ESB eCars

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121488362#Comment_121488362

My feedback will be the same as previous years, stop laying out 2 chargers serving the same "parking" spaces. As long as they continue to deploy this layout I'll be unhappy

I think I understand why they do it that way, but it's still rubbish and needs to be better. Particular when the slower unit also an AC socket.

ELM327

My only negative comment was about the layout and about using the word hub for a 150+50 setup. I have no issues with the pricing or the overstay

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121490307#Comment_121490307

The overstay could do with a bit of tweaking, it fails to encourage movement between minutes 46 and 89. I've no problem with it having to be paid, but it shouldn't cause people to want to get their money's worth after triggering it.

Not important enough for me to put it on the feedback though.

joe1303l

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121490324#Comment_121490324

I suggested to them to move to a charging method that combines kWh consumed and minutes connected like Freshmile on the High Power units. It encourages customers to charge at decent speeds and gives best use of the limited fast charging units available.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121490873#Comment_121490873

people can only charge at what speed their car charges, i don't see how it'll encourage them to charge faster...

joe1303l

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121490951#Comment_121490951

Not so. All EV Batteries have a charging curve. You generally need a warm battery and a low SOC% to get the best DC charging rates. Charging speed really drops off past 75-80%. Watch some Tesla Bjorn videos on YT. Less relevant on older EV’s that have poor DC charging capabilities.

AndyBoBandy

Exactly.. it should work out cheaper to go from 20% - 50% than it would if you put the same amount of energy in, but started at 50% and went to 80% as you’ll take on that 30% much quicker (and cheaper) if you take it when starting at a lower SoC.

Discourages people from remaining on the charger when the rate they are charging at is so low that it makes it uneconomical to continue the charging session.

ELM327

I think a combo of per min and per kwh could work very well. Incentivise people to use the right charger. EG if your car can only take 50kW dont plug into a 350kW.

But what will happen in reality is that there arent enough chargers so you often have to plug into whatevers available

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491022#Comment_121491022

And how exactly can a person needing a charge change any of that….. if people want/ need to charge above 80% it’ll slow down and they’ll be caught with the overstate fee.

AndyBoBandy

and in most cases you'd still want to take on as much as you can while on a charger as the next charger might be broken/blocked/busy... We're still not at the stage where the next charge is guaranteed to be hassle free yet.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491216#Comment_121491216

It's not about catching people with an overstay (which is the system today) it's about it being a paid decision to underuse the charging capacity. A problem that is entirely mitigated by multi head chargers such as Kempower, but I think we're a long way from eCars ever rolling out one of them

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491389#Comment_121491389

People don’t really have a choice. They pull up to a DC charger and plug in.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491545#Comment_121491545

Can you explain that one for me, every time I've charged my car I've been in full control of when to end the charge.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491867#Comment_121491867

So charging speed has nothing to do with it, charging per minute as well as kWh won’t do anything

joe1303l

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491920#Comment_121491920

Several people have kindly tried to explain the concept to you unsuccessfully. I’d suggest you spend a €5 to get a Freshmile RFID card and figure it out with your wallet. I’ll get my coat.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491920#Comment_121491920

It does in over countries, why do you think the Irish consumer will be happy paying an extremely high effective rate to charge their car when it's charging at 10kW as they are at a high state of charge?

I'd bet that most people when faced with that would choose to end the charge.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492197#Comment_121492197

I know how it works. But I don’t see any benefits, maybe you could charge a higher rate when the car is above 80%. But there’s already a penalty after 45 minute , maybe uP It very 5 minutes after that

asides from that there’s nothing a user can do, they need a charge and they plug in and charge.

explain what benefits there are. Other than over complicating the tariff. We’ve already see people ditch freshmile as the price went up

joe1303l

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492312#Comment_121492312

Freshmile still worthwhile with the high power ESB eCars units if you’ve an EV with decent DC charging capability. (Not as cheap as it used to be with Ionity though).

If you value your time or anybody else’s you wouldn’t be sitting on a DC charger past 80% anyway.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492508#Comment_121492508

Sometimes people need a full charge.

MarkN

100% this.

Amount of times I’ve been in a car capable of high speeds but a 50kW max car is using the 150kW and I’m forced to use a 50kW and I wouldn’t even bother trying to explain to the other person why it should be the other way around. Or there’s a seperate 50kW free, you’re using the 150kW and someone jumps onto the 150kW and halves the speed.

CivilEx

Could I ask those that have had an EV for a number of years if they believe the ESB "listen" to feedback from annual surveys and implement suggestions?

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492646#Comment_121492646

I'd actually say that in the past if got reviewed pretty well, but the problem with growth is that the data returned from many of these surveys then get aggregated and a lot of the nuanced data gets lost. It just becomes a corporate box-ticking exercise. This ESB one is at least pretty in-depth and appears to include questions from most of the departments within ecars, so my hope is that it's disseminated and taken onboard, as it should.

I believe that a high percentage of these surveys are validation related and have little or no corporate value, especially the ones which ask you how happy are you with "Steven in the call-center" and was your call effective... that's waffle and doesn't tell you about the underlying issues.

So yeah when smaller companies are reaching out for customer feedback I'm always keen to provide input. When it becomes a corporation then I don't care so much.

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492607#Comment_121492607

Agree 100% on the first part. But if youre the second person and you have a choice between 75kW until you leave and then 150kW, or a max 50kW on the 50kW, I'd take the 75

jogdish

Doing Galway - Dublin return, planning on ecars Kinnegad, so is it 8 chargers? Anyone know of issues or things I should be aware of?

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493724#Comment_121493724

Many users pop a review in here:

https://www.plugshare.com/location/552179

Some issues reported in earth Dec, but none since.

MrMusician18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493724#Comment_121493724

The first and last chargers were cutting out after 10or so mins at the start of the month. Don't know if it's been fixed yet.

innrain

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492508#Comment_121492508

the new units they install the Delta-SL100 don't have dynamic load balancing. This means the speed halves as soon as someone else plugs their car not even staring to charge. If you use per minute charging your price doubles. All the other examples like Portlaiose HPC which is "temporary" power limited to 50kW, 3 years after installation shows that time charging is unfair.

I would say adding time cost after a certain period would be a better model. For example at 100-150kW adding a 20c/min after 45 minutes and for 50-100kW charger add 20c/minute after 60 minutes would be a fairer model. That will allow those who want more charge to choose to pay but not incentivize staying on. Also it does not penalize someone who needs only 10kWh to go on, but because of network incapacity to provide 100kW as it is written on the charger, they have to pay double the amount.

Do they have chargers above 150kW? They are over 10 years in business. When the overstay was introduced most of the cars were around 40kWh, very few above. Right now the majority are around 60kWh mark. In 45 minutes, in practice one charges around 30-35kWh which is about 50% of battery. I think it a bit to soon. I'm nearly 5 years in driving EVs, depending solely on public charging and never paid this overstay charge.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121487859#Comment_121487859

Do you have a link to the survey, didn't get any email from them myself

CivilEx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493836#Comment_121493836

http://esbinnovation.newsweaver.com/esb-ecars-ireland/ydig3gcwmot1tqvmd7b1i4/external?email=true&a=5&p=63827567&t=30034456

You can complete the survey at the link here.

I don't know if that's a link that is personalised to my email address or not.

kanuseeme

The other day I saw 2 people trying to charge there car on AC, it took 4 attempts, I am not surprised people plug into the wrong charger, maybe a display with the prices, I think it unlikely they will move but the next time they might consider it, anyway its not a guarantee some will prefer the cheaper charger over their time, others will plug into what ever is available.

I am 100% against any sort of price increase, as it is , its nearly break even for public charging compared to my petrol use, I also don't buy limited resource mentality, if you want more EVs on the road you need more chargers.