ESB eCars

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121922566#Comment_121922566

It isn't untrue, but it isn't the whole picture

Electric Ireland is a subsidiary of ESB Group and can set prices independently of it's parent company

In that way it isn't possible for the government to influence EIs electricity rates

Ecars place within the group is somewhat muddy but seems to be part of ESB Innovation ROI, which is effectively a consulting firm

A consulting firm does not interact with the electricity market directly and so will likely be purchasing power through an electricity supplier like Electric Ireland

So once again, Ecars pricing is dictated by electricity markets and not politicians

If you're looking at political options for influencing public EV charging prices, then some ideas would be additional funding for EV charging hubs (to ensure Ecars doesn't end up with a monopoly in some areas) and also that public EV charging should be brought under the remit of the CRU to ensure a minimum service standard is met

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121922697#Comment_121922697

ESB could drop their prices, but there would be immediate uproar from the other operators about ESB using their dominant position in the market to stifle competition. So the only way for them to stop that is to also drop prices to the operators a similar amount.

Wholesale prices have been falling for quite some time. Ecars and the other operators are currently milking it. One provider dropping prices might cause uproar but realistically the uproar should have been started by electric car drivers already due to the ridiculously high prices

But then other electricity users would be up in arms about subsidised EV charging and be looking for similar price cuts.

The opposite to that is happening already in that other electricity users are getting prices cut. Look at a your most recent home bill for confirmation

The same would go for a government subsidy for EV charging. Any other countries do this?

There's unlikely to be a need for a subsidy like we had in the residential market or ICE fuel market, prices have fallen on the wholesale market that should allow ecars and others to remain viable while at the same time dropping their prices

zg3409

https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/18b95-zero-emission-vehicles-ireland/ zevi a new quango out of SEAI is probably the best bet to complain for competition and better tenders for public charging contracts.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121922751#Comment_121922751

And who is it that controls and influences the CER/CRU. Politicians, right?

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121922727#Comment_121922727

It’s not linked. They buy at a fixed price.

I don’t believe that commercial rates have fallen in line with residential rates

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121922566#Comment_121922566

It’s a state owned independent company. Your local councillor has just about amount clout with getting AIB to cut rates as he has with ESB or any of it’s subsidies

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121922800#Comment_121922800

No, regulators have a remit based on their powers under legislation.

Leo Varadkar (or Simon Harris I guess) doesn't just ring up ESB management and tell them to lower prices because they need some votes. We've already got plenty of electioneering BS going on without adding populism to the mix

You seem to have us confused with an autocracy where a small group of individuals. Part of democracy is limits on the power of politicians, they don't get to decide everything for everyone and everything in the country

Do you expect the Dáil to pass a law saying Ecars have to charge 20c/kWh?

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121922975#Comment_121922975

Commercial rates were the first to fall

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121923392#Comment_121923392

First to go up, and they went up the most. They haven’t gone back as much as residential

65535

What's needed (and I'm sure it will happen) is that we have competition - maybe what will happen when numbers rise is that you can use all chargers but use your own card that you have decided on - a bit like the ESB providing the Electricity to your house but you having the choice to decide on who bills you and at what rate.

RainInSummer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121924609#Comment_121924609

That'd be ideal. At the minute I'm in the honeymoon phase with a new car and coincidentally have time on my hands.

So I'm off spinning around the country and I'm on my fourth app/account to charge. Such a pile of rubbish.

AndyBoBandy

If Tesla get their arse in gear and install more SuC sites (that will be open to all), that should hopefully first the competition lower their prices to get closer to Tesla….

Tesla will be your saviour.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121924762#Comment_121924762

25 sites promised by the end of 2026, most likely to be V4 so open to all. Could be a game changer alright pricewise. Tesla like to be annoying so I have no doubt they will also be cheaper as you say

wassie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121922566#Comment_121922566

The discussion around the structural separation between wholesaler vs retailer has been done to death in this thread....but go ahead and keep banging that drum.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121924994#Comment_121924994

A road map isn’t a promise. And Elon time isn’t normal time.

AndyBoBandy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121925170#Comment_121925170

But this time it 'should' be different as they will have an Irish based Supercharger person in place from the end of March onwards, which is more than the island ever had before!!

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121925170#Comment_121925170

Fair points, supposedly things are on the up for Ireland in that regard though

liamog

Tesla have started offering their V4 Superchargers as OEM equipment. It's possible this could also reduce charging hardware costs for operators. If the operator doesn't have to spend as much on reliable equipment they can lower the unit costs. Maybe eCars could use these at some point instead of the very large 4 DC chargers they seem to favour.

https://electrek.co/2024/03/21/first-non-tesla-branded-v4-superchargers-are-being-deployed/

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121926847#Comment_121926847

I remember reading an article a while back which said Tesla are able to install fast chargers at a vastly lower cost than competitors

It was based on the applications for US subsidies, they have to disclose the installation costs and charging power

Now to some degree that's because Tesla have used their car business to subsidise their charging business, but that's likely reflected in lower equipment costs which can also be passed on to 3rd party buyers, giving them an edge in the charger market

I think a large part of it is that Tesla have significantly ramped production of Superchargers and also have a lot of experience with optimising production and installation costs

Flinty997

Their payment gateways might be more streamlined also.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121926847#Comment_121926847

Ecars will go with whoever gives the better price, if Tesla charge less than whoever their current supplier is they'll do it

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121931241#Comment_121931241

They’ll. need to offer a good SLA. That’s one thing ECars learnt over the years.

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121932621#Comment_121932621

eCars- being of ESB extraction- will take an engineering approch. I'm hoping that these days SLA's come into that conversation. It didn't in the past.

zg3409

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121931241#Comment_121931241

I would have thought the tritium units that easygo and others use tend to be cheaper and less reliable. One issue ecars had was that in the past being free and a virtual monopoly their chargers got heavy use and abuse, and they were in place so long they became obsolete and replacement parts became impossible to get. Combined with single units per site was a recipe for unreliability.

Tesla superchargers seem to have reliability issues too but as they only have multiple units per site and they often have more than needed, and they can mark them out of use on the car navigation app. As they are so standardized they are probably easier to fix and easier to have spares ready to go.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121932634#Comment_121932634

The unfortunate thing about SLAs is they're just a piece of paper at the end of the day. They're supposed to guarantee a good level of customer support but quite often don't

Usually there's a guaranteed response time, but the response can literally just be acknowledging the request and providing some boilerplate debug steps

Parts availability seems to also be an issue, plenty of Ecars units were broken for ages because they couldn't find parts for repair

With more companies manufacturing quality charging equipment then there might be more of a push to provide good customer support as a selling point

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121933380#Comment_121933380

The original network handed to eCars by the CRU was made up of units that were seemingly pieced together by suppliers. The replacement programme implemented in 2018 consisted of new tenders that included supply of equipment and supply of spare parts.

DC charging equipment is a lot less experimental than it used to be so should be more stable and with an easier supply of spares.

Mad_Lad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121924680#Comment_121924680

Using public chargers can be a frustrating experience, at least the ones at Circle K M9 Tinryland accept your bank card, this is the way forward as having multiple apps, cards etc is infuriating.

I'm surprised Easygo chargers don't accept bank card, you have to top up the app, it's a joke, you don't go to petrol stations all across the Island and pay in multiple currencies or need to do such daft things such as use apps so why should EV owners put up with this ?

It's a pity Easygo don't install more 100 Kw chargers than 50 Kw.

We still take the Diesel on longer runs, if going to the South West, West and North West, for example, we went to Bundoran recently and just took the Outlander, it's just so much more convenient and EV is never going to match this level of convenience because there aren't multiple high power chargers in every petrol station and EV range is still a fraction of ICE range, you'd need around 150 Kwh @20 Kwh/100 Kms to be comparable to ICE.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121932926#Comment_121932926

It's worth considering that there's a lot more incentive for Tesla to keep their SuC network operational than there was on Ecars historically

So the might be willing to do stuff like pay more for faster parts delivery or have more spare parts staged in reserve

It'll be interesting to see if they have the same attitude towards 3rd party networks. Often they depend on the supplier (Tesla) to maintain a stockpile of spares, but parts that are sitting on a spares shelf take away from the number of chargers you have built.

So will Tesla try to maintain more chargers on the same number of parts? Will there be a pecking order if parts are in short supply?

We'll just have to wait and see what happens

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121933392#Comment_121933392

Yes true, a lot of the earlier generations of equipment had a lot of annoying quirks. Pretty sure the majority of it was repurposed from the kind of stuff you'd use for power grids

Problem is some of the current equipment also seems to have a lot of quirks

But with more dedicated charging equipment being manufactured they're steadily improving

One advantage Tesla probably have in that area in a they have a much shorter development cycle because they have all the charging data from their cars and can see where the errors are coming from

RainInSummer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121933396#Comment_121933396

Yep. I'm driving EV pushing on ten years and there's a very strong reason I've avoided the public charging network for the last seven years.

Was grand when it was me and a half dozen other people in the country. Not now though.