SEAI Fuel Cost Comparison posters at petrol stations

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121970034#Comment_121970034

If you look above you will see that my gripe is actually that the prices quoted for electricity 14c/kWh home and 62c/kWh fast public are either unachievable or not available to most.

I will be fair and say the 1.71/L is probably also no longer achievable as taxes will most likely keep going up on petrol and diesel and their prices will probably rise significantly in the next few short months but when the poster was printed last week (week before?) they were accurate figures at the time.

kirving

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121969009#Comment_121969009

I'm not anti-EV by any means - as I said earlier I'm in the market for one right now. But reading that blog post - there's ambition, realism, and being totally out of touch with reality. To quote the blog post:

 One of the key pillars of the plan is to have almost one million EVs on Irish roads by 2030.

Last year, around 122k cars were sold in total. Around 23k were EV's. It's just a totally unrealistic figure by any stretch of the imagination, unless we start muddying the waters by including PHEV's and Electric Scooters as mooted by some, but that just isn't in the spirt of a post which begins by complaining about misinformation.

The author has written some pretty grounded posts in the past to be fair, but there needs to be a healthy dose of realism, and absolute upfront honesty here about the transition process to EV's, before they lose the room.

prawnsambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121970609#Comment_121970609

I quoted one electricity company offering <14c per kWh, others have quoted another. My current contract gives me a two hour window of 11c per kWh and the other seven hours at 18c kWh. For nine hours that averages to 17c/kWh which would give me 83% of a fill - something that has never happened. Generally it's four or five hours which would average at between 14 and 15c/kWh. And there are cheaper rates out there which I will change to soon. At least three more. So it's not an unrealistic rate at all.

The public charging rate looks like an average of eCars and EasyGo. You can get cheaper. Freshmile - if you only use on chargers of 80kW or more will cost between 42c and 53c/kWh.

crl84

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121970984#Comment_121970984

They're referencing the government's Climate Action Plan targets. That was the target when it was created years ago.

The author doesn't say that there will be one millions EVs by 2030, so I've no idea what your point is.

prawnsambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121971054#Comment_121971054

To be fair, these targets are in the government's climate action plan 2024. I think they originally appeared in the 2021 plan. Also the target was 845k EVs, I assume this includes PHEVs.

kirving

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121971054#Comment_121971054

Why continue to reference an totally unachievable target? It undermines all credibility in their approach to EV promotion.

If I kept rabbiting on to my friends that I want to be a millionaire by 2030, but that I only have €35k saved now, and I'm only saving €23k per year, they'd rightly think that I was away with the fairies, and not trust me with just about anything.

prawnsambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121971242#Comment_121971242

Yeah, it's completely unrealistic. Average total number of cars sold over the last three years was ~110k of which in the best year (2023) ~32k were EVs and PHEVs. Even if every second car sold between now and 2030 was an EV or PHEV, it would only total (based on the average) about 400k plus the current fleet of around 150k.

These figures are very rough and ready, but they'd have to be out by an order of magnitude to come any way close to that target.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121971034#Comment_121971034

I suppose yeah when you take smart plans into account you can get charging rates as low as 8c so averaging 14c might make sense. There's very few "activated" smart meters in our country though so not really a fair comparison

MojoMaker

Why would non-EV drivers give two hoots what a sign at a fuel station said?

Genuinely struggling to understand the issue from the non-EV side?

EV drivers would be entitled to question whether the rates were actually achievable, but those welded to the black and green pumps - why would they give a fig…honestly?

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121974035#Comment_121974035

I suppose it's all to do with promoting EVs

If you're filling your car with petrol and thinking to yourself that it feels expensive this sign might help push you to making your next car electric

munchkin_utd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121974035#Comment_121974035

is the point of those signs not to convince ICE motorists to make the jump by providing a comparison of the fuel costs between the various modes

and FFS, if it were for EV drivers, what are they doing in a petrol station that we are told is the single most terrible thing about ICE cars, up there with being waterboarded, so they obviously wouldnt be anywhere near one let alone inside one reading posters.

MojoMaker

"is the point of those signs not to convince ICE motorists to make the jump by providing a comparison of the fuel costs between the various modes"

That might explain interest on the part of an ICE driver, but it doesn't explain the outrage from the new forum visitors in this thread recently.

munchkin_utd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121974388#Comment_121974388

my issue is that it needs to be balanced and show the real cost of Ev charging

i.e. for someone with no access to a driveway with cheap standard electricity let alone night rates, subbing in the standard ESB average rate for public slow charging for that 90% of charging, thats €8.30 for the 14.9kWh plus the €1.03 for quick charging, making a total of €9.43 to drive 100km which is cheaper than petrol but more expensive than Diesel, but not by much, and not enough of a saving to be ditching the petrol or diesel any time soon.

If the cost to charge for someone relying on 100% public charging was hung up in petrol stations, then the effect would be indeed to confirm to many that Evs dont represent any saving on fuel currently BUT it would also highlight that public charging rates are way out of sync with private charging and there needs to be a reduction in those to encourage more to switch over (obviously ignoring the fact that we will all be forced to drive Evs, or take the bus, down the line) and maybe a politican or 2 would see the poster and the penny would drop.

JVince

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121956974#Comment_121956974

No electricity is generated by oil. As other have said, gas prices determine electricity. But hedging is done on pricing for up to 2 years, so in reality its a 2 year gas price average and its been on a downward trajectory for the last 18 months and under €50 per mwh for over 12 months and currently under €30. So electricity prices will continue to fall with the very high gas prices out of the equation by autumn.

prawnsambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121974924#Comment_121974924

This argument has been trashed out and trashed pages ago.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121974924#Comment_121974924

my issue is that it needs to be balanced and show the real cost of Ev charging

But we already established that it isn't showing the real costs of ICE fuelling given that recent price increases aren't shown on the current posters.

i.e. for someone with no access to a driveway with cheap standard electricity let alone night rates, subbing in the standard ESB average rate for public slow charging for that 90% of charging, thats €8.30 for the 14.9kWh plus the €1.03 for quick charging, making a total of €9.43 to drive 100km which is cheaper than petrol but more expensive than Diesel, but not by much, and not enough of a saving to be ditching the petrol or diesel any time soon.

So you reckon that someone who bought an EV and who doesn't own their own charging point, is unaware that charging in a petrol station will cost them more?
Why do you think they won't have done their research before buying?
What proportion of EV owners will be in this position?

If the cost to charge for someone relying on 100% public charging was hung up in petrol stations, then the effect would be indeed to confirm to many that Evs dont represent any saving on fuel currently BUT it would also highlight that public charging rates are way out of sync with private charging and there needs to be a reduction in those to encourage more to switch over (obviously ignoring the fact that we will all be forced to drive Evs, or take the bus, down the line) and maybe a politican or 2 would see the poster and the penny would drop.

Maybe think why charging at a petrol station costs more than charging at home. Might it be for similar reasons that the sandwich I make at home is cheaper than the one I buy in my local forecourt's deli? Surely we should have a thread on making sambos made in Circle-K being a rip off and that the government should be forcing them to reduce the prices because that's effectively what you're posting?

People are really being stupidly petty over this and I'm struggling to understand why this is the case.

witnessmenow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121974924#Comment_121974924

What is the real cost of EV charging though?

As you mentioned, there are some people who don't have driveways and it will be much more expensive for them. But then there are people who do have driveways, have access to cheap EV rate for electricity and don't need to public charge at all, so the rate displayed is actually more expensive than what they pay.

I only have my EV 2 months, so 2 months ago I was in theory one of the people that this poster would be targeting, where I was filling up my diesel car at a petrol station. I fell into the category of people who have a driveway and there was nothing stopping me from moving to an EV rate. Now saying that, I don't know if I would have paid much attention to a poster in the petrol station.

They do have the asterisks indicating the figure 90% home charging at a night rate and 10% public, possibly should be made a little more clear, but it is challenging to cover the nuance required I guess.

MojoMaker

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121974924#Comment_121974924

Yeah, but again, why do you care?

You being a typical ICE driver.

Why are you so outraged?

Don't have an EV, don't want an EV, don't follow EV issues….unless EVs are incorrectly mentioned favourably.

I don't get it.