11 mins read
We have seen, over the past few years, a series of tragic and destructive wars stretching from Ukraine to the Middle East. Quite apart from the dreadful humanitarian consequences, these conflicts have, separately and jointly, had their effect on energy prices. The cost of fuel has been driven skyward by the dread hand of war, and while we should rightly decry the awfulness of these events, we should also be taking them as a warning to redouble efforts to move our transport systems and our driving away from fossil fuels.
The whole situation is possibly best summed-up by UCC professor Hannah Daly who said: “The only durable solution to this vulnerability is to reduce our dependence, by electrifying transport, heating and industry, using energy far more efficiently, and renewables.”
EV sales momentum
There has been a distinct uptick in electric car sales in Ireland concurrent with the war on Iran, although it’s possibly a bit too early to say definitively whether one informed the other. EV sales here had been rising steadily since the beginning of 2025, so it’s only if we continue to see continued elevated sales in the coming months that it might be thought conclusive that higher fuel prices are making more people think about converting to battery power.
There is some underlying evidence, though. Irish EV sales in March went up by more than 50% in a market that was otherwise stagnant. It’s not just new electric sales, either – Paddy Comyn, DoneDeal Cars’s head of automotive content and communication noted that online searches for second hand electric cars had risen by a significant +125% since the start of the conflict.
So, is it time for fleet operators to start finally and fully making the shift to electric? Almost certainly so. There are still a few use cases of ultra-high-mileage drivers who cover endless motorway miles each day who might still be slightly better off with diesel or hybrid power, but for the most part electric cars can now fulfil almost all needs. Research in Germany has shown that electric car drivers are now covering pretty much as many motorway kilometres as their combustion-powered colleagues, while there’s also much less reticence about using an EV for a long journey, such as taking the family off on holiday.
Cost Savings
Ireland’s charging network remains irritatingly sparse in parts, but it continues to improve, so confidence in getting a charge-up when you need it is rising, as are the ranges of EVs. It’s not uncommon to see a 600km+ WLTP range for even relatively humble mid-range models now.
With the current spike in oil prices, there is also – quite apart from the environmental imperative, and the climate crisis hasn’t gone away – a simply un-ignorable saving to be made in switching away from petrol or diesel.
In Ireland, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) the average driver covers 16,000km each year. Company car drivers, however, cover more than that, an estimated average of 30,000km per year.
To cover that 30,000km, most cars with combustion engines will cluster at around the 6.0 litres per 100km mark. Again, some will do better, some will do much worse, but it’s a solid number with which to work.
At that rate, you’ll need around 1,800 litres of petrol or diesel to cover that 30,000km which means you’ll pay (at the rates on the day this piece was written – €1.89 per litre for petrol and €2.09 for diesel) – €3,402 for a year’s worth of petrol, or €3,762 for diesel. Those figures are up by around €1,000-1,400 compared to pre-conflict oil prices.
How much will the same mileage in an EV cost you?
Well, let’s take a Volkswagen ID.4 – the best-selling electric car in Ireland for the past couple of years – as an example. On average, that ID.4, with its 77kWh (useable) battery, will do around 450km on one charge. That’s less than the claimed WLTP figure (an optimistic 566km) but it’s the figure we’ve observed in day-to-day driving while testing the ID.4. Rivals, such as a Peugeot E-3008 or a Renault Scenic, will manage about the same.
That means you will need 66 full charges of the battery to cover the same 30,000km. Now, electricity prices haven’t yet been significantly hit by the conflict in the Gulf, but they almost inevitably will be, which will change the following set of calculations. If you are considering switching your fleet to EV power, it may be wise to look at trying to lock in a long-term pricing deal with your energy provider.
On the basis of current prices, though, those 66 full charges would cost you as little as €14 per charge using the current Electric Ireland standard night rate tariff of 18.39c per kWh as an example.
Now, that’s not strictly accurate, because on a home charger, outputting 7.4kW of power, your ID.4 needs slightly less than 11 hours to charge from empty. But then you probably won’t be plugging it in empty – few EV drivers will pull up in front of the house just as the battery ticks over to zero. Most will plug in with at least 10% power remaining, which means you need to add 69.3kWh of energy for a full charge. We’ll assume that when you collect the car first, it will have at least enough charge to get home with 10% battery remaining…
This means that, starting at 11pm, and using that night rate for the full nine hours, you’ll be able to add 66kWh on the night rate – costing €12.10 – and then the final 3.3kWh on the standard day rate of 34.99c per kWh – costing €1.15 – bringing your 10-100% charge cost to €13.25. This is, again, not necessarily a realistic scenario for everyone, but a reflection of the need to find a baseline performance from which we can extrapolate representative costs.
All that means, assuming you do all your charging at home, you could cover that annual 30,000km for €874, a saving of at least €2,500 compared to petrol, and €2,900 compared to diesel.
Of course, it’s simply not possible to do all your charging at home – inevitably you will need the odd top-up from more expensive public charging points. Let’s take it that around 80% of charging will be done at home – so that’s 52 charges, giving you a cost of €689 — with the remaining 20%, or 14 charges, carried out at public charging points.
ESB E-Cars has a three-layer charging tariff, with the basic pay-as-you-go cost standing at 54c per kWh for standard chargers, up to 50kW power; 59c per kWh for fast chargers, between 50kW and 150kW; and 61c per kWh for high power chargers, above 150kW.
For the purpose of comparison, we’ll take the average price of those three charging options – 58c per kWh – gives us a cost for those 12 out-and-about charges of €40.02 per charge, or an annual €480 for public charging.
That’s a total of €1,354 annually for your 30,000km of electric motoring, which still represents an enormous saving. OK, those are notional figures, and many drivers’ experiences will differ, but they show you what’s possible.
Other considerations
There are other things to consider, such as ensuring that each electric fleet car user has a home charger – much trickier for those living in apartments or terraced houses than for those with their own driveway. It’s obvious from the figures above that running an EV using only public charging is prohibitively expensive, so for those without their own off-street parking, other solutions – such as offering at-work charging – will need to be found.
The issue of reimbursing employees for ‘fuel’ when they’re charging up an EV at home has been largely solved, and suppliers such as GEV, can supply telematics software that records the energy supplied to the vehicle in real-time, and which can organise automatic payments to employees so that they’re not out of pocket when their electric bill arrives.
Treating a war as some sort of excuse to switch to electric power would be both obtuse and ghoulish, but the current conflict, and its effect on oil prices, should most definitely be a salutary and pragmatic reminder that decoupling your driving from fossil fuels is a good idea, for so many reasons.