Nissan Leaf. Got a loaner for 2 weeks and friend asked me to post my experince here

I could do 20-25K miles a year in the Leaf easily, if I had work charging or a fast charger close by, all I'd need is about 12.5 Kwh each way. So I'd need to replace about 3-5 Kwh to get me home, that's about 5 ish mins on a QC to do 84 miles a day. In the MK 1.5 at 20 deg battery temp this could be achievable on one charge at commuter speeds 60-100 kph.

Rother

Deleted User wrote: »

I could do 20-25K miles a year in the Leaf easily, if I had work charging or a fast charger close by, all I'd need is about 12.5 Kwh each way. So I'd need to replace about 3-5 Kwh to get me home, that's about 5 ish mins on a QC to do 84 miles a day. In the MK 1.5 at 20 deg battery temp this could be achievable on one charge at commuter speeds 60-100 kph.

I found the commute to work was perfect.
But where it fell down badly was when I needed to use it above and beyond commuting to work. Its a commuter / shopping runabout, when it comes to regular family car duty as well, it fails badly for me.

You are so right about people sitting on chargers for the sake of it. I feel (and i never thought id say this before) that the only solution is to charge for charging, at a higher rate than home charging. That way you wont get two leafs in the train station taking up the 2 charging bays for the whole day, like ive seen a few times. You also wont get people pulling into the fast chargers near home for a free top up. Only people who really need to charge will be using the chargers then.

It was actually the irishevowners facebook page that my friend wanted me to post to. I joined it recently but havent posted yet. But from reading some of the posts they appear to be dead set against anyone just telling the truth. Some of them seem to take any fair criticism of an ev as a personal insult. I dont think i'll be posting there.

There is lots that is good about the Leaf. It is just seriously let down by the range. If the infrastructure was right you could get over that easily. But its not.

Rother

Rother wrote: »

I found the commute to work was perfect.
But where it fell down badly was when I needed to use it above and beyond commuting to work. Its a commuter / shopping runabout, when it comes to regular family car duty as well, it fails badly for me.

You are so right about people sitting on chargers for the sake of it. I feel (and i never thought id say this before) that the only solution is to charge for charging, at a higher rate than home charging. That way you wont get two leafs in the train station taking up the 2 charging bays for the whole day, like ive seen a few times. You also wont get people pulling into the fast chargers near home for a free top up. Only people who really need to charge will be using the chargers then.

It was actually the irishevowners facebook page that my friend wanted me to post to. I joined it recently but havent posted yet. But from reading some of the posts they appear to be dead set against anyone just telling the truth. Some of them seem to take any fair criticism of an ev as a personal insult. I dont think i'll be posting there.

There is lots that is good about the Leaf. It is just seriously let down by the range. If the infrastructure was right you could get over that easily. But its not.

I get unhappy remarks on irishevowners, sometimes, now if I of all people get unhappy remarks then they will hunt you down and string you up !

Yes charging should be paid for, absolutely and I've said it before. Electrics will still be cheap to run.

A lot of the people bitching on irishevowners over free parking have the attitude that they should be entitled to it simply because they bought an ev. Rather than seeing it as a privilege they just want to abuse it, not all but quiet a few.

Rather than press the government on work place/ apartments charging they'd rather waste time and effort over a euro or two for parking when they probably don't need to charge at all.

Granted in Dublin parking fees are massive for good reason, everyone will want to drive in the city if it's cheap. The idea of the slow chargers is to top up not fully charge, while you go about your business in town, they're not meant to be the main means of charging, this is done at home.

Leaf 1.5 with 6 kw charger over two hrs would be more than enough to get me home from dub city while shopping over a distance of 100 miles total, little more maybe.

More chargers 6 kw capable at least need to be installed in shopping centres to make them viable over 3 kw ones which are only good for hotels over night.

Leaf was never meant for anything other than commute shorter distance but it will easily cope with 140 miles a day with the proper infrastructure.

We have the Prius if needs be but 20-25 k miles a year is a lot of driving and the leaf can easily do it.

kdouglas

NIMAN wrote: »

I am soon changing my diesel car, and had seriously considered a Leaf as my next purchase, as it fits in with my daily commute and we have a 2nd car.

But I have decided against it for now, and will buy another ICE car.

Perhaps I might consider electric a few years down the line, when the range is doubled at least, and I don't have to worry about resale value.

This is more or less the situation I'm in myself and I would recommend the Leaf in this scenario.

I drive the Leaf to work every day and our second ICE car is used by my wife a couple of days a week.
We generally use the Leaf at the weekend when both of us are going somewhere together, but if we were to go further afield (say Cork, Galway, etc..) we'd take her ICE car instead.

The Leaf is saving me about €250 a month in fuel costs just for commuting, if you buy second hand, the car can almost pay for itself in savings.

Sesshoumaru

Rother wrote: »

I found the commute to work was perfect.
But where it fell down badly was when I needed to use it above and beyond commuting to work. Its a commuter / shopping runabout, when it comes to regular family car duty as well, it fails badly for me.

You are so right about people sitting on chargers for the sake of it. I feel (and i never thought id say this before) that the only solution is to charge for charging, at a higher rate than home charging. That way you wont get two leafs in the train station taking up the 2 charging bays for the whole day, like ive seen a few times. You also wont get people pulling into the fast chargers near home for a free top up. Only people who really need to charge will be using the chargers then.

It was actually the irishevowners facebook page that my friend wanted me to post to. I joined it recently but havent posted yet. But from reading some of the posts they appear to be dead set against anyone just telling the truth. Some of them seem to take any fair criticism of an ev as a personal insult. I dont think i'll be posting there.

There is lots that is good about the Leaf. It is just seriously let down by the range. If the infrastructure was right you could get over that easily. But its not.

As a Nissan Leaf owner and member of Irish EV Owners, I found your review quite good and honest. What I would say though is that your review (from my perspective as an EV owner of over 3 years) screams out a certain lack of trust or experience in the technology. As an example -

I was charged and leaving Templogue 50 mins or so after I arrived there.

So now i'm going all the way to Gorey and praying that I would have enough to make it. I was going to have to drive slowly too.

According to Google Maps that is a 89 kilometer journey. You didn't mention anyone else was in the car? or luggage? I've done that trip a few times with my wife, 3 kids and a boot stuffed to the gills with luggage. My trip was 107 kilometers, Celbridge <-> Gorey.

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

Real world example of range:

2011 Nissan Leaf with 50,000 kilometers on the clock, 2 adults, 3 kids (with booster seats) and supplies for one week holiday in Wexford.

Route taken -> http://goo.gl/maps/2ibBy





The fuel gauge has 12 bars and we had 1 left when we arrived. Weather was warm and sunny, so excellent for battery storage. On the other hand the car couldn't possibly have fit more people and luggage. I hope any potential buyers find this real world example of range useful.

I accept your review as very good and definitely broadly agree with your points on the charging infrastructure. From my point of view though, the car is a good family car (it's the only car we've had for the last 3 years - 70,000 kilometers) and some of your perspective I think would be different if you had the car for a longer period of time. For instance you wouldn't be worried about a 90km journey and whether you would make it or not.

Another small example would be your point on the slow chargers.

All of the others are too slow and you must have nothing to do if you want to wait at one for a couple of hours minimum to charge.

We quite often park our Leaf in Dundrum shopping centre and this shopping centre has dedicated charging spots for EV's, never ICED for us so far. We've gone to watch a movie while the car was charging. I don't see this as a waste of time Charging spaces in private shopping centres & car parks are about the only ones we use most of the time. Another example is Q-Park behind the Savoy. They do a deal with the Savoy cinema, €4 for parking when you show them a Savoy movie ticket. We get our free charge in their private dedicated space for EV charging while watching a movie and maybe getting a bite to eat. Maybe none of these scenarios are applicable to you, but I don't think you've considered different strokes for different folks. Other than that, I liked your review.

Sesshoumaru

I'm hoping someday we'll all feel like this

B9K9

The usage pattern in the fair non fanboy review would not indicate any EV to be suitable, barring the Tesla, costing up to 4 times Leaf.

So yes you would need an ICE then. And get killed by standing charges.

OTOH our personal usage pattern sees Dublin suburban driving plus occasional country drives, the longest to date being Rosslare. Wexford town and surrounding have lots of infrastructure, and Gorey is unnecessary if we drive 80-85 kph so as to arrive 23 minutes later.

Mad_Lad is a tad harsh on the Irish EV enthusiasts. Much of the enthusiasm stems from scoring a gleeful economic victory over the oil monopoly (see that post just before this one). With present technology, and even bumping up battery performance quite a bit, I don't see EV mass appeal until (increasingly) dire oil scarcity. Even then, I expect a panic gallop to reorient people towards hiring for long unexpected journeys, because the infrastructure seems unlikely to accept more than token EV % road users.

Where is the political will to invest in infrastructure on a scale to support mass adoption? We early adopters are having a picnic, within these constraints. Join, if your usage pattern permits. Feeling comfortable and good about my EV.

GekkePrutser

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

So I can't really see us needing 6 times the number of fast charging stations as we have regular refilling stations. Everyone has electricity at home.

That's not always the case, if you live in an apartment like myself you don't have your private parking space at the house.

I'd love to get an electric car but it's not doable to roll out a 20 metre long cable hanging out of an open window to plug the car in (not to mention the tripping hazard caused on public property). For me it only would work if there'd be charging stations at work (and then it would work quite well I have to say). Charging stations in apartment blocks should really be commonplace.

PS: Thanks to the OP for this experience.. I always thought the long trips were the biggest drawback of electric cars. For me it wouldn't really matter, my girlfriend has a car too so we could always keep one ICE.

But the biggest drawback at the moment for me is limited secondhand availability. I don't care for driving new cars, I always drive 2000-3000 euro bangers until they're unviable to repair (my current one cost me 1300 and has been going almost 5 years with about 500 spent on repairs and maintenance ). Electric cars are always new, so there is a massive investment there, completely negating the fuel price advantage (I only pay 70 a month in fuel for my commute and run-around-town driving)

I'd love to drive electric for the environment but it does have to be economically viable too.. Not so at the moment... Too bad but I'll keep an eye on it of course.

By the way, someone mentioned that the ESB will only install one fast charger per station because of limited capacity at their power grid. That would make me worry what happens if EVs really take off. If their grid is so bad that adding a few 6kW chargers at a commercial premises isn't doable, I bet they will lag behind massively with installing their stations due to all the needed backbone upgrades.

B9K9

B9K9 wrote: »

Mad_Lad is a tad harsh on the Irish EV enthusiasts.

Who me ? never, not nearly as harsh as Boards.ie members have been on me !

air

Thanks to the OP for a great review. It's a real eye opener on the serious shortcomings of the national charging infrastructure for long journeys.
It sounds as if the Leaf makes a great second car (or primary car for those than never stray far from home) provided you can easily charge the car at home and / or work.

For those without home charging (anyone in an apartment at a minimum) or those that regularly travel long journeys, they seem like a total non runner.

There is a tiny amount of electrics on the road at present so their numbers could easily double or treble over a short space of time. In that case it sounds as if the current quick charge points would be totally overwhelmed making long journeys a total non runner.
Given how slow the ESB have been in rolling out their current charger network and how far behind they are on their rollout plan, I have no doubt that they would be very slow to respond in the event that there is a large increase in EVs on the road.

I agree with Mad Lad in that they definitely need to start charging for public charge points to cut out abuse of them. It's unfortunate but it's a typical tragedy of the commons type situation.

air

GekkePrutser wrote: »

(I only pay 70 a month in fuel for my commute and run-around-town driving)

I can't see an EV being financially viable for you for at least another 5-8 years, you need to be doing enough driving for the fuel savings to make it worthwhile and you clearly aren't.
Hard to beat bangernomics

air

air wrote: »

For those without home charging (anyone in an apartment at a minimum) or those that regularly travel long journeys, they seem like a total non runner.

Anyone with an apartment should not be prevented from installing EVSE's unless it would lead to a cable across the footpath.

Street charging needs to be installed in places like this too, where apartment owners/renters park. This would be expensive and this is another reason I believe charging shouldn't be free.

This and work charging, it's not going to be an easy task, though to be honest the likes of the Leaf II might mean much less of a burden on infrastructure if the range is twice what it is now, 140 ish miles.

air wrote: »

There is a tiny amount of electrics on the road at present so their numbers could easily double or treble over a short space of time. In that case it sounds as if the current quick charge points would be totally overwhelmed making long journeys a total non runner.
Given how slow the ESB have been in rolling out their current charger network and how far behind they are on their rollout plan, I have no doubt that they would be very slow to respond in the event that there is a large increase in EVs on the road.

This is why we need more companies to install fast chargers and not leave the entire burden on the ESB.

NIMAN

kdouglas wrote: »

This is more or less the situation I'm in myself and I would recommend the Leaf in this scenario.

I drive the Leaf to work every day and our second ICE car is used by my wife a couple of days a week.
We generally use the Leaf at the weekend when both of us are going somewhere together, but if we were to go further afield (say Cork, Galway, etc..) we'd take her ICE car instead.

The Leaf is saving me about €250 a month in fuel costs just for commuting, if you buy second hand, the car can almost pay for itself in savings.

I'll admit I am tempted, but my great fear would be buying a car for maybe €15k, what would its resale value be in 2 or 3 years?

If I buy a 2012 and sold in 3 years time, it will be a car thats 5 years old, a 5yr old battery. Would there be a demand for it? What if other EVs out can do twice the range, who would ever want to buy a car that can only do 80 miles?

At least my ICE car will be more easily shifted.

I know that a Leaf would fit my lifestyle perfectly, 90% of my cars use is my commute to work, and I can do that and get home with a single charge, so it would always be ready for me in the morning. I don't ever see myself using much public charging points tbh, so that should not be a big issue for me.

Damn, you got me thinking about it again!

Long Gone

What is known as "range anxiety" ruins the Nissan Leaf experience - i.e. worrying all the time about running out of juice. Also there is no way I would pay the ridiculous monthly rental charge they want for the batteries. The car is also not necessarily very green - It depends how the electricity used to charge the batteries is generated. If it is generated by clean, green nuclear power then fair enough.

air

Leaf's can be picked up from the UK for about 10K at this stage. I would imagine that if the 2nd generation has vastly improved range then it will have a strong negative impact on residuals of the 1st generation models. They will still be useful for local commuting of course.

EV's are at an early stage of development so advances are likely to be quite fast and residuals poor in the early years.
A bit like personal computers, they improved in leaps and bounds every year for the first few years after they became popular, but nowadays there isn't a huge gulf in relative performance between a new machine and a 3 year old one.

NIMAN

Long Gone wrote: »

What is known as "range anxiety" ruins the Nissan Leaf experience - i.e. worrying all the time about running out of juice. Also there is no way I would pay the ridiculous monthly rental charge they want for the batteries. The car is also not necessarily very green - It depends how the electricity used to charge the batteries is generated. If it is generated by clean, green nuclear power then fair enough.

I think to be fair most EV drivers might not care about how green their car is.

I think the bottom line is that they don't have to stop off at petrol stations any longer and pay €1.60 for every litre of fuel.

NIMAN

Is it still VRT free to bring an EV into the State from the UK?

deandean

Thank you OP for your well written and informative post.

I reckon most car owners are slow to speak bad of the vehicle they have just paid 20k or 30k for. The fact that you can return the Leaf after a week probably allows you a more impartial opinion!

I'd still love to trial one myself, but I lost out in the the esb great electric drive.

deandean

deandean wrote: »

I'd still love to trial one myself, but I lost out in the the esb great electric drive.

You have to take a spin in one, it's really good to drive even if you won't buy one just yet.

Instant torque is a really great experience.

Rother

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

As a Nissan Leaf owner and member of Irish EV Owners, I found your review quite good and honest. What I would say though is that your review (from my perspective as an EV owner of over 3 years) screams out a certain lack of trust or experience in the technology. As an example -



According to Google Maps that is a 89 kilometer journey. You didn't mention anyone else was in the car? or luggage? I've done that trip a few times with my wife, 3 kids and a boot stuffed to the gills with luggage. My trip was 107 kilometers, Celbridge <-> Gorey.



I accept your review as very good and definitely broadly agree with your points on the charging infrastructure. From my point of view though, the car is a good family car (it's the only car we've had for the last 3 years - 70,000 kilometers) and some of your perspective I think would be different if you had the car for a longer period of time. For instance you wouldn't be worried about a 90km journey and whether you would make it or not.

Another small example would be your point on the slow chargers.



We quite often park our Leaf in Dundrum shopping centre and this shopping centre has dedicated charging spots for EV's, never ICED for us so far. We've gone to watch a movie while the car was charging. I don't see this as a waste of time Charging spaces in private shopping centres & car parks are about the only ones we use most of the time. Another example is Q-Park behind the Savoy. They do a deal with the Savoy cinema, €4 for parking when you show them a Savoy movie ticket. We get our free charge in their private dedicated space for EV charging while watching a movie and maybe getting a bite to eat. Maybe none of these scenarios are applicable to you, but I don't think you've considered different strokes for different folks. Other than that, I liked your review.

I take all your points on board.
I could only get the car to charge to 80% in Templeogue. When you do your trip what % do you have your car charged to when you do it?

My point about slow chargers is that if I am on my way somewhere a slow charger is no use whatsoever. OK I could call into Dundrum for a few hours and watch a movie or two, but I dont think people generally do that on a trip down the country from Dublin. Imagine having to add a movie to your trip each 100 odd km )
As much as I like the movies, I dont think thats for me.
To me what you have said is another example of the car running the owner and not the owner running a car.

househero

Sound like a charge station app would be handy to see where's available and where's there's a q

And why did you not charge it to 100% over night???

Rother

househero wrote: »

Sound like a charge station app would be handy to see where's available and where's there's a q

And why did you not charge it to 100% over night???

I did charge to 100%. But I was leaving from Ashbourne and planning to go to Roundwood, so had to stop off at a fast charger en route.
The fast chargers only allow you to charge to 80%. Some of them to 100% but that takes an hour. I tried it one day.

toadfly

Double post, can't delete from my phone.

toadfly

I have a Leaf and agree with the OP, the main problem for me is the infastructure. IMO ESB seem to have no interest in it and their staff haven't a clue.

I use mine mainly for commute to work but have gone to Dublin, Cork & Mayo from Galway without much hassle. For me the inconvenienceof charging on long journeys is worth it for the monthly saving of €160.

Sesshoumaru

Rother wrote: »

I take all your points on board.
I could only get the car to charge to 80% in Templeogue. When you do your trip what % do you have your car charged to when you do it?

My point about slow chargers is that if I am on my way somewhere a slow charger is no use whatsoever. OK I could call into Dundrum for a few hours and watch a movie or two, but I dont think people generally do that on a trip down the country from Dublin. Imagine having to add a movie to your trip each 100 odd km )
As much as I like the movies, I dont think thats for me.
To me what you have said is another example of the car running the owner and not the owner running a car.

One weekend we stayed down in Cork city. The hotel we stayed in had a slow charger as well. It was the exact same model we have on our wall at home, so that is 6 to 7 hours to charge the car. Still it was great to be away from home and still wake up to a fully charged car the next morning Celbridge to Gorey is a 100% charge. I had 1 bar left when I reached Gorey, that was with a fully packed car though.

A lot of the time we are bringing the kids somewhere and you just end up spending time there. In those instances it's nice the rare time you find a public charging spot not ICED and free to use. Anyways I think our driving habits have changed since switching to EV only. Mostly good changes I feel, some bad I admit. Obviously longer journeys need more planing. On the other hand we make more effort to enjoy the places we stop in. When I drove my old Audi it was a reasonably fast car and I have to say I always felt compelled to drive it faster. Driving an EV forced me to change my car driving style quite a bit. I also know from the online data the Leaf uploads that the total amount we drive now is much higher than when we had an ICE car. I put this down to not having to worry about fuel costs. I still remember the olden days when I had an ICE car. For sure there were times we actually decided against making a trip, simply because it was costing too much on fuel. The cost of fuel can be quite a limiting factor as well.

Sesshoumaru

GekkePrutser wrote: »

That's not always the case, if you live in an apartment like myself you don't have your private parking space at the house.

I'd love to get an electric car but it's not doable to roll out a 20 metre long cable hanging out of an open window to plug the car in (not to mention the tripping hazard caused on public property). For me it only would work if there'd be charging stations at work (and then it would work quite well I have to say). Charging stations in apartment blocks should really be commonplace.

PS: Thanks to the OP for this experience.. I always thought the long trips were the biggest drawback of electric cars. For me it wouldn't really matter, my girlfriend has a car too so we could always keep one ICE.

But the biggest drawback at the moment for me is limited secondhand availability. I don't care for driving new cars, I always drive 2000-3000 euro bangers until they're unviable to repair (my current one cost me 1300 and has been going almost 5 years with about 500 spent on repairs and maintenance ). Electric cars are always new, so there is a massive investment there, completely negating the fuel price advantage (I only pay 70 a month in fuel for my commute and run-around-town driving)

I'd love to drive electric for the environment but it does have to be economically viable too.. Not so at the moment... Too bad but I'll keep an eye on it of course.

By the way, someone mentioned that the ESB will only install one fast charger per station because of limited capacity at their power grid. That would make me worry what happens if EVs really take off. If their grid is so bad that adding a few 6kW chargers at a commercial premises isn't doable, I bet they will lag behind massively with installing their stations due to all the needed backbone upgrades.

The law needs to be changed to facilitate people living in apartments, that is for sure. I totally 100% agree. I take your point on buying secondhand. Before I became aware of the Nissan Leaf being in development, I also thought the same. I definitely could not afford a new car the price of the Nissan Leaf if it came with regular running costs. Both my wife and I work as IT professionals, so in our case there was also a large element of being early adopters of new technology. Over 3 years later we are both still 100% happy with the decision we made.

Just on the fast chargers though, you are slightly wrong. The fast chargers that can charge to 80% in 30 minutes are 50 kilowatt chargers. As I recall from a meeting with the ESB a few years ago, a typical ESB substation can supply an area with 250 kilowatts of power. Based on this bottleneck in our current power grid the ESB will not install more than two fast chargers in a single location. A standard home charger is currently 3.3 kilowatt, so no problem with lots of people installing these. A normal electric oven will use more than that.

However if you look across the US and continental Europe, Tesla are installing their superchargers (their name for fast chargers) in pods of 8.

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger



Their superchargers output at over 100 kilowatt and they can install 8 per pod. Their website doesn't indicate any planned superchargers for Ireland, so maybe our power grid is limited compared to the rest of Europe? I'm not an expert in this area, but I'd love to see a post from someone who is more familiar with this.

househero

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

The law needs to be changed to facilitate people living in apartments, that is for sure. I totally 100% agree. I take your point on buying secondhand. Before I became aware of the Nissan Leaf being in development, I also thought the same. I definitely could not afford a new car the price of the Nissan Leaf if it came with regular running costs. Both my wife and I work as IT professionals, so in our case there was also a large element of being early adopters of new technology. Over 3 years later we are both still 100% happy with the decision we made.

Just on the fast chargers though, you are slightly wrong. The fast chargers that can charge to 80% in 30 minutes are 50 kilowatt chargers. As I recall from a meeting with the ESB a few years ago, a typical ESB substation can supply an area with 250 kilowatts of power. Based on this bottleneck in our current power grid the ESB will not install more than two fast chargers in a single location. A standard home charger is currently 3.3 kilowatt, so no problem with lots of people installing these. A normal electric oven will use more than that.

However if you look across the US and continental Europe, Tesla are installing their superchargers (their name for fast chargers) in pods of 8.

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger



Their superchargers output at over 100 kilowatt and they can install 8 per pod. Their website doesn't indicate any planned superchargers for Ireland, so maybe our power grid is limited compared to the rest of Europe? I'm not an expert in this area, but I'd love to see a post from someone who is more familiar with this.

Isn't the restricted output charger based on the domestic 2 phase supply, large business s and factories have 3 phase supply's and can support much faster charge stations.

loinnsigh

Long Gone wrote: »

What is known as "range anxiety" ruins the Nissan Leaf experience - i.e. worrying all the time about running out of juice. Also there is no way I would pay the ridiculous monthly rental charge they want for the batteries.

No rental on a Leaf battery - you're thinking of the Renault business model (Zoe or Fluence ZE). I agree - I wouldn't pay rental on a battery either.

Long Gone wrote: »

The car is also not necessarily very green - It depends how the electricity used to charge the batteries is generated. If it is generated by clean, green nuclear power then fair enough.

Have a look at this. The amount of electricity used to power an electric car is significantly less than the amount used to refine an equivalent amount petrol. So not only are you not burning petrol while driving, you're actually using less power than it takes to produce said petrol. Double green win

Sesshoumaru

househero wrote: »

Isn't the restricted output charger based on the domestic 2 phase supply, large business s and factories have 3 phase supply's and can support much faster charge stations.

Yes you are right as well I think. Currently the ESB will give you a 16 amp 3.3 kw charger at home. In theory though you shouldn't have much trouble running a 32 amp 6.6 kw. Whoever you are though, home owner or business, you connect back to your local substation, which I was told has a typical capacity of 250 kw.

BigEejit

Jaysus, Tesla has 8 charging stations at each site x 17. If every point was in use at the same time thats 13.6MW :0