EV drivers? Is it sufficient?
The infrastructure is not great at the present but I do see things beginning to improve albeit not fast enough.