Recently, it has been announced that Ireland will be a testing ground for electric vehicles. This is for the purpose getting more motorists to change over to them from traditional vehicles. The government in Ireland has even joined forces with a couple of car companies along with the local electricity provider ESB. Renault and Nissan will provide the cars. The Irish Government will give a subsidy of €5,000 to each owner as the vehicle is bought. The owners will not have to pay any registration taxes either.

The Leaf from Nissan will be the first of the cars released under this plan. The price of the Leaf will be €29,995 and was released in 2010 in May. This price even includes the batteries. The Fluence from Renault will be released in 2012 in a model that is electric. These two vehicles can go for 150km with one charge.

The cost of running these electric vehicles are only $.03 per mile as opposed to the $.15 per mile for the diesel or petrol the owner starts to break even with just 12,000km a year which is about 30km a day. The possible savings are huge when in Ireland the average car travels about 17,000km a year.

This country is thought to be perfect for the electric vehicles to be used in. The bulk of the country’s populations live in the areas of Waterford, Dublin, Limerick, Galway, and Cork. ESB will be giving most of the total 3,500 charging points to these areas by the last part of the year 2011. The most current technology as far as the lithium batteries will be manufactured by the AESC (Automotive Energy Supply Corporation), thanks to the joining of NEC Tonkin, NEC and Nissan in this venture.

In April 2010 the “Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland” put on an Energy Show to showcase numerous suppliers of electric vehicles. One of the manufacturers was Avia Group’s Electric Vehicles Ireland based in Tullamore. This group provides the Smith electric vehicles for commercial usage. These are built using the Avia and Ford Transit chassis as their example of what the chassis should be.

Similar to the other cars mentioned in this article these vehicles can travel about 150km on one charge. The users can save as much as 80% using them opposed to traditional vehicles. These vehicles when purchased are tax deductable 100% in year one of ownership. These are perfect for delivering goods in the urban areas with their low-maintenance and operating costs.

Ireland does have a true commitment to lowering the carbon emissions to help fuel needs in the long term. This country is on the front lines in the fight for more green living. It will be interesting to see how successful their efforts are. The world needs to join them in changing over to electric vehicles for traveling for whatever reason on a daily basis. The more countries that join in on this effort the more energy is preserved and the carbon emissions would be drastically lowered.