Shell to install chargers in forecourts

KCross

Dont get too excited!.... initially only UK and Netherlands and supposedly starting in 2017.

http://newsonahand.com/shell-to-install-chargers-for-electric-cars-on-european-forecourts/



Anyone know what Shell's forecourt footprint is in Ireland?

It would be good to have an alternative to eCars, particularly if the CER decision goes the wrong way.

EDIT: Quick google says that Shell dont have any forecourts in Ireland! They sold them all to Topaz a long while back. Ah well! Maybe other suppliers will follow Shell.

zilog_jones

Shell's long gone from Ireland - most changed to Topaz or were shut down.

n97 mini

I'd be skeptical. They're putting them in because they know they can get away with charging £6 per 30 mins, which is a complete rip-off for most owners.

Well if I had the choice to run out of power or pay 6 pounds, I'd pay the 6 pounds. about 60% of my charging is at home, work maybe another 50% and another 10% at public points. Maybe a bit less so a 6 Pound charging fee isn't really going to upset me too much.

I could see it upset people who use the network a lot but then I wouldn't like to be so dependent on it.

n97 mini

Deleted User wrote: »

Well if I had the choice to run out of power or pay 6 pounds, I'd pay the 6 pounds

There's a word for that: ransom!

Approx. 120 percent of the statistics are made up Mad_Lad :-)

It is expensive but how's going to install the network without making a profit ? seriously ?

Would I be saying this if I were heavily dependent on the network ? of course not but would I have a Leaf if I were heavily dependent on the network ? probably not. I did use it daily for 9 months before I got the work charger and sometimes it was a pain , especially at Naas. It just so happened that I work shift and only see peak traffic 5 days a month. But even at that there were issues at Naas that I won't go into here.

Anyway this 6 pounds per charge , what does that get you ? what's a charge, what you need , an hour etc ?

robtri

Deleted User wrote: »

Well if I had the choice to run out of power or pay 6 pounds, I'd pay the 6 pounds. about 60% of my charging is at home, work maybe another 50% and another 10% at public points. Maybe a bit less so a 6 Pound charging fee isn't really going to upset me too much.

I could see it upset people who use the network a lot but then I wouldn't like to be so dependent on it.

thats 120%

Yes it is, guess I need more sleep, lol.

The moral of the story is that most people charge at home and so charges for the network won't be such an Issue.

Water John

What charge do you think would be acceptable? Free, isn't an option.
Would I pay €5 for a 30/40 min fast charge. Yes, I would.

isnottheword

Water John wrote: »

What charge do you think would be acceptable? Free, isn't an option.
Would I pay €5 for a 30/40 min fast charge. Yes, I would.

Tie it in with regular electricity bills - regardless of provider. If necessary, have a special tariff setup. Some accommodation for those without regular esb billing and visitors to the country to pay in another way.

However, it's my belief that they need to start out delicately. i.e. simply introduce the system - to prove a workable system - and to diswade abusers. It should not be punitive on those of us that (as the next 24-36 months goes in) are going to find ourselves in a minority running 24kW cars i.e. it won't be a level playing field with some of us forced to use public chargers more than others - and not being able to get as much on board for the same charge (depending upon how it;s implemented) - simply because we can't afford to buy new cars...ergo don't disenfranchise EV take-up by people with lesser $ means.

cros13

That would be the ideal situation, possibly with a small fixed fee per charge to pay contribute towards the infrastructure.

I'm not confident we're going to see that from CER though....

isnottheword

cros13 wrote: »

I'm not confident we're going to see that from CER though....

of course, we would never see it from Ecars - not in their interests. However, we *should* see it from CER - otherwise, what's the point in having them (but I agree - given how things roll in Ireland, most likely that won't be the outcome).

n97 mini

Water John wrote: »

What charge do you think would be acceptable? Free, isn't an option.
Would I pay €5 for a 30/40 min fast charge. Yes, I would.

I would pay per kw/h. And have it billed to my domestic bill at the same rate as I'm currently paying. The ESB made €200m profit last year and in total have only spent €6m on the EV charging network since they started installing it a number of years ago.

n97 mini

n97 mini wrote: »

I would pay per kw/h. And have it billed to my domestic bill at the same rate as I'm currently paying. The ESB made €200m profit last year and in total have only spent €6m on the EV charging network since they started installing it a number of years ago.

Yeah but a petrol station isn't going to charge your car for free.

isnottheword

Deleted User wrote: »

Yeah but a petrol station isn't going to charge your car for free.

I think you missed the first sentence in his post.

As regards initial losses, .gov or the esb (esb is one way or another in public hands) need to step up. If we're going to end up with mass adoption of EVs not too far into the future, don't they stand to gain in any event - with higher volumes of energy being consumed via their network? In the case of .gov, they have targets to meet (one of which they've already missed - the revised one they will most likely also miss).

grogi

isnottheword wrote: »

I think you missed the first sentence in his post.

Nothing was missed. If one pays only for consumed electricity, the rest is free. Land and related taxes, maintenance (not only of the charger, but the access roads, toilets), insurance, salaries etc.

Charging at a public charger needs to be more expensive than just electricity. Otherwise they don't make financial sense.

While 6 GBP/€ 7 does look like extortion, it would give ~150km of range. That is equivalent of 8l of diesel - that would cost almost twice as much...

isnottheword

grogi wrote: »

Charging at a public charger needs to be more expensive than just electricity. Otherwise they don't make financial sense..

Look at the bigger picture. IF there's strategic thinking going on at .gov level, then the objective right now is to manage the transition and coax people across to EV uptake. You'll appreciate that of the current national fleet, less than 0.5% is accounted for by EV's!

They can charge (and they will!) to their hearts content later - but my point is it would be reasonable that they start very subtly - and increase in increments. Otherwise, the little (current) uptake we have right now will be killed off. Very sensitive, calculated management required here.

By the way, this is just the thin end of the wedge. What cost do you put on the ESB having to upgrade the entire irish network to 3 phase?? The reason I ask is that if we jump forward a few years, most EVs at that stage will be capable of doing 95+% of their charging at home. Batteries will be bigger. The charging tech will be such that it can be loaded faster. The current single phase network can't facilitate that.

That's when the serious $ will need to be spent.


Lastly, I reiterate - in the longer term, more volume will go through electricity. Therefore, in the longer term, the esb (and their retail partners) stand to gain. Additionally, theres a great opportunity being presented in dealing with a major electrical networking issue - balancing out demand. EV's can help with this - and can also provide a better fit for wind generated energy.

grogi

isnottheword wrote: »

Look at the bigger picture. IF there's strategic thinking going on at .gov level, then the objective right now is to manage the transition and coax people across to EV uptake. You'll appreciate that of the current national fleet, less than 0.5% is accounted for by EV's!

They can charge (and they will!) to their hearts content later - but my point is it would be reasonable that they start very subtly - and increase in increments. Otherwise, the little (current) uptake we have right now will be killed off. Very sensitive, calculated management required here.

By the way, this is just the thin end of the wedge. What cost do you put on the ESB having to upgrade the entire irish network to 3 phase?? The reason I ask is that if we jump forward a few years, most EVs at that stage will be capable of doing 95+% of their charging at home. Batteries will be bigger. The charging tech will be such that it can be loaded faster. The current single phase network can't facilitate that.

That's when the serious $ will need to be spent.


Lastly, I reiterate - in the longer term, more volume will go through electricity. Therefore, in the longer term, the esb (and their retail partners) stand to gain. Additionally, theres a great opportunity being presented in dealing with a major electrical networking issue - balancing out demand. EV's can help with this - and can also provide a better fit for wind generated energy.

Did you really put the words 'strategic thinking' and 'government' in one sentence?

It would be sufficient if the VRT for diesel was significantly increased, so they would become viable option only for high-milers. Nobody would really be penalised - it would only affect future sales. But there is no thinking really.

What you are suggesting is heavily subsidising the charger network. We already have a bit of that and it does very little for EV sales.

isnottheword

grogi wrote: »

Did you really put the words 'strategic thinking' and 'government' in one sentence?

I put them in the same sentence but it should not be lost on you the fact that the 'IF' was capitalised.

...so in answer to what you're getting at, I know only too well the country I live in. However, we can only aspire to greater things. To a certain extent, the public at large have a responsibility as regards who ends up running the country (and I guess lets leave it at that or else we end up off topic).

For example, in Germany (makes for the perfect example of course - a nation of engineers and long term thinkers), they already have a nationwide 3phase standard.

grogi wrote:

It would be sufficient if the VRT for diesel was significantly increased, so they would become viable option only for high-milers. Nobody would really be penalised - it would only affect future sales. But there is no thinking really.

It's what I would expect from .gov here - more stick than carrot - albeit that I'm not against the idea. That said, they would also have to do this subtly with gentle year-on-year increases. It's not that long ago that policy was to encourage diesel (we followed the brits on that) - and thats turned out to be a mistake. That said, its not unreasonable for people to feel a bit frustrated with the quick turn around - so gentle increases would be the way to go.
The minister already had the opportunity to stick on a very small increase on diesel duty/tax - but he chickened out.

grogi wrote:

What you are suggesting is heavily subsidising the charger network.

No, evidently I'm not! We've already identified that there's damn all EVs on the road. If you are talking about the infrastructure, in the grand scheme of things, it was not such a massive investment (compare it against the ESB infrastructural single phase to 3 phase rollout that will be necessary - don't have the figures but you can be sure that it's small beans in comparison).
Do you want to kill off the current poor take up stone dead entirely? As momentum builds, they can subtly increase charges year-on-year - reviewing the implications of that as they go. Remember there are lots of would-be EV drivers in the country too who may be disenfranchised i.e. those that live in apartment blocks - they need to be catered for also (and without it being prohibitively expensive). They are working towards this on the continent - where there are many more people in apartments than single unit houses as in Ireland.

cros13

grogi wrote: »

Charging at a public charger needs to be more expensive than just electricity. Otherwise they don't make financial sense.

I'd remind you that petrol/diesel are often a break-even or loss making business for petrol stations. With most of the profits being made in the shop.
We're not going to be able to make a case for EVs in that vane until EVs hit a substantial percentage of vehicles on the road. We have yet to hit 0.1% of the fleet.

Definitely EV owners without home charging need to be accommodated. I was annoyed that in their submission to CER, ESB eCars seemed to characterise the use of the network by one such individual as abuse.
FastNed in the Netherlands for example handle this with a €99/month unlimited charging plan. And they are now building specially designed multi-rapid city-center charging locations so that city dwellers don't have to clog up the inter-city network if they are not travelling.

zilog_jones

isnottheword wrote: »

It's what I would expect from .gov here - more stick than carrot - albeit that I'm not against the idea. That said, they would also have to do this subtly with gentle year-on-year increases. It's not that long ago that policy was to encourage diesel (we followed the brits on that) - and thats turned out to be a mistake. That said, its not unreasonable for people to feel a bit frustrated with the quick turn around - so gentle increases would be the way to go.

The changes to motor tax and VRT in 2008 were very sudden - but both the industry and customers changed quickly to accommodate this. I don't see why this couldn't be done again to discourage vehicles with high NOx/particulate emissions.

Think of it another way, as I've tried to point out many times,

IF you pay per time ( as was proposed by the ESB) then you get a bit screwed if you got a 24 Kwh Leaf on a cold battery, however, think ahead, the IONIQ already seems to charge at 65 Kw on the ESB DC Chargers so you get a lot more Kwh per min !!!

100 kw chargers, a lot more again and so on.

Be careful what you wish for !

grogi

isnottheword wrote: »

I put them in the same sentence but it should not be lost on you the fact that the 'IF' was capitalised.

...so in answer to what you're getting at, I know only too well the country I live in. However, we can only aspire to greater things. To a certain extent, the public at large have a responsibility as regards who ends up running the country (and I guess lets leave it at that or else we end up off topic).

For example, in Germany (makes for the perfect example of course - a nation of engineers and long term thinkers), they already have a nationwide 3phase standard.

It's what I would expect from .gov here - more stick than carrot - albeit that I'm not against the idea. That said, they would also have to do this subtly with gentle year-on-year increases. It's not that long ago that policy was to encourage diesel (we followed the brits on that) - and thats turned out to be a mistake. That said, its not unreasonable for people to feel a bit frustrated with the quick turn around - so gentle increases would be the way to go.
The minister already had the opportunity to stick on a very small increase on diesel duty/tax - but he chickened out.

And I am ok with him backing off. Incrasing tax on fuel would hit mainly those who encouraged by tax regime, already invested a lot of money into a diesel car.

We don't want to eliminate the current diesel fleet from the streets. That would be political and, what's worse, social disaster. We simply don't want MORE diesel cars. Existing ones would soon disappear when pricey repairs bills start popping up...

No, evidently I'm not! We've already identified that there's damn all EVs on the road. If you are talking about the infrastructure, in the grand scheme of things, it was not such a massive investment (compare it against the ESB infrastructural single phase to 3 phase rollout that will be necessary - don't have the figures but you can be sure that it's small beans in comparison).
Do you want to kill off the current poor take up stone dead entirely? As momentum builds, they can subtly increase charges year-on-year - reviewing the implications of that as they go. Remember there are lots of would-be EV drivers in the country too who may be disenfranchised i.e. those that live in apartment blocks - they need to be catered for also (and without it being prohibitively expensive). They are working towards this on the continent - where there are many more people in apartments than single unit houses as in Ireland.

We probably are on the same page, but there is a bit of misunderstanding.

I don't want to kill EV and agree that there should be low-cost EV charger network. But if a private operator decides to put a charger at his facility, they should charge what they want. And if that additional charger saves me hour and a half on my Dublin-Cork journey, I'll be glad to pay for it...

But @cros13 point about not making money on fuel right now is a very good one too. EV driver, as they tend to wait a bit longer at the station than an ICE driver, will - on average - spent a bit more there... Maybe a coffee + scone etc. However abysmal number of EV right now would not be sufficient to cover for the initial cost.

isnottheword

zilog_jones wrote: »

The changes to motor tax and VRT in 2008 were very sudden - but both the industry and customers changed quickly to accommodate this. I don't see why this couldn't be done again to discourage vehicles with high NOx/particulate emissions.

I'm not in any way against the idea. I believe the minister chickened out as it would be politically sensitive (there are a hell of a lot more diesel drivers out there than EV drivers right now!). Notwithstanding that, I agree entirely - he should have made changes to motor tax.

KCross

zilog_jones wrote: »

The changes to motor tax and VRT in 2008 were very sudden - but both the industry and customers changed quickly to accommodate this. I don't see why this couldn't be done again to discourage vehicles with high NOx/particulate emissions.

I think it was already pointed out somewhere that that quick change was "easy" in 2008 because it made low CO2 cars have cheaper tax rather than penalising/increasing existing cars as such.

What is different now is that you cant reduce tax or VRT on EV's much more (€120/yr.... its tiny), what is required is to increase tax and VRT etc on existing diesels which is a MUCH more difficult political thing to do.

Thats the gotcha and why it hasnt been done to date!

isnottheword

grogi wrote: »

And I am ok with him backing off. Incrasing tax on fuel would hit mainly those who encouraged by tax regime, already invested a lot of money into a diesel car.

I was talking in terms of a subtle increase. It's much better to have small incremental increases than one big hit. Even as a token gesture, it would send the signal out to prospective buyers right now that they really need to be considering other options (ergo EV) - that policy is shifting and diesel will be forced out one way or another.

grogi wrote: »

We probably are on the same page, but there is a bit of misunderstanding.

I don't want to kill EV and agree that there should be low-cost EV charger network. But if a private operator decides to put a charger at his facility, they should charge what they want. And if that additional charger saves me hour and a half on my Dublin-Cork journey, I'll be glad to pay for it...

But @cros13 point about not making money on fuel right now is a very good one too. EV driver, as they tend to wait a bit longer at the station than an ICE driver, will - on average - spent a bit more there... Maybe a coffee + scone etc. However abysmal number of EV right now would not be sufficient to cover for the initial cost.

I agree - it looks like we're not that far apart in our views. That said, you talk of 'private operators'. The current infrastructure is not provided by a private operator - and the model is not right for a private operator right now. There are times when we need to dip into public finances and this is one of them.....until we at least reach a certain critical mass or target EV numbers - and have a system in place that can be somewhat self sustaining.

Not going to happen in Ireland, when Car manufacturers themselves raise the cost of diesels and/or stop producing them is when you''ll see Irish people change.

I keep mentioning this but the Irish Government still allows solid fuels to be burned as a form of heating which makes a modern diesel look like an EV !!! so I wouldn't expect them to do much more to promote the use of electric cars unless they come under political pressure from the E.U !

I looked over my village the other day from a local hill and the chimney smoke clouded over the village and beyond, in 2017 !!!!!

KCross

isnottheword wrote: »

By the way, this is just the thin end of the wedge. What cost do you put on the ESB having to upgrade the entire irish network to 3 phase?? The reason I ask is that if we jump forward a few years, most EVs at that stage will be capable of doing 95+% of their charging at home. Batteries will be bigger. The charging tech will be such that it can be loaded faster. The current single phase network can't facilitate that.

That's when the serious $ will need to be spent.

What do you base that on?

The ESB report doesnt back you up.

Their recent report on the suitability of the network for EV spoke extensively about managing and improving the current single phase LV network if/when/where required but nothing about supplying 3-phase to houses.

They can support upto 20% penetration (500,000 EV's) with minimal investment and that investment is self funding by the extra customer usage. That takes us well passed 2030 so dont expect 3-phase any time soon!

Some other interesting snippets around peak load and whether additional power generation is required:

Analysis completed by UK Power Networks suggest that EV load growth is seen to have a minor impact on the overall network peak load but will impact the network at LV feeder level.

Under current conditions, Electric Vehicle penetration can reach 40% for thermal capacity before there is a problem with regards to the peak demand exceeding the peak demand provided such charging occurs at night.

What is required beyond 40% penetration, I dont know, but their report made no mention of even considering 3-phase as a solution. It was ALL about upgrading the LV network. Providing 3 phase to every house would be a massive investment and if they have LV based solutions they wont ever go the 3 phase route.... nor should they because its us will have to pay for it!

unkel

grogi wrote: »

We don't want to eliminate the current diesel fleet from the streets.

Oh yes we do :cool:

The big "gotcha" Kcross mentioned is the main factor why the government doesn't have an easy path to do this quickly and fairly. Fairly small (10%) yearly tax increases on VRT, excise and motortax for ICE cars , in particular diesels can give people a nudge in the right direction without being unfair to all the people that bought diesels because the greens said they were good for you :rolleyes:

And some draconian measures. Can you believe the London congestion charge is 14 years old? We need one asap for Dublin for all ICE and for it to convert from a charge into a ban for diesels within the next 5 years or so

KCross

unkel wrote: »

Oh yes we do :cool:

The big "gotcha" Kcross mentioned is the main factor why the government doesn't have an easy path to do this quickly and fairly. Fairly small (10%) yearly tax increases on VRT, excise and motortax for ICE cars , in particular diesels can give people a nudge in the right direction without being unfair to all the people that bought diesels because the greens said they were good for you :rolleyes:

And some draconian measures. Can you believe the London congestion charge is 14 years old? We need one asap for Dublin for all ICE and for it to convert from a charge into a ban for diesels within the next 5 years or so

The one I like most is an increase in VRT as that only affects new purchases which is where the change in behaviour needs to start. It doesnt penalise those that have already bought diesel.

Once things start to shift a bit quicker to EV you can then slowly increase the motortax to speed up the process.