It's the year 2018, and a countrys second city FCPs are...

Orebro

Fugged

(Well it's 2017 but I wanted to be more dramatic :-) )

Rex Rex Rex the more I read stuff like this the better I feel for getting the Rex !

The Issue also is that the app might not have the correct information and a charger up is shown down and one down showing up etc.

Orebro

Just to say that the light blue charger is a Nissan dealer and it's only accessible during business hours.

jhegarty

And on CCS you only have 1 when everything is working.

k123456

I have been seeing a lot of post here and on FB EV, .....huge amount of chargers down, not been fixed quickly etc

Still no disincentive for charger hogging, by EV or non EV drivers

Added to that , not always ....but usually inept support from Ecars

I think its fair to say, in Ireland we now have a "third world" charge infrastructure

The non EV driving public is aware of the above (as well as EV drivers) . I am fairly sure future EV sales will decline, some existing EV drivers will migrate back to Ice. The Irish Government has a lot to answer for

cros13

jhegarty wrote: »

And on CCS you only have 1 when everything is working.

Well for CCS the entire southeast network was down today. Cork, Fermoy and Waterford.

unkel

And the entire northwest CCS network is only one charger in Donegal, which is regularly down too.

Orebro

Something simply has to happen to stop the charger hogging. Just last week I was on the way home and needed a quick 10 mins to make sure I'd finish the journey - guy in his Leaf was there already, pulled in beside him, noticed his 3rd dash light was flashing so thought he can't be much longer. Nope - he sat there for another 20 mins watching a video on his iPad while he slow charged his Leaf into the 90's percent, and all this at half 10 at night - absolutely outrageous behaviour - bring in the paid charging right now I say.

unkel

Orebro wrote: »

Something simply has to happen to stop the charger hogging. Just last week I was on the way home and needed a quick 10 mins to make sure I'd finish the journey - guy in his Leaf was there already, pulled in beside him, noticed his 3rd dash light was flashing so thought he can't be much longer. Nope - he sat there for another 20 mins watching a video on his iPad while he slow charged his Leaf into the 90's percent, and all this at half 10 at night - absolutely outrageous behaviour - bring in the paid charging right now I say.

My first thought to that would be: arsehole. But then again it is more likely he is just not aware of the way charging works and how his Leaf gets extremely slow over 80% and particularly creeping up towards 100%

There's one older Irish gentleman in Lucan who does the same. I'm sure he's kind and doesn't mean to be rude, but his ignorance is causing other people grief.

Orebro

unkel wrote: »

My first thought to that would be: arsehole. But then again it is more likely he is just not aware of the way charging works and how his Leaf gets extremely slow over 80% and particularly creeping up towards 100%

There's one older Irish gentleman in Lucan who does the same. I'm sure he's kind and doesn't mean to be rude, but his ignorance is causing other people grief.

Very likely, but still not nice when you're sitting there. If it were costing them money then it would sort it pronto.

Even if for a start, limit the connection time to 30 mins and leave it free.

unkel

I think we almost all agree that we need charging for charging

Orebro

Orebro wrote: »

bring in the paid charging right now I say.

I called for this years ago but the abuse I got was incredible.

Thinking back it's a shame Nissan didn't include a generator option like the Rex from the start, have it optional like the I3. I bet it would have been the most popular option.

Soarer

Opel should've sold the Ampera here.

Or at least train their lads on how to service them.

Sabre Man

unkel wrote: »

I think we almost all agree that we need charging for charging

Or more than one charger at each location.

liamog

Minimum charge rates, drop below a threshold and it cuts you off.

If you cut people off at 20% of the charger capacity it would prevent most of the slow charging blockers.

Evd-Burner

liamog wrote: »

Minimum charge rates, drop below a threshold and it cuts you off.

If you cut people off at 20% of the charger capacity it would prevent most of the slow charging blockers.

That's fine for the current chargers, would have to revisit when they get higher capacity ones. Love the idea though, would solve a lot of the waiting around problems.

That's grand provided the person comes back to the car and moves or there's room to get in.

You'll still get people that will go nuts because someone unplugged their car and won't understand that it cuts off after a certain time or charge current.

liamog

[Deleted User] wrote: »

That's grand provided the person comes back to the car and moves or there's room to get in.

You'll still get people that will go nuts because someone unplugged their car and won't understand that it cuts off after a certain time or charge current.

Its easier to explain, people would get used to their car stopping charging at around a certain percentage.

It's fairer than an arbitrary percentage cut off as it allows for the fact that newer cars charge at reasonable rates much higher up the charge percentage.

They could put up signs that say something like "chargers cut off automatically on detection of low power usage" and small print that states something like "these chargers are designed to charge at high power but when car starts to consume little energy disconnection will occur to allow someone else to charge at high power"

I think once it's clear who will get the network that proper terms of use are sent out to every EV driver.

But , we still need a proper charging network.

Orebro

Loads of common sense options being mentioned.

Here's one I like - if it is to be free for the time being, then make it free for 30 mins - anything after that time with the cable plugged in you get charged by the minute. That'll stop the weekly shop, Netflix watching while charging, and all the other nonsense causing the chargers to be hogged.

thierry14

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Thinking back it's a shame Nissan didn't include a generator option like the Rex from the start, have it optional like the I3. I bet it would have been the most popular option.

That's true

Nissan E-Power is what should have happened

All the good things about EV's and ICE together, no negatives

Doesnt bother me putting 40e petrol a week into car

They are saying the next Nissan GTR will be e -Power

Would be a mental car

Yes thinking back it would have been an easy option to add, I'm sure they could have packaged the leaf drivetrain better to fit a generator.

It would have been particularly useful with the 24 Kwh leaf and then as battery ages the generator can make up for any capacity loss.

But, Nissan wanted to be the first to release the first affordable mass produced EV and that's fine, but they still after nearly 7 years have nothing else apart from the E-nv200 and the Micra which isn't even available outside of Japan. They really dragged their heals.

And what's worse is that they could have made a lot more batteries if they had to release more EV models which would have made their battery production more profitable and they could have got costs down a lot faster. They made some stupid decisions.

cros13

thierry14 wrote: »

All the good things about EV's and ICE together, no negatives

Not quite... you lose almost all of the maintenance and running cost advantages (while still beating pure ICE of course).
And while the Note e-power has the Leaf's motor... the power output is cut in half due to the limited discharge of the tiny battery buffering power from the combustion engine.

The Note e-power is more of a gateway drug to BEVs than an end in and of itself.
Which is also Nissan's intention for e-power.

DrPhilG

unkel wrote: »

I think we almost all agree that we need charging for charging

We need a functional network first. Then and only then we need charging for charging.

BoatMad

DrPhilG wrote: »

We need a functional network first. Then and only then we need charging for charging.

The current travails of the charging network can almost singlehandedly be placed at the door of the CER/CRU. who essentially washed their hands of a network they financed , leaving in the temporary hands of an owner who has been told to sell it, while at the same time expected to fund its operation

Thats a recipe for what we got , an " owner" with zero interest in the network and who may not end up owning it anyway

its a shame but its purely a function of the crazy way the Irish state allowed a charging network to be built as a " pilot research project" , None considered what was to happen when that project ended

charging for charging , has almost nothing to do with it, because the current network is not financially self sustaining and you are still left with the issue of who funds the shortfall. Never mind funding expansion

the reality is we will see pricing for the use of FCP in 2018, irrespective of the state of the network. thats the reality, because all operating funding has in essence been withdrawn.

ELM327

Hopefully once there is charging for charging on a crappy public "network" there will be a market for a private operator to enter.
Currently with the free "network" there is no point.

Judging by the level of interest in the responses to the CER from the energy companies, there does seem to be some interest in running the network commercially. I'd trust any and all private operators over and above Ecars who have no interest in running the network.

BoatMad

ELM327 wrote: »

Hopefully once there is charging for charging on a crappy public "network" there will be a market for a private operator to enter.
Currently with the free "network" there is no point.

Judging by the level of interest in the responses to the CER from the energy companies, there does seem to be some interest in running the network commercially. I'd trust any and all private operators over and above Ecars who have no interest in running the network.

There is no evidence that the current EV population or even the expected one in the next few years, will support a commercial charger network particularly outside the GDA.

There is no doubt that the DCCAE is of the mind that both Capex and Opex support may be needed from the state, but the modalities of that are a long way from being sorted ( never mind an adequate budget to fund that ambition )

The issue is the interim , it may take 12 months for a vendor to buy and gain control of the network then it may be necessary to implement completely new IT structures and there is the whole issue of the land under the chargers etc ( this may require revenue sharing etc ) all this has a tendency to take time, as anyone waiting for the Gorey MSA to open will be well aware of

Whats depressing is that the CRU knows all this and still cast the network financially adrift

ELM327

It's not just the network that's cast adrift though, it's the EV owner community.
I think I like most EV users are just getting p1ssed off at the current ridiculous state of the not working network, which means our cars are runabouts for 50km from the house only.

BoatMad

ELM327 wrote: »

It's not just the network that's cast adrift though, it's the EV owner community.
I think I like most EV users are just getting p1ssed off at the current ridiculous state of the not working network, which means our cars are runabouts for 50km from the house only.

Yes ,I agree, I used the term " broken a social contract " recently in correspondence with the CRU.

The EV community bought cars on the reasonable assumption that they had access to a stable charging network , one that was positioning itself to grow as well.

The reality which transpired was it was a once-off research project , whose funding stopped dead , Thats was not public knowledge and was never referred to by the ESBN in its "glossy brochures "

NIMAN

Maybe they are deliberately letting it go to ruin to encourage us to offer to pay for it?

ELM327

NIMAN wrote: »

Maybe they are deliberately letting it go to ruin to encourage us to offer to pay for it?

That's already happened.

huggs2

Things are changing for 2018.Just found this in rte environment news at bottom of page.

"Electric car charger grant to be announced

A new grant of €600 for the installation of an electric car charger in domestic homes is to be announced today.

The grant, which was signalled in October's Budget will be available from 1 January and will be administered by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland.

There are around 3,500 electric vehicles in Ireland according to the Department of Communications, Climate Action and the Environment, and a network of nearly 900 public charting points are available.

Funding was also provided in the budget for the rolling out of an additional 50 super-fast electric car charging points around the country during 2018."

BoatMad

NIMAN wrote: »

Maybe they are deliberately letting it go to ruin to encourage us to offer to pay for it?

They dont need to do that ,

The issue is the madness of the CRU decision to cut off funding , while equally ordering the network to be sold and naively expecting ESBN to fund it in the interim

ESBN seem to be walking away as far as I can see , bigger fish to fry in London and Paris

huggs2

huggs2 wrote: »

Funding was also provided in the budget for the rolling out of an additional 50 super-fast electric car charging points around the country during 2018."

50 DC chargers ain't going to cut it, they need to get their act together. They need a minimum of 4 chargers on site in the busier locations.

What's the bet these will be the same 50 odd Kw chargers ?

cros13

Deleted User wrote: »

What's the bet these will be the same 50 odd Kw chargers ?

What's the bet they'll just replace the 50-odd chademo only rapids?

cros13

cros13 wrote: »

What's the bet they'll just replace the 50-odd chademo only rapids?

I'm sure they'll do that too !

One thing for sure is they're going to spend as little money of their own on the network, first the E.U funded chargers now the Government funded chargers and this is exactly what they were waiting for.

KCross

cros13 wrote: »

What's the bet they'll just replace the 50-odd chademo only rapids?

I'd hope not. The LEV Taskforce workgroup specifically asked whether the existing chargers should be replaced/refurbished. Most people said no, because they are in the wrong location so they got the feedback loud and clear about location.

They also asked if any new ones should be triple head or not.

I'm holding out hope that whatever type of new chargers they get they get put into new, more appropriate locations. I think they will, based on the feedback they got.

And maybe double up the ones that are currently in appropriate locations (motor service areas).

liamog

They should have sent a survey to all registered users of the eCars network.

There are many people who would deny the use of rapid chargers to local users in a bid to ensure that the chargers remain free for use.

Any future network needs a mix of charging hubs on the major inter urbans and some localised rapid charger centers within our larger developed areas.

Fastned and Tesla have already worked this out. Why should we wait to learn the lesson for ourselves.