Owners of electric vehicles (EVs) largely do not share the concerns of non-owners around vehicle range, charging and the logistics of keeping their vehicle powered up, a new survey from Volkswagen Ireland has found.
Conducted by Core Research on behalf of the German automaker’s Irish unit, the survey of more than 2,000 owners of Volkswagen cars also found that half of motorists who do not currently own an electric vehicle believe they will own one in the next 10 years.
The research also found that concerns among those who are yet to buy an EV are not shared by motorists who have experience owning and driving one.
Where 60 per cent of non-EV drivers said they are concerned or feel they are not fully informed about the possibility of running out of charge, just 25 per cent of EV owners said they shared this concern.
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Some 43 per cent of non-users also said they had concerns about how often charging is required while just 10 per cent of EV owners said they had similar concerns.
Meanwhile, 28 per cent of non-owner said they were concerned about the logistics of charging at home, compared with just 6 per cent of EV owners.
A similar mismatch in perception is evident around charging times, Volkswagen said. While some 20 per cent of non-EV users think they would need to fully charge their car at home every day, just 3 per cent of EV owners and drivers said this was the case in their experience.
Similarly, 20 per cent of non-users believe they would have to charge their car at work or in public every day, yet just 2 per cent of EV users say they would have to do that.
Released on Tuesday, the research is published against a backdrop of declining rate of EV adoption this year in the wake of the Government’s decision to reduce the electric car grant from €5,000 to €3,500 last July.
But Pierre Boutin, chief executive of Volkswagen Ireland, said the decline may also relate to some “genuinely held, but often misplaced” concerns among non-users about the practicality of driving an EV in the Republic.
“If we are going to successfully transition to electric motoring and meet emissions targets, there is a need for better public charging infrastructure and for more incentives, but there is also a knowledge gap, which can and should be addressed,” he said.
“Collectively, we need to highlight the measures already in place to reassure buyers that they are making the right decision when buying their next car.”
The latest figures from the Central Statistics Office revealed a 25 per cent decline in the number of new vehicles registered in the first 10 months of 2024 compared with the same period last year. More recent figures will be published on Tuesday.
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