Queen's Speech: Petrol stations to go electric

Calahonda52

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40352884
Petrol stations and motorway services will be required to install electric charge points, under plans outlined in the Queen's Speech.
The measure forms part of a government push to increase the number of electric vehicles on UK roads.
The Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill also contains plans to push driverless car technology.
It includes an extension of car insurance to cover the use of automated vehicles.

oikle

That's funny, the Greens accused them of not having a single green policy, but this is pretty good.

Dont be at yourself

If it's the cheap option, of SCPs, it won't make a big impact, given the charge times.

If it's FCPs, it will be huge benefit to EV drivers, but a massive headache and financial burden for the garage operators.

IMO the best part of the speech was that all of the existing networks will need to implement common billing. Heading to UK next month and gathering enough cards/accounts/apps to use the existing infra is a major pain.

liamog

This is a place where I believe the EU should step in.

A common access protocol for fast chargers.
I'd like to see a PayPass/PayWave requirement, there should be some way for people to charge their car without membership, access cards, or smartphones.

ELM327

One central charging system, set by the equivalent of Eirgrid and regulated by a competent CER equivalent.
FCP at every garage. End to the current one point of failure grid.
Perfect, then everyone would have an EV.

who_ru

one thing is certain - you would be waiting a very very long time indeed for an Irish Govt to come up with something like this.

BoatMad

ELM327 wrote: »

One central charging system, set by the equivalent of Eirgrid and regulated by a competent CER equivalent.
FCP at every garage. End to the current one point of failure grid.
Perfect, then everyone would have an EV.

I dont think that existing garages are a good place for FCPs . MSAs yes, but far too many garages are space limited and unsuitable to scale

multiple chargers , but fewer charging parks are better then scattering chargers everywhere, because in a multiple charger park, you are more likely to get access to a charger then having to decide in advance which garage might have a single unoccupied charger . ( even with instant status , because there is still a time to drive to that charger issue)

with increasing range AND charging at home, its a huge mistake to compare EV fuelling with ICE fuelling and assume that the EV behaviour will mimic ICE . It wont

BoatMad

who_ru wrote: »

one thing is certain - you would be waiting a very very long time indeed for an Irish Govt to come up with something like this.

I dont believe we will. There are serious attempts to set down aggressive policies to incentivise EVs here and unlike The UK, we will be subject go serious EU fines on carbon emissions from next year, we have a serious incentive to act

The issue however is getting it right and I believe the UK initiative is not well thought out

jimmycrackcorm

liamog wrote: »

This is a place where I believe the EU should step in.

A common access protocol for fast chargers.
I'd like to see a PayPass/PayWave requirement, there should be some way for people to charge their car without membership, access cards, or smartphones.

Isn't that like telling transport users - Wait lads! don't use pesky leap cards, you can use cash instead.

liamog

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

Isn't that like telling transport users - Wait lads! don't use pesky leap cards, you can use cash instead.

The opposite, it's likely telling transport users, you don't need to use your pesky Irish Rail card for trains, Dublin Bus Paper Smart Card for the bus and your Luas smartcard for the Luas. Instead you can use this one universal card that will cover them all.

In fact, it's like we extend the leap card to be taken anywhere in the world and for any type of payment.

Arbie

BoatMad wrote: »

I dont think that existing garages are a good place for FCPs . MSAs yes, but far too many garages are space limited and unsuitable to scale

What's an MSA?

Surely for a full FC at a service station the cost would be €10 ish +?
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/motors/esb-electric-car-price-plans-jolt-owners-anger-1.2419590

ELM327

Arbie wrote: »

What's an MSA?

motorway service stations afaik (I don't know what the acronym stands for but it means essentially motorway service stations)

Augeo wrote: »

Surely for a full FC at a service station the cost would be €10 ish +?
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/motors/esb-electric-car-price-plans-jolt-owners-anger-1.2419590

€10 is prohibitive IMO.
A pro-rated charge per minute and/or per kilowatt which would equate to roughly €4-€6 per charge would be my tipping point, probably more the former than the latter.

KCross

Arbie wrote: »

What's an MSA?

Motor Service Area

Typically the larger ones off the motorways are referred to as MSA's as they have more than just petrol/diesel. They are meant to be 24hr and provide food and toilets and truck parking areas etc.

oppenheimer1

ELM327 wrote: »

motorway service stations afaik (I don't know what the acronym stands for but it means essentially motorway service stations)


€10 is prohibitive IMO.
A pro-rated charge per minute and/or per kilowatt which would equate to roughly €4-€6 per charge would be my tipping point, probably more the former than the latter.

Why is it prohibitive? Don't people pay €70-80 to fill their cars at present?

ELM327

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

Why is it prohibitive? Don't people pay €70-80 to fill their cars at present?

ok

liamog

At €10 for 24kWh your talking €8.4 profit over wholesale rates.
The infrastructure would need to average 3-4 charges a day to be profitable over the suggested 8 year timeframe.

I'd hope we plan our chargers around much higher utilisation than that.

oppenheimer1

liamog wrote: »

At €10 for 24kWh your talking €8.4 profit over wholesale rates.
The infrastructure would need to average 3-4 charges a day to be profitable over the suggested 8 year timeframe.

I'd hope we plan our chargers around much higher utilisation than that.

The Enfield eastbound FCP has been used less than 400 times since its been installed, less than twice/three times a week, and its free.

As range gets longer, utilisation of public chargers will lessen. Therefore if will never be profitable to run a public charger.

ELM327

liamog wrote: »

At €10 for 24kWh your talking €8.4 profit over wholesale rates.
The infrastructure would need to average 3-4 charges a day to be profitable over the suggested 8 year timeframe.

I'd hope we plan our chargers around much higher utilisation than that.

Yes I agree.
The UK would be a great example to follow (albeit we need to maintain a central database and single access card) . Look at the ecotricity chargers, 17p/kWh, plus a £3 connection fee for non ecotricity customers, with a 40 minute time limit

That's a great basis for charging to be introduced here.

oppenheimer1

ELM327 wrote: »

Yes I agree.
The UK would be a great example to follow (albeit we need to maintain a central database and single access card) . Look at the ecotricity chargers, 17p/kWh, plus a £3 connection fee for non ecotricity customers, with a 40 minute time limit

That's a great basis for charging to be introduced here.

I disagree, in order to ensure utilisation of the infrastructure, a monthly fee of say €25 with annual contract with a 10c/min would be appropriate. One off charges would not be possible on the network. It would be much less to than what people spend on fuel at the moment so it's a win-win for everyone.

ELM327

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

I disagree, in order to ensure utilisation of the infrastructure, a monthly fee of say €25 with annual contract with a 10c/min would be appropriate. One off charges would not be possible on the network. It would be much less to than what people spend on fuel at the moment so it's a win-win for everyone.

Ok

liamog

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

I disagree, in order to ensure utilisation of the infrastructure, a monthly fee of say €25 with annual contract with a 10c/min would be appropriate. One off charges would not be possible on the network. It would be much less to than what people spend on fuel at the moment so it's a win-win for everyone.

Per minute times are ridiculous, I want any charger provider to be incentivised to provide me energy quickly instead of slowly.

If I can charge you per minute, I may as well go round installing 22kW DC chargers, I'd charge you more money and it would cost me less.

Evd-Burner

oppenheimer1 wrote:

I disagree, in order to ensure utilisation of the infrastructure, a monthly fee of say €25 with annual contract with a 10c/min would be appropriate. One off charges would not be possible on the network. It would be much less to than what people spend on fuel at the moment so it's a win-win for everyone.

A standing charge of 25 a month is never going to work. A standing charge in general will never work. Lol, most of us don't even pay that a month on our home electricity bill. Nobody would sign up to it, those that did would use it all the time to try and make the money back on it.

IMO the ecotricity pricing structure seems very fair! It also give them an incentive to have faster rate charging to get you off the charger as fast as possible so they can make another connection charger after.

ELM327

ELM327 wrote: »

motorway service stations afaik (I don't know what the acronym stands for but it means essentially motorway service stations)


€10 is prohibitive IMO.
A pro-rated charge per minute and/or per kilowatt which would equate to roughly €4-€6 per charge would be my tipping point, probably more the former than the latter.

At €4/charge what's in it for the service station?
The potential profit on a coffee while you use their charger for 10/20+ mins?

ELM327

Augeo wrote: »

At €4/charge what's in it for the service station?
The potential profit on a coffee while you use their charger for 10/20+ mins?

A lot more in it for them than the current €0 per charge. A garage on the n2 just installed their own (non esb funded) charger in the last week from their own pocket. Same as Kildare village. They wouldnt be paying for it from their own pocket if there wasnt something in it for them!

Generally an EV charging is an ideal customer for a MSA/service station, captive for 20-30 minutes and generally from a good socio-economic background with disposable income, so predisposed to purchasing overpriced coffee when they wait to charge!

PS, the margin on a garage coffee is generally well north of 50-60% of sticker price. Sometimes 80% or more. While they are usually lucky to make 1-2 cent per litre of fossil fuel.

ELM327

ELM327 wrote: »

.............
PS, the margin on a garage coffee is generally well north of 50-60% of sticker price. Sometimes 80% or more. While they are usually lucky to make 1-2 cent per litre of fossil fuel.

Yeah, I worked in a busy service station years back that had an O Briens sandwich bar and the shop was essentially a decent mini market. You'd sell as much non fuel as fuel generally speaking but much of the non fuel was cigarettes.

1/2c per litre is decent when you are selling thousands of litres a day though.

Most EV owners are tight as fnck IMO, likely to have a flask from home with them.

unkel

Augeo wrote: »

At €4/charge what's in it for the service station?

More than they make from the average fill up with diesel / petrol. To give you a rough idea: average fill up is for about €30 or €35, so 25l or so, which gives them about a €0.50 margin. If they can get wholesale-ish kWh price of €0.10, a 20kWh fill up for €4 will give them €2 margin, so four times as much...

ELM327

Augeo wrote: »

Yeah, I worked in a busy service station years back that had an O Briens sandwich bar and the shop was essentially a decent mini market. You'd sell as much non fuel as fuel generally speaking but much of the non fuel was cigarettes.

1/2c per litre is decent when you are selling thousands of litres a day though.

Most EV owners are tight as fnck IMO, likely to have a flask from home with them.

LOL that's not my observations having spoken to some fellow owners at various events around the country.
I've done a few cross country (400+km) trips in my leaf and I spent more money on coffees, snacks and newspaper than on tolls and "fuel".

Dont be at yourself

Called into a Maxol for a 20minute quick charge this morning on the way to work. While waiting, I bought a high-margin coffee, bottle of water and a pastry. If they can also claim a connection fee for me plugging in, I'm comfortably making them more money than somebody buying 50l of diesel.

However, with the current charge times and installation cost of fast chargers, I'm not sure how scaleable it is. Assuming two chargers at full occupancy for 20min charges, and you're looking at 6 customers an hour -- if they're spending a fiver each while waiting, that's only €30 an hour...

ELM327

Dont be at yourself wrote: »

Called into a Maxol for a 20minute quick charge this morning on the way to work. While waiting, I bought a high-margin coffee, bottle of water and a pastry. If they can also claim a connection fee for me plugging in, I'm comfortably making them more money than somebody buying 50l of diesel.

However, with the current charge times and installation cost of fast chargers, I'm not sure how scaleable it is. Assuming two chargers at full occupancy for 20min charges, and you're looking at 6 customers an hour -- if they're spending a fiver each while waiting, that's only €30 an hour...

But you forget that, while the charging may be on a cost neutral basis (like fossil fuel practically is), the ev "chargee" is there for 20-30 mins and is more likely to purchase items in the shop that are high margin. Similar to a loss leader.

I have read quoted that an FCP needs 8 customers per day to break even. currently in the UK.

oppenheimer1

Evd-Burner wrote: »

A standing charge of 25 a month is never going to work. A standing charge in general will never work. Lol, most of us don't even pay that a month on our home electricity bill. Nobody would sign up to it, those that did would use it all the time to try and make the money back on it.

IMO the ecotricity pricing structure seems very fair! It also give them an incentive to have faster rate charging to get you off the charger as fast as possible so they can make another connection charger after.

Why wouldn't it work? Most people easily pay multiples of my suggested standing charge on petrol and Diesel per month.

Dont be at yourself

Dont be at yourself wrote: »

.................

However, with the current charge times and installation cost of fast chargers, I'm not sure how scaleable it is. Assuming two chargers at full occupancy for 20min charges, and you're looking at 6 customers an hour -- if they're spending a fiver each while waiting, that's only €30 an hour...

ELM327 wrote: »

But you forget that, while the charging may be on a cost neutral basis (like fossil fuel practically is), the ev "chargee" is there for 20-30 mins and is more likely to purchase items in the shop that are high margin. Similar to a loss leader.

I have read quoted that an FCP needs 8 customers per day to break even. currently in the UK.

He didn't forget, the €5 each is for items purchased.

ELM327 wrote: »

LOL that's not my observations having spoken to some fellow owners at various events around the country.
I've done a few cross country (400+km) trips in my leaf and I spent more money on coffees, snacks and newspaper than on tolls and "fuel".

That's on your few cross country trips, ie days out.

ELM327

Augeo wrote: »

He didn't forget, the €5 each is for items purchased.



That's on your few cross country trips, ie days out.

€5 plus whatever the charge for charging is.
I have 2 such trips each weekend generally, most times with 2 adults and 2 children in the car. Generally we buy something for each of us (even if it's two coffees and two yops).

Another point, when we go on holidays I actively seek out premises with destination charging. So these premises would be sought out to receive payments because of their charging facilities also.

.............. you do 2 x 400km trips every weekend, generally?

oppenheimer1

ELM327 wrote: »

€5 plus whatever the charge for charging is.
I have 2 such trips each weekend generally, most times with 2 adults and 2 children in the car. Generally we buy something for each of us (even if it's two coffees and two yops).

Another point, when we go on holidays I actively seek out premises with destination charging. So these premises would be sought out to receive payments because of their charging facilities also.

Volumes of EV drivers using the charging network are too low to justify garages spending €50-100k installing fast chargers. The fast charger at Enfield east bound will probably never pay for itself and that's the issue that needs solving. Paying the wholesale rate or little more than the wholesale rate for electricity will never be enough to make chargers a viable business.

EV drivers will need to realise that they will have to put their hand in their pocket to fund the charging network and it needs a lot of money. A standing charge is the only way to achieve this as a high unit rate will mean people won't use the network. A €25-30 per month standing charge is tiny compared to what people would spend on diesel. You'd still be saving loads, so what's the issue?

oppenheimer1

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

.............

EV drivers will need to realise that they will have to put their hand in their pocket to fund the charging network and it needs a lot of money............... You'd still be saving loads, so what's the issue?

Well if the loads saved gets eaten into by funding the charging network the financial benefit of EVs is minimised.

What's the rule of thumb, €400 home charging is €1500 of diesel or something in kms travelled for 25k kms/annum? Add the standing charge onto the home charging bill and you're up to €700/€800.

The network needs to be provided before most will change to EV, the early adapters can hardly be expected to fund the network.

Just to add, I'd consider myself tight as fnck money wise so my earlier comment wasn't meant as a dig against EV owners.

oppenheimer1

Augeo wrote: »

Well if the loads saved gets eaten into by funding the charging network the financial benefit of EVs is minimised.

What's the rule of thumb, €400 home charging is €1500 of diesel or something in kms travelled for 25k kms/annum?

The network needs to be provided before most will change to EV, the early adapters can hardly be expected to fund the network.

It's only the financial benefit that is reduced, not minimised and it would only add €360 per year to the running cost. You'd still have all the other benefits of EV, the torque, the smooth power delivery and the silent drive. It would still be less than half of the running cost of a diesel. Furthermore joining wouldn't be mandatory, you could opt out and just charge at home.

ICE drivers have to pay for the pumps and forecourts for their fuel, why shouldn't EV drivers pay for their chargers?

ELM327

Augeo wrote: »

.............. you do 2 x 400km trips every weekend, generally?

No, but 2 trips outside comfortable range of my 24kWh leaf (approx 160km) requiring an FCP stop of 15-20 mins.

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

Volumes of EV drivers using the charging network are too low to justify garages spending €50-100k installing fast chargers. The fast charger at Enfield east bound will probably never pay for itself and that's the issue that needs solving. Paying the wholesale rate or little more than the wholesale rate for electricity will never be enough to make chargers a viable business.

EV drivers will need to realise that they will have to put their hand in their pocket to fund the charging network and it needs a lot of money. A standing charge is the only way to achieve this as a high unit rate will mean people won't use the network. A €25-30 per month standing charge is tiny compared to what people would spend on diesel. You'd still be saving loads, so what's the issue?

ok.

Augeo wrote: »

Well if the loads saved gets eaten into by funding the charging network the financial benefit of EVs is minimised.

What's the rule of thumb, €400 home charging is €1500 of diesel or something in kms travelled for 25k kms/annum? Add the standing charge onto the home charging bill and you're up to €700/€800.

The network needs to be provided before most will change to EV, the early adapters can hardly be expected to fund the network.

Just to add, I'd consider myself tight as fnck money wise so my earlier comment wasn't meant as a dig against EV owners.

Well if you charge at night you can charge at 7-8 c/kWh. If you have sufficient power to charge fully at night, thats €1.92 for a 24kWh leaf from true 0 to true 100% - which of course will never happen, due to BMS limitation. Generally when the car displays "100%" the true percentage is 92-95, likewise if you arrive home with "0%" you really have between 8-12%. Lets aggregate it to €1.50 per 100km of home charging. At those rates, €400 will buy you 26,666 km from your home charger assuming you never use the public network. How much diesel do you need for 26,666km?

(Agreed with the rest of your post by the way)

Augeo

Augeo wrote: »

................

What's the rule of thumb, €400 home charging is €1500 of diesel or something in kms travelled for 25k kms/annum? ............

ELM327 wrote: »

............. At those rates, €400 will buy you 26,666 km from your home charger assuming you never use the public network. How much diesel do you need for 26,666km?

(Agreed with the rest of your post by the way)

At €1.30l and 55mpg you'd need to spend €1800 for that 26,666 kms.

oppenheimer1

Augeo wrote: »

At €1.30l and 55mpg you'd need to spend €1800 for that 26,666 kms.

So that's €1040 less than diesel if you paid for home charging and had a €30p/m standing charge to use the public network. Sounds pretty good to me, the charger network would be funded and then you might actually see real expansion.

liamog

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

The Enfield eastbound FCP has been used less than 400 times since its been installed, less than twice/three times a week, and its free.

As range gets longer, utilisation of public chargers will lessen. Therefore if will never be profitable to run a public charger.

If Enfield East is being used 2/3 times a week, it should be removed, that is a waste of resources.
We should move it to Blanch and Lucan where the chargers are being used 12-15 times a day.

At €5 a charge (24kW), any charge over 8 a day starts to subsidise the rest of the network.
My main problem with an over reliance on home charging is that it discourages network expansion.

Some quick math,
Assume and average EV does 16,000km per year with an average efficiency of 15kW/100km.
The energy requirement for the year is 2,400kWh which is 100 hundred charges, or €500 at my proposed €5 a charge.

Let's assume there are 2,500 EVs on the road, we need 6,000,000 kWh total per year to fuel them, or 16,438kWh per day. A single charger needs to dispense 192kWh per day to fund itself.
Given us a requirement of 85.6 FCPs to provide commercially viable charging for all EV's with just 4 hours per day of usage.

So in a full FCP scenario, every 2,500 cars can fund 86 FCP with an average user cost of €500 per year.

Evd-Burner

oppenheimer1 wrote:

EV drivers will need to realise that they will have to put their hand in their pocket to fund the charging network and it needs a lot of money. A standing charge is the only way to achieve this as a high unit rate will mean people won't use the network. A €25-30 per month standing charge is tiny compared to what people would spend on diesel. You'd still be saving loads, so what's the issue?

oppenheimer1 wrote:

So that's €1040 less than diesel if you paid for home charging and had a €30p/m standing charge to use the public network. Sounds pretty good to me, the charger network would be funded and then you might actually see real expansion.

Your still not getting it in relation to a monthly standing charge. There are vast numbers of EV drivers who would only need the network a half a dozen times a year. Like myself, I really don't need FCPs more than 3 trips or so a year. If I have finish a 360 standing charge a year there is no chance I would sign up. I'd just take a lend of an ice. Adding a standing charge will just force people to not use the infrastructure at all. From current EV numbers youd be lucky to get a few hundred people sign up to the monthly charges.

A connection charge for each usage plus a per kwh fee is better. That way people will use it as and when they need to!

stesaurus

liamog wrote: »

If Enfield East is being used 2/3 times a week, it should be removed, that is a waste of resources.
We should move it to Blanch and Lucan where the chargers are being used 12-15 times a day.

No thanks, It makes much more sense to have the network spread out at present due to the majority of EV's still being limited by range.

You want to remove out one of the only viable triple chargers leading into Dublin so that locals in Lucan don't have to queue up while they get their unneeded free juice? Because let's be honest this is why Lucan/Blanch etc. are generally busy.

And actually where is this 2-3 times a week figure coming from? Is this based on someone reading the electric meter on the charger and working out from that or do we have actuals stats to go by.

oppenheimer1

Evd-Burner wrote: »

Your still not getting it in relation to a monthly standing charge. There are vast numbers of EV drivers who would only need the network a half a dozen times a year. Like myself, I really don't need FCPs more than 3 trips or so a year. If I have finish a 360 standing charge a year there is no chance I would sign up. I'd just take a lend of an ice. Adding a standing charge will just force people to not use the infrastructure at all. From current EV numbers youd be lucky to get a few hundred people sign up to the monthly charges.

A connection charge for each usage plus a per kwh fee is better. That way people will use it as and when they need to!

I don't agree at all, €360pa is a tiny charge given the low running costs of electric. And asking someone to borrow their car because you wouldn't fork out on the €360pa, despite all the savings you're making on fuel won't win you any friends.

If 75% of EV drivers today were paying €30pm there would be enough funds there to install a new FCP every 2 months, and perhaps properly maintain the ones that are already in. With 20k drivers joined up there would be enough funds for 7 new FCP's per month.

The problem is that as ranges increase, the need for using the public network will decrease, thus usage will fall. This will make an extensive charging network nonviable leading to huge swaths of the country being charging blackspots should a driver be caught short. This is why access will need to be in a subscription form. Paying only as you access won't generate enough revenue.

ELM327

stesaurus wrote: »

No thanks, It makes much more sense to have the network spread out at present due to the majority of EV's still being limited by range.

You want to remove out one of the only viable triple chargers leading into Dublin so that locals in Lucan don't have to queue up while they get their unneeded free juice? Because let's be honest this is why Lucan/Blanch etc. are generally busy.

And actually where is this 2-3 times a week figure coming from? Is this based on someone reading the electric meter on the charger and working out from that or do we have actuals stats to go by.

We should move the FCPs out and away from Blanch and Lucan. Replace them with multiple SCP and move the FCP to MSA to create an end to the "single point of failure" charging.

Blanchardstown and Lucan are not really where people will "need" to charge during a longer trip - which is what FCP are for. They are abused by locals for free fuel.
Naas is another.

liamog

ELM327 wrote: »

We should move the FCPs out and away from Blanch and Lucan. Replace them with multiple SCP and move the FCP to MSA to create an end to the "single point of failure" charging.

Blanchardstown and Lucan are not really where people will "need" to charge during a longer trip - which is what FCP are for. They are abused by locals for free fuel.
Naas is another.

Or introduce the fee I proposed and provided Blanch and Lucan still sustain more than 8 charges a day they will start to subsidise the FCP in the middle of the sticks which is used 2/3 times a week.

Evd-Burner

oppenheimer1 wrote:

I don't agree at all, €360pa is a tiny charge given the low running costs of electric. And asking someone to borrow their car because you wouldn't fork out on the €360pa, despite all the savings you're making on fuel won't win you any friends.

€30 on top of an already higher loan ads up on the overall cost. The savings most of us make are used to pay towards the cost of the car. You may not agree that 30 isn't a lot but I a guarantee it would cause 75% of people to not sign up.

oppenheimer1 wrote:

If 75% of EV drivers today were paying €30pm there would be enough funds there to install a new FCP every 2 months, and perhaps properly maintain the ones that are already in. With 20k drivers joined up there would be enough funds for 7 new FCP's per month.

The investment should be coming from the government in order to push people towards choosing EV so we aren't fined from the EU majorly once we hit 2020. You can also guarantee that the money on the monthly standing charge will not go directly towards new infrastructure but rather pay for what's already there and go towards profit!

oppenheimer1 wrote:

The problem is that as ranges increase, the need for using the public network will decrease, thus usage will fall. This will make an extensive charging network nonviable leading to huge swaths of the country being charging blackspots should a driver be caught short. This is why access will need to be in a subscription form. Paying only as you access won't generate enough revenue.

Then how does it work for ecotricity?

Evd-Burner

oppenheimer1 wrote:

I don't agree at all, €360pa is a tiny charge given the low running costs of electric. And asking someone to borrow their car because you wouldn't fork out on the €360pa, despite all the savings you're making on fuel won't win you any friends.

€30 on top of an already higher loan ads up on the overall cost. The savings most of us make are used to pay towards the cost of the car. You may not agree that 30 isn't a lot but I a guarantee it would cause 75% of people to not sign up.

oppenheimer1 wrote:

If 75% of EV drivers today were paying €30pm there would be enough funds there to install a new FCP every 2 months, and perhaps properly maintain the ones that are already in. With 20k drivers joined up there would be enough funds for 7 new FCP's per month.

The investment should be coming from the government in order to push people towards choosing EV so we aren't fined from the EU majorly once we hit 2020. You can also guarantee that the money on the monthly standing charge will not go directly towards new infrastructure but rather pay for what's already there and go towards profit!

oppenheimer1 wrote:

The problem is that as ranges increase, the need for using the public network will decrease, thus usage will fall. This will make an extensive charging network nonviable leading to huge swaths of the country being charging blackspots should a driver be caught short. This is why access will need to be in a subscription form. Paying only as you access won't generate enough revenue.

Then how does it work for ecotricity?

Orebro

Jeez I really get the sense that some ICE drivers here really resent the fact that EV drivers have it so cheap at the moment and want EV drivers to be as miserable as them. Go and buy one lads - it's open to everyone!

oppenheimer1

Orebro wrote: »

Jeez I really get the sense that some ICE drivers here really resent the fact that EV drivers have it so cheap at the moment and want EV drivers to be as miserable as them. Go and buy one lads - it's open to everyone!

And I think you're missing the point entirely. How can the EV take off in a big way if charging infrastructure is lacking in huge swathes of the country? It's not about envy, it's about being realistic - that if there is a pay as you use system for chargers them they will naturally be clustered in places where they will get the highest use. This is to the detriment of what the network should be: providing a wide and redundant spread of chargers for when they are needed.

Why would any company provide a charger with pay on access in rural Leitrim that might see 50-75 uses a year when they could locate it in urban Dublin and see ten times that. A subscription makes the network itself the selling point, not the cost of electricity.


Given our small and thin population density, what works in the UK may not work here.