ELECTRIC WIN SIGNALS TURNING POINT
For the first time in the history of the award, an electric car has won Irish Car of the Year. At a ceremony in Dublin on Thursday night, sponsored by Continental tyres, the Kia e-Soul was elected from a clutch of category winners to take the top prize.
It is the flag bearer now for a whole host of electric cars already on sale and soon to be launched, and reflects growing customer interest in new powertrains – this year will see twice as many electric cars leave the forecourts compared to last year, with total sales topping 3,500. It’s a small percentage of the overall market, but the only one showing significant growth, and heralds what’s to come as we move away from conventional internal combustion engines ahead of the mooted 2030 ban on sales of petrol and diesel models. That, incidentally, is a wildly ambitious target, especially in Ireland, where manana has too great a feel of urgency. The impending start of payment for formerly free ESB street chargers won’t help either, and no one has yet convincingly addressed the question of how, if all two million cars on our roads are replaced by EVs, we’ll actually be able to generate the electricity needed to power them. Maybe we’ll have wind turbines in our back gardens.
The success of the e-Soul, and its sister models the Kia e-Niro and the electric Hyundai Kona, is down to range, with all three delivering close to 460km on a single charge, either overnight on a 7kW home wall box or in around an hour on a high-speed charger such as the 100kW Ionity units popping up at motorway service stations nationwide.
In the general categories, the winners were the Toyota Corolla (medium car), Peugeot 508 (large car), Volkswagen T-Cross (compact SUV), Audi Q3 (medium SUV), SEAT Tarraco (large SUV), Ford Focus ST (hot hatch), Alfa Romeo Stelvio QV (performance/luxury car), Kia eSoul (green/efficient car) and Peugeot Rifter (MPV).
The joint entry of Citroen Berlingo/Opel Combo Cargo/ Peugeot Partner was voted as the Irish Van of the Year.
I was surprised not to see the Toyota Camry do better, especially since it is so refined it feels like a Lexus in Toyota threads, but agreed with almost all the results, especially the Peugeot 508, my personal Car of the Year for 2019.