Any advice- moving electric

GusGus

i apologise in advance . My questions may have been answered a number of times but Iv tried to read through various threads but can’t get an answer so far .

We are a two person household .2 diesel 2l cars . I do about 30000km per year various types of journeys . My partner would do less than 10000km with a lot of short journeys .

we both like cars so tend to drive newish and personally I change regularily.

I want to get one electric issue is that we live in a communal parking area and for now we won’t have home charging . Does it make any sense to go electric at all without home charging ? I’m not looking to save a fortune or anything on diesel just trying to figure out could we manage without home charging . We live in Galway city so seems to be lots of public charging.

Like the Ionic 5 as a car but mAinly anyone any thoughts on lack of a home charger ?

thanks

irishgrover

personally I would not by a PHEV or full EV without home charging. It would be too much of a PITA. Also the public charging in Galway is particularly bad in terms of numbers. Yes there are 2 fast chargers in the city, however both are in bad locations, in terms of access and parking availability.

The only exception I would consider is if you can access charging at work. If you can (even if you have to pay for an install yourself) then it would make the whole thing much more managable.

However, if you have to rely exclusively on public charging, I would not do it.

Hopefully someone who actually has done it will be along to disagree with me and provide you with better feedback

innrain

The consensus here is that it's a no-no if you don't have home charger. However, we have two electric cars and no home charger. And to be honest life got better since we swapped the last petrol for an EV. Before we were fighting who drives the EV and the ICE remained unused. I used to drive around 35k a year which got a bit scrambled in the last 18 months but coming back to old patterns. Since I got the first EV, April 2019, they've installed a rapid charger @work and a bank of 10x slow chargers within walking distance of home. So pretty relaxed from this perspective. Wasn't always like that but I didn't sweat either. I must say it does not compare to having your own charger @home. Follow the thread with apartment/multi units development grant and public charging grant. Even though now may not be for you maybe you can find a solution to have your charger installed in the near future.

baldshin

The charging network in Galway is shocking. We survived with no home charger for a year or so, charging using a granny charger. This meant having to plan a lot to make sure it's charged when needed. If you can't do this, I wouldn't rely on the public infrastructure exclusively, unless you're willing to have a few bad days where chargers are taken/offline. Also, if using the public network, savings on fuel won't be that great.

slave1

No home charger means no EV, you have better things to be doing in the evening that queuing for a charge or if broken looking for another one.

Don't do it

unkel

I agree with above posters, don't get an EV if you do not have home nor work charging, but a couple of considerations not yet mentioned:

1. Ioniq 5 even the base model will only need charging once every 10-14 days if you only do 10k km per year
2. You could convince the management company of your apartment complex to install one or more EV charge points

the_amazing_raisin

I guess I'll throw in my experience. When I first got a Nissan Leaf I had to bring it to the local fast charger every second day before I got my home charger installed, that was definitely a pain

However, now with the ID.4 I only charge once a week roughly. I'll admit we're both WFH at the moment and we don't do huge mileage (~10,000km). Even the Leaf (now my wife's car) only get's charged once a week the mileage is so low at the moment

So with something like an Ioniq 5, you'll likely only be charging once a week as well

I'd really try to explore every possible option of getting a dedicated charger installed for yourself, it makes life a lot easier and will save you money in the long run

If your parking area is owned by a management company then they seem more open to installing a charger if you have an allocated space. You'll need to pay for all this yourself obviously and depending on the work involved it could get very costly

Another option is ask your employer to install some work chargers. There's good tax breaks available and they can charge for the electricity to recoup some of the costs. Even though other employees can use them, they're likely to be more convenient than public chargers