Conchúr Ó Maonaigh
As 2030 approaches, the likelihood that Ireland will miss its legally binding climate commitments is becoming clear. The environmental protection agency (EPA) projects that Ireland will miss its targets 2030 emissions reduction target by a minimum of 20 per cent. As a result, Ireland could face fines of up to €26 billion according to the Climate Change Advisory Council. The environmental and economic consequences of missing these targets are clear. Ireland is stumbling towards a catastrophic failure, the repercussions of which will be felt for generations (and perhaps indefinitely).
This article focuses on the failure to reduce emissions within Ireland’s transportation sector. I examine how policies aimed at developing an electric vehicle (EV) market in Ireland failed to align with decarbonisation timelines. I highlight how this misalignment emerged due to global contestation within the automobile industry, which constrained what technologies were prioritised in the Irish transportation sector. I argue the case of Ireland’s EV market brings into focus the need to understand Ireland’s domestic climate policy efforts within global political-economic hierarchies of industrial power.
Ireland’s stunted EV transition.
In 2010, the Irish government signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Nissan, Mitsubishi, and the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) to establish a partnership aimed at developing a plug-in electric vehicle (EV) market in Ireland. At the time, the government was keen to market the country as a ‘testbed’ for EVs, capitalising on Ireland’s relatively small size compared to mainland Europe, which helped offset concerns around the limited battery range of early-generation EVs. This alliance marked the beginning of Ireland’s attempt to become a pioneer in the global race to electrify transport.
Despite the global financial crisis, Ireland became one of the first countries globally to introduce EVs to its automobile market. The sale of early generation EVs, such as the Mitsubishi i-MiEV and Nissan LEAF, paved the way for an exponential increase in the number of EV models. From just two in 2010 to six by 2016, and then surged to 102 models by 2024. The ESB also set out to develop a national scale EV charging infrastructure, largely consisting of AC units (≤ 22kw), which were more suitable for limited battery ranges. These efforts to stimulate demand cost the state over €320 million in subsidies.
The Irish EV project’s final stamp of approval came in 2019, when the government’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) set an ambitious target of having 845,000 passenger EVs on Irish roads by 2030.[i] The CAP targets signalled a turning point for the role of EVs in the Irish transport sector. Although the government had advocated for EVs in past low-carbon roadmaps, this target appeared more concrete, emerging from what the CAP considered to be “the most cost-effective pathway to reduce emissions”. Ireland’s planners and policymakers would no longer treat EVs as a niche innovation. This emerging technology would be foundational to the government’s approach to addressing the climate crisis.
Yet, fast forward to 2025, and Ireland’s transport fleet includes 145,426 EVs – 700,000 vehicles off the CAP target. While EVs now make up around a third of Ireland’s automobile market share, meeting the CAP target would mean every car sold between now until 2030 needs to be electric. This enormous task brings into focus the misalignment of Ireland’s EV project with decarbonisation timelines, raising questions about the nature of the EV project itself. Why did Ireland’s pioneering ambitions struggle to deliver the level of market penetration needed for timely decarbonisation? Were the targets set out in the CAP ever coherent? What factors are driving Ireland’s failure to seriously address carbon emissions in the transportation sector?
There are different explanations. One is that the CAP targets were too ambitious: the government devised the 845,000 target with carbon abatement in mind, but without conducting any meaningful analysis of what Ireland’s automobile market could supply. This story is backed by some actors within the Irish automobile industry. Another explanation is that the government’s efforts were not ambitious enough. The government reduced subsidies for new EVs and grants for the second-hand and used EV market remained remarkably absent. From this perspective, any politician can set a target, but real ambition, and leadership for that matter, requires long-term investment and planning that never materialised. Both of these explanations have a certain truth. However, I want to draw your attention to another set of factors that remain underexamined: the contested dynamics of automobile production.
What’s good for General Motors…
The former CEO of General Motors and U.S. Secretary of Defence, Charles E. Wilson, is said to have remarked, “what’s good for General Motors is good for America”. Wilson, always keen to highlight the deep ties between General Motors and U.S. economic interests, understood the geopolitical significance of industry. In many ways his comments are true for the geographies of economic power today. What’s good for Volkswagen is largely seen as good for Germany; Tata for India; and Toyota for Japan. Even in a globalised economic order, the capitalist mode of production comes to ground in ways that benefit specific political-economic contexts.
The Irish CAP targets, of course, focus on the territorial and administrative boundaries of Ireland. However, Ireland’s FDI dependent, semi-peripheral economy, depends on industrial core nations to develop its EV market. Ireland is a ‘technology taker’ with no indigenous automobile manufacture, and therefore, its automobile industry has limited influence over the production line. Therefore, to suggest that actions taken in Ireland alone determine the trajectory of its EV project is to deny the ways automobility is shaped by extra-local forces. As such, a salient question for the Irish context might be ‘is what’s good for(?) the automobile industry good for Ireland?’
The case of Toyota might offers a useful lens through which to approach this question. After Nissan and the Irish government signed an MoU in 2010, the dominant Japanese force in Ireland’s automobile market became Toyota, not Nissan. In fact, Toyota has been the top-selling car brand in Ireland since 2020, with close to 85 per cent of Toyota’s sales made up of ‘self-charging’ hybrids. Toyota’s position within the Irish market is likely to continue to grow as car dealers look to import vehicles from more vehicles from Japan post-Brexit.
Yet, Toyota’s self-charging hybrids have played a significant role in undermining Ireland’s EV project. One reason that goes a long way to explain why is that the term ‘self-charging’ is, in reality, a savvy form of greenwashing. Toyota’s use of this term helps to associate these vehicles with the ‘charging’ capabilities of plug-in EVs when their engines require oil to work. Self-charging hybrids, therefore, do not count toward Ireland’s CAP targets because these vehicles have no decarbonisation potential.
However, the case of self-charging hybrids is instructive, not because of Toyota’s clever marketing tactics, but rather the political-economic roots of self-charging hybrid systems. Toyota’s investments include billions worth of R&D and capital expenditure to support the manufacturing of hybrid technologies – leading some commentators to describe the company as “the car industry’s loudest champions of hybrid vehicles”. Toyota has also heavily invested in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), most notably, through their model the Mirai. These HFCVs are a type of alternative fuel vehicle that rival plug-in BEVs, but have yet to mainstream in the global automotive market.
Another crucial point here relates to how EVs are manufactured. Consider that a typical EV has around 20 moving parts, whereas petrol and diesel internal combustion engine has around 2000. With fewer mechanical components, the labour costs of EV production can be 40 per cent lower than internal combustion engine manufacturing. Fewer parts, moreover, mean that the need for flexible specialisation – fragmented firms specialising in the production of unique components – is vastly reduced. These conditions are likely to give rise to industrial consolidation, meaning larger firms will survive while smaller firms are bought up or fade out.
While Toyota has also invested in EV production, they are also one of the vertically integrated Keiretsu groups in Japan, which emerged post-WWII with support from the Japanese government. The Keiretsu structure consists of a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings that are tightly-knit throughout the supply chain. In other words, Toyota is deeply embedded in relationships across the Japanese automobile supply chain. The likelihood of industrial consolidation as a result of the EV transition, therefore, does not bode well for Toyota’s business relationship or workforce. For example, the CEO of Toyota has maintained that plug-in BEVs would be detrimental to the Japanese auto sector, resulting in a potential jobs loss of 5.5 million in the country.
One interesting outcome of Toyota’s dominance in the hybrid market was that other Japanese firms compete by promoting similar models. In Ireland, and despite the MoU, Nissan begun to promote the sale of its own self-charging option, ‘e-Power’, which further undermined the credibility of EV market. However, we shouldn’t be surprised. The competition over hybrid technologies develops out the ‘coercive laws of competition’ that compel capitalist firms to pursue accumulation and profit maximisation, regardless of social or environmental harms. As Harvey argues, “no matter whether they are good- or bad-hearted, capitalists are forced by competition to engage in the same labor practices as their competitors.” This case of Toyota’s reliance on internal combustion engine manufacturing has shaped global EV market dynamics – with real consequences for low-carbon transitions in countries like Ireland that rely on Japanese auto manufacturing.
The long-term accumulation strategies of firms like Toyota depend on capital-labour relations that cannot be easily undone. Self-charging hybrids emerged in response to Japanese automakers’ industrial dependence on internal combustion engines. Crucially, similar dependencies exist within the European context, where the automobile sector accounts for 6.1 per cent of total EU employment. As such, the expansion of EVs forces lead firms into conflict with much of the workers, unions, smaller firms, business associations and governments that have historically worked together to create the conditions for internal combustion engine production. These class alliances can stifle the EV transition to defend the circulation of capital in their regions.
Hence, Volkswagen announced that while the firm intended to cease production of petrol and diesel engines by 2035, it was committed to expanding the sales of internal combustion engines in the meantime because “a robust-margin internal combustion engine business, generating strong cash-flows will finance and accelerate the shift to BEVs”. In addition, Volkswagen paused operations at some EV plants in Germany, and other major players such as Ford, General Motors, and Volvo have scaled back their EV ambitions. The Irish automobile market is not immune to the instability of the global automobile industry.
Conclusion
The case above is a snapshot of how EV transitions are shaped – and constrained – by structural forces that are geographically specific but stretch beyond borders. For small or semi-peripheral states like Ireland, the ability to act on climate is increasingly mediated by their position in these global systems, not just by domestic policy ambition. This issue suggests that inequalities in wealth, power, and resources between the industrial core and periphery nations must be centred in investigations of low-carbon transitions.
The self-charging hybrid is but one technology within the wider inventory of EV innovations. As such, we must ask how it informs developments elsewhere? EVs are characterised by technological pluralism, with divergent production methods, infrastructure, and energy sources reflecting the specific regional geographies from which they emerge. If decisions that are made at the point of production, which prioritise specific technologies (e.g., hybrids), continue to evade or even outpace policy and planning strategies at the point of consumption, new critical disjunctures will emerge that undermine the global shift to EVs.
[i] Although the CAP, 2019 figure initially suggested a 950,000 EV target, the government later clarified this target included 845,000 passenger EVs alongside low-emissions vans, heavy good vehicles, and public transport.
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