ESB eCars

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122168464#Comment_122168464

He could have stopped the charge with his car by unlocking the charge port

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122168581#Comment_122168581

I have once or twice had it take a few locks and unlocks of the car to release it. Haven't used them much so might be my inexperience.

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122168581#Comment_122168581

Yup. This works in every EV I've had, and there have been a number of different variants.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122168619#Comment_122168619

The only time I've ever faced a problem was at a Nissan dealership standalone chademo charger. In order to remove the plug from the car you need to pull a part of the plug back, I was about 30 minutes trying to figure it out

AndyBoBandy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122168464#Comment_122168464

Not sure.. it was an MG, and he only had it a few weeks…

Eventually he was able to stop the charge while on the phone to eCars… they got him to lock, unlock, and then lock the car again to stop the charge and release the plug…

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122168783#Comment_122168783

Oh I got that one too. The old style silver chademo plug. I was similar, 30 mins (and a call to ecars which didnt help at all) at templeville years ago.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122168993#Comment_122168993

To make my situation worse the charger I was trying to disconnect from was powered off so I had to go to a charger afterwards

MJohnston

My previous i3 I used to have to unlock/lock/unlock/lock to try and boot it off a charger that wouldn't disconnect. Thankfully my current iX has an explicit "unlock charger" option in the car itself which I've been glad for a few times (especially with eCars units that go into error state and I'm wanting to hurry up and try a different charger instead)

Genghis

As we all know ESB e-cars raised prices as the cost of energy soared in 2022. If memory serves correctly they made two significant price rises in short order, which in fairness I think everyone could understand.

They have not done anything remotely significant or fast to reduce their rates as energy pricing recovered over the past 15 months. Their dominant market position has a clear effect on the overall market - not just from the sheer size of their share of units sold, but as a price reference point for others (most competitors like EasyGo have not amended their pricing either, and new entrants since 2022 have priced on a par with e-Cars).

I have posted previously about John Byrne, Head of e-cars, boldly promising in an Irish Times article rate reductions last Autumn, a promise that has not been kept. (link to that article: https://www.irishtimes.com/motors/2023/08/16/ev-charging-prices-to-fall-in-near-future-says-esb/ )

In that same newspaper today there is news of a switcher.ie report that has found Ireland to be the second highest cost for public charging in the EU. Quelle Surprise.

The article itself is paywalled, but here is the eCars statement on the situation. Please ignore any corporate doublespeak and just be assured that e-cars are continually working hard for EV drivers.

“Continuous investment is required to continue our upgrade and expansion work, as well as maintaining the customer offerings including the eCar connect app and customer care service. We want our pricing to be fair and attractive to customers who are making the change to clean transport.

“As such, we monitor our pricing on an ongoing basis to ensure it is competitive while also covering the cost of expanding and operating a national network on a 24/7/365 basis. When wholesale energy costs were soaring across Europe, we worked hard to absorb the increases and avoided passing these additional costs to drivers. We will always work to offer drivers the most competitive rates available and will work hard to keep the cost of charging as low as possible."

Link to todays article: https://www.irishtimes.com/motors/2024/05/28/ireland-is-second-most-expensive-for-ev-charging-in-europe-says-report/

Here is another article that covers most of the data / comparison, from breakingnews.ie (not paywalled)
https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/ireland-second-most-expensive-european-country-for-running-evs-1625218.html

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122193433#Comment_122193433

The article is based on research by switcher.ie that compares the cost of domestic charging by using domestic energy rates as listed on eurostat, giving an average cost per 100km of €6.66.

As you can see, Ireland does indeed have very high average electricity prices compared to the mainland, but I question how many people were really paying the 45.6c/kWh to charge their EV at home.

The article then goes into a piece on public charging with a statement from eCars, but it doesn't appear to me that there is a comparison of costs, more that it's been included as cost to charge publicly is related to domestic charging costs so we'll include it to flesh out the article beyond switcher.ie's press release. I think it would be good to see some public charging DC charging data captured at the eurostat level.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122193433#Comment_122193433

I don’t believe any “boldly promising” was done

I also question the articles accuracy.

Also bear in mind while other countries put caps on electricity prices. Ireland paid out several hundred in credits. Caps show a reduced price while credits don’t

Finally as an island nation our electricity is more expensive as we need to do everything ourselves, other counties have AC interconnecters. We have DC interconnects which don’t help with voltage or frequency stability. , or help provide systems services

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122193433#Comment_122193433

Yes there was 2 significant increases in 2022. One around summer time and one around December when wholesale prices had strangely been falling for 4 months in a row. The cost to charge at ecars, when not on a plan, before the first increase was 26.8c/kWh for AC and 33c/kWh DC. Those figures currently stand at 56.3c/kWh (a 110% increase) and for DC 64.7c or 68.2c (96% or 107% increase respectively)

€cars, being a subsidiary of ESB I am sure helped ESB to record profits of €868m in 2023. I would have thought that this would be a loss making venture the way they go on about wholesale prices, but seemingly not. Some very lucky private shareholders out there

https://esb.ie/media-centre-news/press-releases/article/2024/03/07/esb-group-announces-2023-annual-results

To be fair though, the whole electricity network in this country lost all transparency when Fianna Fáil and the Greens privatised it in the early 00's. An important fact to point out to them when they come calling to our doors looking for our votes next month

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122196813#Comment_122196813

ESB shareholders are the Irish state, they are not a publicly traded company. No private shareholders to get lucky. As we've previously informed you, as a former monopoly company they are statutory barred from using cross group profits to subsidise the retail part of the business, the large profits come from generation windfalls that energy suppliers experienced in the same period due to the gas pricing.

ESB was established as a statutory corporation under the Electricity (Supply) Act 1927 to deliver a national electricity system. With a holding of 96.9 per cent, ESB is majority-owned by the Irish Government and the remaining 3.1percent held by the trustees of an Employee Share Ownership Plan.

https://esb.ie/who-we-are/our-story/about-esb

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122196831#Comment_122196831

As a former monopoly company they are statutory barred from using cross group profits to subsidise the retail part of the business

My point is that ecars is massively profitable and contributed to the ESB massive profits. I'm not saying it's the only part of the ESB that is profitable

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122196884#Comment_122196884

eCars is part of the Customer Solutions part of ESB group which reported a €12m loss for 2023. It's part of the ESB Group that wasn't profitable in 2022 and 2023. This info is available via ESBs annual report and financial statements, where are you getting your info from?

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122196884#Comment_122196884

ECars are not massively profitable. They’ve made significant investments over the last few years that’s expensive, electricity prices are up , and there’s big staff costs.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122197281#Comment_122197281

I have to question the staff costs part of that statement. Ecars don't have their own field technicians, they use ESB engineers for that

In general if you look at the labour costs that ESB charge, they don't exactly work for pennies (nor should they)

However, there's a potential issue there of ESB paying ESB for work and then bundling that into the cost estimate for the chargers which is submitted to government to get the grants

The question then is whether Ecars is being run in a way to maximise profits, or is it utilised as a loss making vehicle to fund other sections of ESB Group

There's definitely a potential for this kind of behaviour where government grants are involved so it's important to have a slightly suspicious nature

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122197795#Comment_122197795

it doesn’t work like that.

ESB Networks is a regulated business, ECars isn’t, everything is cross billed at approved rates

The staff costs I was referring as the ECars team. ESB is very risk adverse and above board , that’s costs money.
there’s a full team in the ECars office from mangers , designers , project mangers, admin, marketing, customer support etc.

It’s much cheaper for smaller non union companies to do things than for state owned companies

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122197857#Comment_122197857

Yeah that's fair enough, but there's also a bit of an incentive for ESB to ensure Ecars isn't profitable in the near term, otherwise they'll lose all their grants

I'm not accusing them of being corrupt, but the simple truth is that ESB group is a profit motivated enterprise and the loophole does exist for them to ensure Ecars isn't profitable to enable more funding via grants

So it isn't smart to simply dismiss it out of hand. One can assume the government accounting offices have looked through the grant applications to ensure everything is above board, however we've seen recently with RTE that they don't always catch everything (or anything 😬)

Genghis

Who knows how profitable e-cars is or is not. They are a business unit located in one division of a very large group, and the published numbers aren't detailed enough for anyone to know what profit that unit is making now, or in the past.

The reason for the price increase was wholesale cost, and was in line with general electricity cost rises of the time, so perfectly valid / understandable. Wholesale costs have recovered, general market prices have fallen and continue to fall - but eCars pricing has not budged.

Ipso facto - e-Cars are maintaining high prices for a reason that is not the same as the reason they had for raising them. What else has changed for e-Cars since December 2022? Their attitude? Funding / Access to Capital? Internal accounting policies? Cross-subsidy? Ambitions in the UK? Changes in staff remuneration? Unlikely that they have lost customers, market share or demand.

All we know is that we don't know, and that's not really good enough for a public company in a dominant market position.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122198091#Comment_122198091

Given there's significantly more competition it's actually quite possible they've lost customers

I know there's areas that Ecars are the only option, but most motorways have multiple hubs now

Also they lost the TII sites that Applegreen booted them out of

I suppose the typical excuse is that the increased prices are funding the rollout of more chargers, however that should already have been funded by the investment from 2020 (or whenever it was)

Personally I've no problem with Ecars being run as a profitable enterprise, however I don't like how it's rolled into another business unit with very little transparency of its true profitability

Busman Paddy Lasty

Beware comparing unit prices between domestic and eCars. For domestic the homeowner pays a lump sump for the cabling and groundworks plus ongoing standing charges. Then start paying for electricity on top.

eCars have to roll those costs into a unit price.

Genghis

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122199243#Comment_122199243

Agreed, we can keep this simple. The wholesale cost of electricity increased and e-cars rates rose very quickly. The wholesale cost dropper back to previous level but e-cars rates, inexplicably, haven't.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122199822#Comment_122199822

they rose several months after the wholesale price increases.

Busman Paddy Lasty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122199822#Comment_122199822

Also agreed. Even if eCars rates do come back down just don't expect them to match domestic prices. By design their base price needs to be higher.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122199973#Comment_122199973

I don't think anyone expects them to match domestic prices, but if wholesale prices drop by a significant amount and Ecars prices don't then there's either some strange hedging model going on or they're making more profit

Tbh, with more competition coming online every month either Ecars will start competing or lose market share

Busman Paddy Lasty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122200006#Comment_122200006

That's great, re not expecting to match domestic prices. I presume they'll milk it until usage drops.

Fingleberries

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122200006#Comment_122200006

Although the impression is that most 'competition' that comes into the market just charge the high prices like everyone else.

No point competing on price when you can get away with big profits. (Although this is true of most markets in Ireland, not just the public EV charging one 🤔)

SharkMX

They are not likely to decrease prices by much if they do. In fact I think they probably will increase them.

If you increase the price then less people will hog the chargers and they will be more available for anyone who really needs them. eCars are not unaware that they will not lose by having higher electricity prices at their charge points.

Most EV drivers would be happy with them charging €1 - €1.50 per kwh if it meant less waiting at chargers when they needed them.

sh81722

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122200437#Comment_122200437

I might be minority, based on your assessment, but paying equivalent of a car using 15l/100 km (19 MPG) would not be my cup of tea, and by a very long distance. I would literally rather divert 100 km to an operator with sane pricing than pay that.

Math based on the Model 3 using 180 Wh/km plus losses at motorway speeds at €1.50/kWh.