Dr. Aoife O'Grady:

To follow up on the Chair's questions on EV sales and whether they will displace ICE vehicles, they will, of course. At the moment, approximately 12% of new registrations on the road this year are EVs. The modelling we have done is not based on a target of cars in the fleet; the modelling is based on what we think is reasonable in terms of projecting future demand for car purchase and then how many of those will convert to an EV rather than an ICE vehicle. When the modellers did that analysis, they projected an increase in the car fleet over the next decade. They project that increase is likely to be smaller than the increase in the car fleet over the previous decade of 2011- 2020, but there will be an increase of approximately 1% year-on-year out to 2030. That is based on both demographic and economic growth, which are trajectories set out by the CSO.

In terms of EVs displacing ICEs, we expect that by 2028 or 2029 almost 100% of car sales to be EV. At that stage, we do not see any ICE passenger car sales. There may still be some vans and heavy goods vehicles, but we would expect the passenger car fleet to be 100% new EVs at that point. The market will completely switch.