Offaly man drives 32 counties in 24 hours in electric car

Offaly man Peter Bracken and former professional rugby colleague Mikey Smyth recently drove 1,147km in a 100% electric car through the 32 counties in under 24 hours for Rare Diseases Ireland, Ireland’s national alliance for rare disease patient charities.

Bracken and Smyth managed the feat in 21 hours and 34 minutes.

The electric car was kindly donated by Connolly Motor Group (Ballina, Galway, Letterkenny & Sligo).

Peter and Mikey officially started their adventure from Caracastle, Mayo at 3.08pm on Saturday September 18 and finished near Tubber, Co Galway at 12.42pm the following day driving clockwise through all 32 counties. People joined the guys on their journey as they sang songs and had fun as they live-streamed their journey on Facebook.

The guys chose Rare Diseases Ireland as the beneficiary of their fundraising efforts in recognition of all the awareness, advocacy and support that they offer to people living with rare conditions and their families.

Peter said: “We all know someone with a rare disease and we really appreciate the invaluable work that RDI do for the rare community, so we decided to help in a way we could.”

He added: “People tend to be a little hesitant to buy electric cars even though they know how brilliant they are to drive (much smoother, more comfortable, faster, better acceleration than petrol/diesel cars) and they also know that an electric car’s carbon footprint is 3 times less than equivalent fossil fuel cars over its lifetime, so they know they are just better cars in every way but it’s the worry about charging that stops people going greener even though they want too.

“We wanted to show that there is plenty of charging points in Ireland and to ease people’s worry in this regard. Doing something exceptional to prove this rather than just talking about it is always better.

They said that although the charging infrastructure needs to continually get better, the charging myths seem to stem from years ago when the charging infrastructure wasn’t up to scratch.