Energy minister Eamon Ryan has aid there are exciting opportunities for new businesses with the arrival of electric vehicles. But what are they, asks PADDY COMYN

YOU PULL up and plug-in. It takes 25 minutes to recharge your car at a quick-charge point: what to do? Eat, read, rest, shop? And what about tapping that unused power when your car is parked at night? How about selling it back to the ESB? Aside from revolutionising the motoring world, the advent of electric cars is likely to have major implications in a multitude of areas, from retail and the restaurant trade to power storage.

We are a few short months away from the arrival of the first mass-produced, mainstream electric vehicles (EVs) on Ireland’s shores. The Nissan Leaf will go on sale in early 2011 at a price of €29,995, including a €5,000 grant provided by the Government. The ESB has started to roll out the first charging points around the country to charge these new cars, both on the street and in the driveways of the early adopters. But what opportunities exist for business in Ireland as a result of this new technology?

Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan recently outlined his vision for how businesses could develop on the coat-tails of electric vehicles. “If you are a garage or a hotel near the motorway or the road network, you’ll want to put in a charging point – because very quickly we will be using a mobile phone application and an addition to the satellite navigation on your electric vehicle telling drivers where the next free charging point is, and even what you can have for lunch while you are having your car charged up. So I am looking forward to, not only the ESB putting in charging points, but a whole range of other institutions and businesses availing of the opportunity that is going to exist.”

The plan is to provide not only infrastructure, but also technical support. Ryan believes Ireland’s pioneering lead in electric car introduction will offer a great opportunity to develop the back-end information technology systems others will adopt. We could create the template for electric cars that other countries would copy. “We should look to get all the information technology, systems technology, process management and other spin-off benefits developed here first so we can sell [them] off to the rest of the world. That is the Government’s idea and intention,” he says.

His views are supported by Dan Illet, founder of Greenbang sustainability research, which supplies industry insight and analysis into the clean technology and sustainability sector. He sees many layers to the business opportunities that will emerge as a result of electric vehicles.

“Electric cars are the sexy part of what is happening in the change to the grid and the way that we do things with energy and movement,” he says. “The grid is being updated at a massive level; it is being digitalised, so that you can monitor and measure everything in real time. The first companies popping up as a result of this are the metering companies. Smart metering companies are about to go huge. We reckon that by 2020, the market in Europe for smart metering could be worth $25 billion (around €19.4 billion) and that is just for putting meters out there.”

Car manufacturers understand that battery technology is vital to the success of this new technology. Indeed, it is perhaps the battery firms themselves that hold all the power.

“The grid isn’t very good at storing energy, so battery technology is the holy grail of all renewable energy systems.” says Illet. “Electric cars will be developing batteries first. There is a lot of money going into their development because, once you crack it for electric cars, you can use these batteries for other purposes.”

Battery manufacturers know that, if they get the technology right in cars, they will be able to move outside of this into the infrastructure – and that, according to Illet, is a huge market. “It could be worth billions of dollars, because it will fit into absolutely every single thing we do as human beings.”

Olivier Paturet, general manager of the Nissan Europe zero-emission business unit, agrees. For Nissan, the decision to produce their own batteries was born out of economic necessity.

Paturet says the charging infrastructure field has been the most active. “Manufacturers of home chargers, public chargers and quick chargers have been created throughout Europe. Soon there will be another wave, concerning the installation and maintenance of these units. Further upstream, new solutions of software system integration are being created to make sure the supply of energy is aligned with the demand from EV charging infrastructure.”

But what is it like for businesses actively working in the sector? Carra is a Howth-based firm involved in the area of traffic management. Previous projects include the Dublin Port Tunnel, the M50 barrier-free tolling systems and installing toll booths on the M6 and M7. It is currently installing the first of the electric car charging points for the ESB. Three years ago, it started working with Electromotive, which installed the first electric car charging points in London.

“We installed the first electric car charging point in Grange Building Supplies in March of this year, followed very quickly by the first three the ESB installed this year in Dublin,” says managing director Niall Doonan. “We installed charging points in Intel recently and are adding charging points in Cavan and Galway. The ESB is about to tender for 1,500 on-street and 2,000 domestic chargers. We are also doing back-end work on an iPhone application, developed in-house, which we are hoping Elektromotive will take up for European-wide distribution.”

Doonan shows us how the iPhone application will work and demonstrates how Carra will be able to monitor the use of all the charging points. “We can talk to the charging stations and, using the iPhone application. We can find out where the nearest charging station is. You will also have the facility to use your mobile phone to access the charging station. This will all be subject to the requirements needed.”

Carra currently employs 10 people but the company is hoping to expand, should the technology take off. Having already supplied the initial charging points, it would be in a position to supply to anyone wanting to boost their business by offering a charging point on their premises.

So what advice is there for businesses likely to set up as a result of this new technology? Prof Pat Gibbons is Jefferson Smurfit professor of corporate planning at the Smurfit School of Business.

“We are at a point [where our] consideration of how we use energy goes beyond an individual’s carbon footprint. Our use of energy creates huge potential,” he says.

“The evolution of battery technology is of paramount importance. A lot of research and development will go into battery technology and this is the critical technology. A lot of research and development opportunities exist in this area.”

Gibbons sees an opportunity for car sharing and believes people are likely to consider new ways of acquiring transport, such as rental and leasing.

“When people begin to factor in the cost of ownership, they will begin to consider new [options] ,” he says. “People in Ireland loved owning their cars and, more recently, owning their houses, but people are taking a bath in home ownership at the moment. The true costs are starting to hit home.”

It will, according to Gibbons, be down to public acceptance of the technology. “There is merit in converting the bus and taxi fleet, even as a demonstration of the technology. Consumer acceptance would be much greater if people felt they could pop into a taxi and it would get them from A to B. I think there is a reluctance on the part of the consumer [to embrace] the technology.”

Gibbons thinks there won’t be many opportunities when it comes to utilities, as existing utility companies will be hard to compete against and will be well positioned for this technology’s arrival. He is also hesitant to encourage businesses to invest heavily in things like charging points just yet.

“I think it needs to happen at the same pace as consumer acceptance of the cars. Front-ending the delivery of the energy is fine, but you would need to see this acceptance: that is the barrier. I think it would be risky enough. We would need to see consumers being persuaded and there isn’t a lot of that.”

Evidence from Spain would appear to back up Gibbons’ thoughts. There, just 15 electric vehicles have been sold in the first year of their government-backed initiative, way short of the end-of-year target of 2,000.

It has been pretty difficult for some businesses to promote electric vehicles. David Mullen from Electric Vehicles Ireland imports Smith Electric Vehicles – commercial vans and trucks. His business has suffered from the recession and what he believes is a hesitancy by governments to invest in the technology for their own fleets.

“We have been selling to the city councils, some of the utility owners and some private companies. The take-up hasn’t really been sufficient so far.”

The biggest problem Mullen has is the price of vehicles and the fact that HGV vehicle sales have fallen. “Government bodies have not led by example and bought electric vehicles – the money simply isn’t there,” he says.

Fine Gael spokesman on energy, Simon Coveney, thinks the Government is to be commended for its efforts so far to encourage green business, but feels that more could be done.

“If I was in the Minister’s position, I would be sitting down with the likes of An Post and ensuring they are among the first to adopt the technology,” he says. “There needs to be more done to involve state companies and local authorities.”

Illet thinks governments fail to understand some elements of the potential for electric car business. “Governments rarely understand the investment problems businesses have and they rarely give them the support they need. Grant schemes are available but they are mostly around research and development,” he says.

“If you look at the iPhone, it has quality information and multiple uses for around €40 per month, while a car can cost around €400 per month. An electric car is going to be more expensive to buy and the buying model is different.”

“The business model and how cars are sold could change dramatically. You will still have to buy a car the old fashioned way but the electric car could spark a new business model.”

Many commentators agree that the traditional model of buying a car outright will be flawed with the electric car because it is likely that the battery technology will change so quickly.

“After one year of ownership, we would expect EV residual values to be above the segment average expressed in terms of values,” explains Andy Carroll, managing director at car valuation bible, Glass’s. “But if the battery is owned rather than leased, and without the appropriate warranty, the value of the typical EV will then fall dramatically until the vehicle is five years old, at which point the car will have a trade value little more than 10 per cent of the list price.”

It is expected that different car manufacturers will adopt different approaches to how they sell their electric vehicles, with Nissan planning to sell their Leaf outright and Renault examining the possibility of leasing the battery on their Fluence EV. Cars might no longer be something that you own outright, but something you use, cutting out the risks of depreciation as you simply pay for usage.

Either way, the next 12 months will reveal a lot for new businesses in Ireland – and existing ones. Whether Ireland truly does become a leader in this new area will be down to consumer acceptance of the technology.

www.irishtimes.ie

The latest company car trends report from GE Capital Fleet Services, in the UK, suggests that smaller fleets are neglecting their duty of care obligations.

When it comes to risk management and duty of care, many smaller fleet operators have failed to recognise the importance of these issues compared to their larger counterparts, claims GE Capital Fleet Services.

Just over three in five (63%) see the significance of duty of care, a marked difference from the three-quarters (76%) of larger fleets that deem this important. Furthermore, a little over half of smaller fleet managers (56%) are actively taking action to ensure they have a risk management programme, in comparison to seven in ten (70%) of larger fleets who already have a solution.

The study has also shown that just one third of operators (33%) looking after fleets of under 100 vehicles currently consider driver training to be important – in contrast to one in two (50%) managers of fleets sized with more than 100 vehicles. In addition, less than three in ten (27%) small fleets actively have a solution in place to train their drivers, and one quarter (25%) have no concrete plans to ensure that their drivers are sufficiently trained in the future. This is in comparison to nearly three in five (57%) of larger fleets already having a driver training scheme in operation, while only one in seven (13%) have neither a solution nor plans in place.

Gary Killeen, UK fleet commercial leader, GE Capital Fleet Services, said:  “It is somewhat alarming to see the failure by many small fleet operators to recognise the value of duty of care and driver training. While times are tight for many companies, safety, training and ultimate duty of care should be of the highest priority. What’s more, at a time when financial considerations are to the fore, an effective duty of care programme can be as much about delivering cost savings as it is about health and safety.”

Fleet managers and decision makers are losing out financially by overlooking safety, says RoadSafe.

Research by eSafetyAware, shows 60% of fleet managers in the UK believe safety is an important consideration when procuring vehicles. However, further responses in the survey of more than 100 fleet managers and decision makers in the UK, show many are not acting on their beliefs.

Less than a third (28%), said they look for a Euro NCAP rating when purchasing cars and vans. Only 42% said their policies considered duty of care. 41% said there were no requirements for specific safety equipment in vehicles, and substantial numbers were unaware of, or uninterested in, the latest electronic safety technologies.

In the UK, more than 150 vehicles driven on company business crash each day. Every year, an estimated 7000 deaths and injuries on UK roads involve at-work drivers. Business pays for this.

Adrian Walsh, RoadSafe director, says, “Fleet decision makers rightly focus on driver behaviour, but many seem to overlook the importance of buying or leasing safe vehicles.

“They must look out for those equipped with the latest technology, such as Electronic Stability Control, and those with the highest Euro NCAP ratings. There is a strong business case for investing in eSafety in fleets. Evidence from our campaign partners proves this.”

RoadSafe runs the government-backed campaign, Driving for Better Business. The programme is supported by organisations, which recognise the benefits of procuring vehicles with eSafety systems.

Arval UK is one such business. The fleet and fuel management company only purchases vehicles for its drivers that have ESC, and it provides a strong business case for employing eSafety.

Between 2007 and 2009, the number of incidents in Arval’s fleet fell from 40% to 25%. Since 2003/04, this ongoing decline has helped cut fleet repair costs by more than 50%.

Arval says investment in eSafety technologies has helped to achieve this. Compulsory extras in its fleet already included Advanced Braking Systems and reverse parking sensors, and in July 2008, ESC was also made a mandatory safety feature on all new company cars.

Arval fleet & road safety manager, Tracey Scarr, says, “Around 40% of fatal road accidents are a result of skidding and studies show that ESC will dramatically reduce this. Obviously, there is no substitute for careful driving, but this is a valuable safety feature that will help reduce the risk of death or serious injury for our drivers.

“The benefits are broad as ESC does not just make drivers safer, it also helps fleets meet their ongoing duty of care responsibilities, and reduce their accident costs. With this in mind we believe that fleets should be making the technology a standard requirement when selecting vehicles.”

A CHANGE in the current registration system is being sought by car distributors and dealers in Ireland in an effort to spread out the current glut of sales at the start of the year. As new car sales this year already exceed the total sold in 2009, with 57,898 cars registered, some industry figures say businesses in the industry face front-loaded costs at the start of the year and then struggle to justify the expenditure on staff and premises as business dries up towards the autumn.

“The key issue we have with the current registration system is that between 60 to 70 per cent of new cars are sold in the first four months of the year, so funding for everyone operating and costs is enormously front-loaded,” says Alan Nolan, of the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (Simi).

“And it’s not just an issue for ourselves – the National Car Test calls in cars based on the date of registration and in recent years they have witnessed a huge proportion of tests due in the first four months and far fewer as the year goes on,” he says.

Alternatives to the system are being discussed within the industry lobby group.

However, they are likely to get a lukewarm reception from Government and civil servants, who don’t believe the cost of changing the current system is either timely or worthwhile.

Also, not everyone in the industry agrees that the system is broken. One senior industry source warned that dealers and distributors need to be careful what they wish for.

“If people don’t have the incentive of the new registration on the numberplate, they may well revert to only buying new when the car is actually new. With many manufacturers fully updating models every seven years or so, that could mean people will hold onto their cars for longer. It may ease the rush of the early months but only by reducing the number of people buying cars,” he said. “For all the problems, there’s no doubting that the current system offers a tempting incentive to buy, for some.”

Apart from seeking to downplay or remove the year of registration, Simi is also suggesting that buyers be allowed to change the county of registration to their own after they buy a used car. According to Nolan, the transfer could generate significant revenue for Government and be assigned to local roads maintenance. It won’t affect the information on the used car either.

When the registration is changed, the old registration for the car would not be used again, but would reside with the car, allowing full background checks to be carried out through the various history check services, as at present.

MICHAEL McALEER

THE LONG-DELAYED €200 parking levy will finally become operational this summer, almost two years after being announced in the budget of October 2008.

The two Government departments responsible for the levy – Finance and Environment – have confirmed that the final memorandum on the tax is ready for submission to Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan for his approval of the plan.

The Department of Finance has indicated the levy will be introduced in the next month or two, initially on a pilot basis in Dublin city centre.

After that it is expected to be extended to most of the Dublin City Council area and the major urban centres of Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford. It is expected that it will be at least a year before the levy – designed to combat congestion – becomes fully operational.

For the pilot period, the tax will be confined to those workers who benefit from free parking spaces in Dublin city centre within the North and South Circular Roads. The affected postcode areas will be Dublin 1, 2, 4 and parts of Dublin 7 and 8. There will be exemptions in areas where there are no regular public transport links at present.

While neither department has given an estimate as to how many motorists will be affected, the number is due to run into thousands. It is expected the vast majority will be public servants, working for the city council, Government departments, the Oireachtas or a plethora of State bodies and agencies.

The Department of Finance does not expect the levy to raise a significant sum for the exchequer, even when fully operational. When the budget was introduced in the autumn of 2008, it was estimated that the nationwide implementation of the levy would raise €10 million in a full year.

Because it is now being introduced on a pilot basis, the tax take in the first year is not expected to be above €5 million.

The levy, announced in the emergency budget of October 2009, envisaged a flat-rate levy of €200 per annum on employees whose employer provided them with car parking facilities. It was subsequently delayed because of difficulties in defining “urban centres”, opposition from unions and business interests, and resistance from sections of the public service.

If more than one employee shares a parking space, it is envisaged that each worker sharing the space will pay a reduced fee of €100. The provisions will also impose fines of up to €3,000 on employers who do not impose the levy on their workers through payroll reductions.

The geographical limit of the levy in urban areas has been agreed between the local authorities and the relevant Government departments. Because it is being introduced as a means of reducing congestion, it will apply to city centre and business districts, where there are good public transport alternatives.

COMMERCIAL VEHICLE drivers should be subject to specialised drink driving enforcement as they are more likely to be involved in a collision that results in a death – based on kilometres travelled – than other motorists.

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) in a report, Drink Driving in Commercial Transport , said that even though commercial drivers were less likely to drink and drive than private motorists, the size and weight of lorries, trucks and buses meant crashes involving such vehicles were more likely to result in a fatality.

Along with stricter enforcement, the ETSC has also called for alcohol ignition locks to be installed in the vehicles of first-time drink driving offenders found significantly over the limit.

The ETSC cited research collated by the European Traffic Police Network (Tispol) which gathered data on the prevalence of drink driving from national police forces, including An Garda Síochána, in June last year.

It found the percentage of all driving journeys associated with alcohol – including commercial and private vehicles – ranged from 0.2 per cent in Norway to 8 per cent in Cyprus.

In Ireland it was over 3 per cent. According to the ESTC, “while the prevalence of drink driving among commercial drivers is lower than for drivers of private cars, it can be expected that they follow a similar pattern when it comes to differences between countries”.

The ETSC used the example of the UK where research shows that for every 200 million miles travelled by HGVs they are involved in three fatal crashes, while buses and coaches are involved in four. The equivalent figure for cars is less than two.

According to the Road Collision Facts 2008, published by the RSA, 82 commercial and public service vehicles were involved in a fatal crash that year, compared to 234 cars. That year, 279 people were killed on the roads.

As far back as 2001, the European Union recommended the allowable blood alcohol limit for commercial drivers be reduced at 20mg.

While states are free to set their own limits, the EU said a 50mg limit should be the highest allowable.

Ireland, the UK and Malta are the only states in the EU 27 to still have an 80mg limit.

Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey decided to reduce the alcohol levels for drivers last year and also to introduce a 20mg/mls limit for professional drivers.

The legislation providing for these changes, the Road Traffic Bill 2009, is due to come before the Dáil this term.

Among the other recommendations in the ETSC report is that testing for drink driving form part of every police checkpoint for driver behaviour and that all collisions dealt with by police lead to a mandatory alcohol test for the drivers.

This recommendation is subtly different to the approach being taken by the Department of Transport.

The Road Traffic Bill 2009 provides for mandatory testing at crashes where someone is injured.

Road safety agencies including Public Against Road Carnage (Parc) have called instead for mandatory testing of all drivers at crash sites.

A new cross-border agreement is being introduced today that will allow the authorities in Northern Ireland and the Republic to pursue motorists for unpaid parking fines incurred in either jurisdiction.

The unpaid fines represent the loss of hundreds of thousands of pounds in revenue.

Every year, thousand of drivers who incur parking tickets on either side of the border do not pay the fines in the knowledge they cannot be pursued by the authorities.

In border counties like Donegal for example, this can mean lost revenue running into hundreds of thousands of euro.

Drivers from the Republic who have received parking fines in Northern Ireland before today are advised that the penalties are still valid and should be paid.

The pilot scheme runs until next November.

Hyundai Motor will recall 47,000 of its new Sonata sedans to fix faulty door latches, seeking to avoid the damaging criticism Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp faces for its handling of a series of safety problems.

The South Korean automaker announced the voluntary recall after earlier saying it would suspend US sales of its 2011 Sonata, a move analysts said was in contrast to Toyota’s sluggish response to concerns about sudden unintended acceleration.

“Recalls have become a highly sensitive issue since Toyota’s recall,” said Yim Eun-young, an analyst at Dongbu Securities. “Hyundai seems to have decided to deal with these issues as fast as they can.”

Hyundai, which was the only major automaker to increase sales in the battered US market last year, has targeted Toyota customers rattled by the acceleration problems linked to dozens of crashes and the recall of more than 8.5 million vehicles.

Shares in Hyundai Motor fell as much as 4.3 per cent in early trading and ended down 2.6 per cent versus a 1 per cent drop in the wider market. The stock had risen 13 per cent since Toyota’s recall woes spiralled in January.

Stephen Ahn, auto analyst at LIG Investment & Securities in Seoul, said the recall would undermine Hyundai’s image at a time when customers were sensitive to quality following Toyota’s mass recall. “But given that the flawed part is a not a key function such as the accelerator, powertrain or electronic controls, it will have little impact on Hyundai’s sales,” he said.

The Sonata and Elantra are the two top selling models for Hyundai.

“We have upgraded quality problems to a safety problem and decided to make a voluntary recall,” the company said in an emailed statement in Korean.

The recall will affect about 1,300 of the 2011 Sonata sedans built through February 16th at Hyundai’s plant in Alabama and sold to customers, plus 46,000 YF Sonata units produced through December 6th in South Korea. The new model started to be sold from September 2009 in South Korea and this month in the United States.

Hyundai notified dealers late on Monday of potential faults in the front-door latches of the new model that could affect 5,000 vehicles, and the stop-sale order was put into effect at US dealers on yesterday, a spokesman said.

It will notify South Korea’s transport ministry and the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this week of the decision to recall the cars in March. The company said it received complaints from customers but no reports of accidents or injuries related to the model.

The South Korean automaker is targeting 4.5 per cent market share in the United States this year, helped by popular new product launches and aggressive marketing.

Hyundai plans to launch the new Accent and a revamped Elantra this year, which competes against the Corolla and Honda’s Civic.

With the new models, Hyundai aims to increase global sales in 2010 by 11 per cent to 3.46 million vehicles.

Hyundai’s US sales rose 8.3 per cent to 435,064 units in 2009, while industrywide US sales fell 21 per cent. Its US market share increased to 4.2 per cent from 3 per cent in 2008.

Toyota will today outline plans on fixing the accelerator pedals behind a series of crashes and the global recall of millions of vehicles as it scrambles to put its worst public relations crisis behind it.

Toyota, whose reputation of quality and reliability helped it overtake General Motors as the world’s top car maker, is facing criticism of moving too slowly to address a sometimes deadly problem of unintended acceleration in many of its cars.

Including recalls in China and Europe, some 7.9 million Toyota vehicles are up for repair globally, including a separate problem involving floor mats and pedals.

Toyota, which reports its third-quarter results on Thursday, has been forced to halt sales of eight recalled models in North America, including the top-selling Camry, until it comes up with a fix.

Yesterday, Toyota also kicked off a media blitz with full-page ads in major US newspapers alerting consumers to the recall and production shutdown that will last at least a week.

The recall, which covers almost 1.9 million cars in Europe and China that use faulty accelerator pedals made by U.S. supplier CTS Corp, has spread to some PSA Peugeot Citroen cars made at a joint Toyota-PSA factory in the Czech Republic.

Toyota said today an unknown number vehicles in the Middle East were also fitted with defective accelerators, but the problems seen elsewhere were unlikely to occur there because of the difference in climate.

Toyota said it was studying the necessary remedy for the two models in the Middle East.

The remedy being readied by Toyota and CTS elsewhere involves a shim, also called a spacer, that will be placed in the accelerator to keep it from sticking when affected by condensation, sources said.

Fears of a heavy and protracted blow to Toyota’s sales and bottom line have knocked off about $20 billion from its market value in the last week.

Reuters