30th September, Ireland / by Cormac MacKay, Founder and Spokesperson
Abstract Summary
There have been several public consultations over the years under the Green
Party Eamon Ryan administration of Transport in the current coalition government,
Unfortunately, there has been an opinion formed, whether it is true or not with
some members of the general public and business community, that they have all
become a bit Chinese Communist Party-styled consultations in their nature
looking for the answer they want while ignoring or not seriously fully exploring all
other future options, many of which rely upon outdated unrealistic undesirable
behavioral change expectations, 20th-century solutions for our 21st-century
transport and societal needs not looking 10, 20 years ahead to what will be
available and is actually already available in many cities around the world at this
very moment that we really should be looking to for inspiration and how these
solutions will help us meet our climate goals while improving the quality of life for
all in society.
The importance of individual needs and expectations in transport cannot be
understated, what effects it has on our wider society, from urban development, our
local economy, our health and mental health with many of these deteriorating in
recent years due to lack desirable transport or Government imposed guilt for using
private transport and the effects this has on the wider society along with missing
our climate goals.
Autonomous Electric Shared Mobility and Artificial Intelligent technology is the
future of Transport both public and private and could address many of the
concerns and shortfalls that traditional public/private transport and business
models have failed to do, most importantly including the ever-deteriorating decline
in road safety, with our aging demographic and ever increasingly distracted
negligent drivers, that has just become so socially acceptable that these tragic are
reported in the news like the weather! with the devastating effects from these
life-altering or ending events not given the same seriousness as it would be in say
the Aviation industry or any other aspect of basic health and safety in our lives,
with the adoption of transport technological solutions much of the technology is
already currently available, just not adopted and made mandatory, retrofitting
existing vehicles is an alien concept and safety features are only for a privileged
few, those purchasing a new vehicle with those safety systems on board,
disregarding all other road users, inside and outside the vehicles
Current CarSharing Shared Mobility options are
extremely limited and have many issues that is
affecting their uptake and popularity,
Although we have 5 operators they all operate a very limited service and are not
ideal for complete private car ownership replacement, from a cost or service
provision perspective, with most Local Councils using them as revenue collection
source, rather than climate mitigation and reduction in private car ownership
initiative with Dublin City Council only holding its first CarShareDay this year and
ignoring the feedback regarding shortfalls from users and this does not bode well
for the role out of further Shared-Mobility Hubs when feedback of customer needs
is quite deliberately ignored or worse just not understood.
All Our current CarSharing services, use a return-to-base and exclusive use model. This means
you have to bring it back to where you collected the vehicle and no other member of the public
can use the vehicle while you have it booked. Prohibitively high Insurance excess is also
off-putting to potential users
VW Group’s Europcar GoCar
Toyota’s Yuko
Hyundai/Kia DriveYou
Enterprise CarClub
Hertz CarClub
Unfortunately, most of the vehicles are fully fossil-fueled and Hybrid Petrol vehicles with very few Electric
Vehicles available to Hire
Unfortunately having EV’s in your fleet is not a requirement of Operators to be issued a license to
operate by the Local Councils/DOT.
UFOdrive.com is the only exclusively Electric Vehicles car rental company in Ireland,
They only do full-day exclusive use rentals, with pricing geared to encourage
multiple-day rentals to match the price of petrol/hybrid CarSharing hire rates. along with
requiring a €2000 cash deposit or credit card hold for excess insurance.
Joe Quirke of The VW Group’s Europcar GoCar even had to reduce the number of electric
vehicles it had due to the poor infrastructure, with little or no improvement or investment by
councils over the past 5 years compared to other Cities around the world and as been
completely surrendered to the for-profit private sector has been a failed policy for Electrification
of CarSharing services.
7
Other operators would have liked to enter the Irish market but the charging
infrastructure for electric SharedMobility is just completely missing and again
we have Councils blaming National Authorities for failure to role out sufficient
Charging infrastructure.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/05/green-mobility-bringing-400-evs-to-dublin-in-new-car-sharing-sche
me/#:~:text=5%2C%202019%20%E2%80%8C-,Ireland%20is%20set%20to%20get%20some%20serious
%20electric%20vehicle%20love,to%20drive%20an%20electric%20vehicle.
The lack of public EV charging infrastructure is the reason this company decided against deployments
here, this would have been Dublin’s first fully electric free-floating CarSharing service had it gone ahead.
Most cars are parked unused for over 90% of their lifetime, there have been
several studies to back up this claim and Irish cars are no different including
all current return-to-base exclusive use Irish CarSharing services!
This is an incredible waste of carbon-intensive to produce, hoarding of
precious limited resources, that are getting harder and more expensive to
source, due to world events and protectionist policies by governments and is
actually delaying the electrification of our transport and meeting our climate
goals by hoarding these vehicles for limited use instead of maximizing
Electric Vehicle use, that would be possible with either remoting piloted or
fully Autonomous SharedMobility services.
8
In other cities such as London CarSharing services have been much more
successful at reducing private car ownership replacing up to 29 private cars
with just one Free-Floating CarSharing Vehicle, Free-Floating means you
can make one-way journeys and do not have to bring back to where you
collected the vehicle, 58% of those journeys where one-way journeys.
www.como.org.uk/documents/car-club-annual-report-london-2022
Irish CarSharing services providers are reluctant to do one-way journeys for fear
of losing control of vehicle locations and having to relocate them and free-floating
has not been a requirement for issuing a license to operate by councils.
9
Remotely Piloted TeleDriver CarSharing Services
One of the solutions for repositioning and delivering vehicles is by remote pilot
TeleDriver Hyundai/Kia plans on using remotely piloted CarSharing services in Las
Vegas it will be done by German company vay.io
10
www.qibus.com is another remotely piloted service operator that is partnering with
Italian company www.next-future-mobility.com a unique multi-purpose flexible
adaptable Taxi/Bus that will be deployed around the world.
11
The advantage of this vehicle over traditional public buses is the whole vehicle doesn’t
have to stop at every single bus stop, if you want to get off just walk to the back and the
back module could simply drop off, for passengers wishing to disembark and then to
collect new passengers, it could then catch-up and re-join the vehicle in front or a vehicle
following behind could be added behind.
They also have another function when not carrying passengers, the NExT vehicles
when not carrying passengers could be rented out for cargo deliveries as an
additional revenue source to reduce the cost to operators.
12
The National Transport Authority which is responsible for vehicle selections is,
unfortunately, lacking in technology innovation, and are extremely risk overt, they come
up with all kinds of excuses for failures without producing solutions such as the RTI Real
Time Information and contactless payments debacles, and they have only awarded
contracts for new buses to established traditional “preferred bidders” regardless of how
long this decision will delay the switch to all-electric vehicles and this could be one of the
reasons for us missing our 2030 Transport Climate Targets and cause for us receiving
huge EU Commission fines!
These slow journeys with traditional vehicles may be the reason some current car
owners would never switch to public transport and if we are serious about trying to
promote public transport and SharedMobility advanced vehicles like NExT should be
seriously considered I would like to see an allocation of funding for a trial to take place
on our roads as soon as possible to speed up electrification of our transport to make
sure we reach our climate targets come 2030 and avoid heavy fines from the EU
commission.
If the DOT/NTA is not prepared to award traditional Bus Eireann or Dublin Bus bus
routes to NExT vehicles they should be offered a free license to operate privately
on any routes they wish.
13
Even our mostly fossil-fueled National & LocalLink Buses lack of flexibility which
means these expensive to purchase buses often run practically empty alot of the
time.
14
Autonomous Electric RoboTaxis could be much more
productive and efficient SharedMobility services.
Figures from Waymo and Baidu RoboTaxi services show their vehicles are being used
up to 20 or 30 times per day, some of our CarSharing services would be lucky to do this
in a month because of the return-to-base exclusive use model they operate.
15
Public Consultations
Moving Together:
A Strategic Approach to the Improved Efficiency
of the Transport System in Ireland
www.gov.ie/en/consultation/b51b0-moving-together-a-strategic-approach-tothe-
improved-efficiency-of-the-transport-system-in-ireland/
Aeravai’s submission to the questions asked
Objectives and Vision of Moving Together
16
Public Consultation:
Shared Mobility Hubs
https://www.gov.ie/en/consultation/7e2fc-public-consultation-shared-mobility-hubs-issues-paper/
Cormac McKay’s submission
Cormac McKay’s Submission to the public consultation on Mobility hubs link
17
Public Consultation on Connected and Autonomous
Mobility in Road Transport
https://www.gov.ie/en/consultation/15a35-public-consultation-on-connected-and-autonomous-mobility-in-road-transport/
Public Consultation on the Development of the
Government’s Road Safety Strategy 2021–2030
Aeravai’s submission to the questions asked
https://consult.nationaltransport.ie/ga/node/1392
Published: 29 Aug 2024
18
By Aviva
Some 21% of drivers actively trying to use their car less for
environmental reasons, according to new Aviva research
Regular journeys too long, weather and safety concerns are the main reasons preventing
people from doing so
28 August 2024, Dublin: More than 1 in 5 (21%) motorists say that they are actively trying
to use their car less for environmental reasons, while 1 in 10 (10%) adults don’t have a
car for the same reason. However, some 28% of drivers claimed that they won’t change
their driving habits for the environment. These are some of the key findings of new
research carried out amongst 1,000 consumers, 879 of whom were motorists on behalf of
Aviva Insurance Ireland DAC (Aviva).
https://www.aviva.ie/group/media-centre/research-drivers-using-cars-less/
Cormac McKay also conducted a number of surveys one was done as part
of his Post Grad Climate Enterperunureship studies
Transport & Systems Change assignment
Some of the main findings
19
20
Legislation to allow deployments on Irish roads
https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2023/act/16/section/5/enacted/en/html#se
c5
Unfortunately, it is unlikely this will be passed in the current Dáil Éireann term and
has been delayed yet again and Aeravai has unfortunately had no other option but
to report Ireland to the EU Commission for failure to legislate falling fowl of EU
Trade rules and possibly Windsor Framework violations for North-South trade who
have now opened an investigation.
21
Cormac McKay has written to the Dept of Transport Officials and our current Ministers;
Jack Chambers TD Minister of Finance, James Lawless TD Minister of State and Eamon
Ryan TD Minister of Transport and also members of the opposition; Darran O’Rouke
Transport spokesperson for Sinn Fein and Cian O’Callaghan Transport spokesperson for
Social Democrats to inform them of the investigation and I am awaiting a response from
them and has offered his help and assistance to put an end to the EU Commission
investigation as quickly as possible in the next Government term to help us meet our
climate commitments in the Transport sector and allow for deployments on Irish and
Northern Irish roads.
22
We asked what would it take to get Waymo to Ireland?”
we boldly asked Cedric Dupont, director of product management at
Waymo today.
Surprisingly, the answer was equally bold and very straightforward.
“A stable legal framework and a local partner willing to invest in a
permanent deployment, not a pilot project” This would take a
budget of only around €100m.
23
A lot of preliminary work as already been carried out in Ireland, by many different
operators including Google’s 4D mapping of Dublin streets, using the same
vehicles they currently use for Autonomous Electric Shared Mobility RoboTaxi
Services in the USA today.
*in the USA
Waymo is ready and waiting to enter the Irish market with government support
and local investment something our ISIF should consider.
24
Recommendations for Pre-Budget 2025 builds on our recommendations of last year’s
submission Pre-Budget 2024 recommendations. Despite inviting the then Minister for Finance
Micheal McGrath TD to try the Waymo Autonomous Electric SharedMobility RoboTaxi services
in San Francisco while on a Trade mission and him being extremely impressive with the trip our
calls for SharedMobilityVouchers Car Scrappage Scheme unfortunaly went unanswered, that
have garnered more international attention than domestic with one German city adopting my
proposal for SharedMobilityVouchers Car Scrappage Scheme
https://downloads.regulations.gov/NHTSA-2022-0079-9320/attachment_1.pdf
https://www.polis-mobility.com/magazine/articles/marburgs-incentive-program.php
The city of Marburg is planning an incentive program that encourages Marburg residents to give
up their private cars. With a bonus of up to 1250 euros, participants can use car sharing, public
transport and shop with Marburg Vouchers.
25
Aeravai’s Pre-Budget 2025 Recommendations
€2500 one-off SharedMobilityVoucher Car Scrappage Scheme
for any household that gives up a private car.
An extra €2500 if the whole household is completely private car-free
An extra €2500 if the household is outside Urban centers in rural areas
These ShareMobility Vouchers can then be used by current CarSharing and new
SharedMobility providers to purchase a new Electric Vehicles and also Shared
Wireless Vehicle Charging Infrastructure that can be used in a Free-Floating
CarSharing service only.
€10,000 per vehicle
for a non Autonomous or Remotely Piloted fully Electric Vehicle,
€50,000 per vehicle
for a fully Autonomous or Remotely Piloted Vehicle with 24/7 use.
The idea behind this is to replace private cars with SharedMobility Vehicles.
The Customer can use the SharedMobilityVouchers in an Annual or Monthly
Subscription Package or 50/50 pay-as-you-go per journey if your journey costs
€20 euro €10 can be used by your SMV and the remainder paid by you.
SharedMobility services could actually be significantly more affordable than the
average cost of running a family car for a year which is about €10,691.12 according
to the AA www.theaa.ie/motoring-advice/cost-of-motoring/
Each household that signs their private electric car up to CarSharing Club or
RoboTaxi Service can earn up to €10,000 tax-free (similar to the rent-a-room
scheme) This is only available to electric Vehicles adapted to be shared.
Workplaces and Businesses can also benefit. Company electric cars can also
work in car sharing scheme, inside or outside work hours, to benefit for up to
€10000 tax-free earnings, if capable of being remotely piloted or RoboTaxi and
available for SharedMobility services and €5000 for the purchase of a new electric
vehicle for every fossil fuel vehicle they replace.
.
26
Time to get the stick out!
With the expected fines for failure to meet our climate goals the fines will be quite
significant €8.2B yearly those who cause the emissions should be the ones who
pick up the tab and not the exchequer and all other taxpayers.
The Stick against fossil-fueled internal combustion engine vehicles including all
Hybrids, needs to get bigger as an extra incentive for going electric rather than
increasing the grants available for private EV car ownership.
A new ICE Tax should be considered by the next government.
Any shortfall in the collection of ICE TAX and proportion of EU Fine caused by the
Transport sector for missing our target should be paid directly by all remaining
private fossil-fueled internal combustion engine vehicle owners when the fine is
imposed. there should be this 5 year notice given to ICE vehicle owners to let
them know this is going to happen.
This revenue could also help fund the SharedMobilityVoucher scheme.
Credit to: Cormac McKay
Cormac McKay is a passionate advocate for environmental sustainability, with a particular focus
on the urgency of addressing climate change through technology and behavioral adaptation. His
expertise in autonomous and electric vehicles, both for road and air, drives his mission to educate
industry professionals, urban planners, and the public about current and future advancements in
transportation. Cormac believes that embracing innovative transport technologies will not only
mitigate the climate crisis but also provide numerous societal benefits.
A regular commentator across TV, radio, online platforms, and at in-person events, Cormac
frequently speaks on topics related to transport, the climate crisis, autonomous technologies,
future road safety, and the need for a just transition to sustainable systems. His extensive
knowledge and persuasive communication skills have made him a trusted voice in the ongoing
discussions around climate action and technological innovation.
Cormac is also a registered, unpaid, and unfunded independent lobbyist to the Irish Government,
well-versed in the intricacies of public affairs both in Ireland and abroad. His work has seen him
testify before the California State Government and participate in oral hearings with Ireland’s
planning authority, An Bord Pleanála. He has also advised the Office of the Comptroller and
Auditor General, further solidifying his role as a key consultant on environmental and transport
issues for both public and private clients.
Cormac’s educational background is as impressive as his professional achievements. He holds a
Level 9 Postgraduate Degree in Climate Change Entrepreneurship from Trinity College Dublin,
where he developed his skills in creating innovative solutions to environmental challenges. His
academic pursuits also include a course on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Law
from the University of Cambridge, which gave him a deep understanding of the intersection
between global environmental goals and legal frameworks. Additionally, his qualifications in
Communications, Healthcare, Nutrition, and Health & Safety underscore his commitment to
holistic, interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability.
In 2019, Cormac founded Aeravai, the Autonomous Electric Road & Air Vehicle Association of
Ireland, where he serves as the lead spokesperson and independent lobbyist. Aeravai is a
platform through which Cormac advocates for the widespread adoption of autonomous and
electric transport in Ireland, aligning with his broader goals of climate change mitigation and
technological innovation.