At IrishEVs we’re eager to highlight the wide range of brands and services in Ireland who are working to reduce the nation’s carbon footprint and to make our lives more sustainable.

We’ll be bringing you a range of interviews, guides and more to help give you a unique and unbiased insight into the very latest in everything from renewable energy, to zero-emissions technology, and academic research to how to reduce food waste with home-grown produce.

In this article we cover key topics including the need to cut car rental emissions, how rental can give people their first taste of EVs, how our changing lifestyles are transforming car ownership, and why Ireland is the ideal location for mass electric vehicle adoption.

Since it was founded in 2018, UFODRIVE customers have driven more than 7 million kilometres

The concept was created by Irishman Aidan McClean after bad experiences with established car rental companies, and a desire to see greater sustainability in the sector: “I’ve had nothing but poor rental experiences, and couldn’t understand why it hadn’t been digitised; why couldn’t I just arrive and drive away using just my phone, why did I have to deal with fuel options, queuing, insurance, delays – we all know the story.”

“Secondly, I’m a cyclist and I’ve spent my whole life racing, and I cannot stand the fumes from the cars that are accelerating by me. So I wrote a business case focused on arrive-and-drive, premium locations, no human interaction, and electric car-only to increase sustainable mobility.”

The business was founded in 2018 and began in Luxembourg but has quickly spread, and UFODRIVE now offers its service from its first location in Ireland – St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. In that time its customers have driven more than 7 million kilometres since they launched, saving around 1.1 million kilograms of CO2 in the process.

“We've found that 80% of our customers had never been in an EV before”

McClean continues: “We’ve put a massive amount of work into the technology to make it easy for any new customer to drive one of our cars who has never driven electric before. In our customer feedback surveys, we’ve found that 80% of our 6,000 customers had never been in an EV before, but they all said they’d come back and use one again – and we’ve already seen that 40% of our customers have been repeats.”

This type of approach is vital to allowing drivers to access electric technology without the fear of commitment, and demonstrates that there isn’t an unnerving upheaval to overcome – the only difference is that the cars run on electricity.

“For millennials we know that 64% say they don’t want to own a car”

“They want to use services like us to cut their costs. They might use services like Uber for short car journeys, perhaps a car share service to get around the city for a couple of hours, and use UFODRIVE for multi-day hire – and we know that only about 20% of our customers ever need to charge the car.”

With urban design and government policy taking time to adapt to more sustainable city dwelling, this addresses the growing need for ad-hoc transport options, while also reflecting the growing desire from consumers for brands who align with their personal ethics.

McClean and his team are also working in partnership with logistics companies and business fleets to use their software to aid the transition to zero-emissions transport: “We already sell our UFO Mobility Solutions to government fleets, post vans, small logistics vehicles specifically for that purpose and to help with the transition to electric. We’re seeing a lot of companies now coming to us and saying that they want to shift their entire fleet to fully electric in the next few years and are looking for help and support to make this happen.”

“We got some really encouraging news around 12 days ago. Berlin was the first city in Europe to begin gradual easing of lockdowns and we were fully booked straight away, as soon as the restrictions started easing off. All our cars are sanitised and cleaned for our customers, and we’ve put our own branded hand sanitiser wipes in every car to put users at ease.”

With a growing demand for non-touch services at this time, the business has continued to operate with around 40% of the sales it was achieving before the crisis across Europe.

“I think the biggest opportunity is that Ireland is the perfect geographical size and location to go fully-electric”

“It’s a great opportunity for Ireland to be 100% clean and green, and to be a centre of excellence as well for EV – acting as a model for the world in how to transition to zero-emissions transport.”

He believes the transition will come faster than many in Ireland have stated, and believes that EV adoption will follow a similar path to smart technology: “All the charts we see about EVs gaining a market share of 50% by 2040 is absolute rubbish – I think this will be like the adoption of the iPhone and we’re already seeing their proliferation accelerating.”

“I’m based in central Europe and I’ve seen it in Belgium, I’ve seen it in the Netherlands, I’ve seen it in Denmark, it is accelerating rapidly and if you think it’s going to take 10 or 20 years to transition to EVs, you’re wrong.”

With a plethora of cities around the world introducing bands on petrol and diesel cars, which come into effect in the next few years, McClean believes this will only accelerate adoption all the more: “The resale values of that legacy technology will be ridiculously low – and right now the total cost of ownership for an electric car is lower than a petrol or diesel car already. Its absolute inevitability, and faster than you think.”

Find out more

If you’re interested in trying an EV for the first time, need a car for a long weekend, or want to make your business trips more sustainable, visit www.ufodrive.com.

You can also follow UFODRIVE on social media, or download their app from Google Play or the App Store.

IrishEVs has not yet had the opportunity to try the UFODRIVE service first-hand due to the current Covid-19 lockdown, but the company has agreed to provide an opportunity to test the system in the near future – and we’ll bring you the unbiased review as soon as we have.

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