What ever happened to On Street Charging ?

Fr Tod Umptious

I recently saw this from the RTE Archive site.

It's Eamon Ryan launching on street EV charging in 2010

It's also covered in the below articles.

The plan was for 1,500 public charge points around the country by the end of 2012 and every town of over 1,500 people having at least one.

Did it ever come to pass ?

I know a lot of towns have a public charging of some sort, but I've not seen any of these slim on street ones like in the video.

And the Examiner article says that the target was to have 250,000 EVs on the road by 2020, how close did that come to happening ?

https://www.rte.ie/archives/2020/0311/1121681-electric-car-charging-points/

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-20102694.html

https://ecoevolution.ie/2010/03/15/first-on-street-electric-car-chargers-usable-this-month/

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058344840/what-ever-happened-to-on-street-charging

I think all of this happened in Norway instead. ;-)

...Ghost...

Ryan got into Government and anything normal people wanted was forgotten. Instead, he plastered the country with unnecessary bike lanes in places cyclists didn't even want them. We are still waiting for apartment dwellers to have a real solution to charging their EV.

liamog

Multiple companies have worked out that on-street public AC charging isn't profitable enough to run as a business. There's a project being ran by the 4 Dublin city councils to prototype municipal charging services the study found that charging hubs were more viable than large amounts of fixed on street chargers.

HBC08

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058344840/what-ever-happened-to-on-street-charging

If you live in an apartment or don't have a designated parking spot you are not eligible for an EV.

That's about 20% of the population.

Fairly major stuff like this is routinely swept under the carpet on these threads.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972306#Comment_121972306

All new builds with shared parking have a requirement to install shared access charging infrastructure. This includes housing estates and apartments.

As to retrofitting existing developments we can only force a change like that during significant overhauls.

For on-street parking areas councils have decided that to install 1000's of AC points that are used once a week is silly and instead supporting the development of hubs is a better option.

why are we not talking about this more?

Why do we not have multiple charge locations on street like they do in London? If we had easier access to charge EV’s, more people could buy them and move out of Dirty diesels

We need to hold our Green Party politicians to account.

HBC08

Indeed,

So about 20% to 25% of the population of Ireland aren’t eligible for an EV.

Thats before you bring expense, inconvenience and personal taste into it.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972333#Comment_121972333

You need to hold all your local politicians to account. The Irish Green Party aren't pro-ev as they see it as a wasteful form of private transport.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972356#Comment_121972356

yeah. But Eamon’s the man in the pictures?
Does he believe in what he is photographed for or just looking for head lines?

The Green Party need to drive good solid policy’s forward. (Edit. Per PM messages- All politicians need to drive good policy’s forward, Green especially for environmental beneficial policy’s)

If there was wide spread charging, surely EV take up would be higher, emissions would be lower. Fairly simple concept

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972306#Comment_121972306

Swept under the carpet? Seems to brought up in every EV thread multiple times. Live in an apartment 1000km from work, with no off street parking. Regular emergency high speed motorway runs to the three grannies across Europe. Non stop.

Problem with on street charging is that you're not guaranteed to get a spot overnight or when you need it. I don't see how you'd ever have enough on street charging to solve that. Even the hubs can be blocked by ice cars.

Our local shopping centre has a few chargers in the street lights in the car park. But have never seen them used.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972362#Comment_121972362

One problem is public chargers have become so expensive it starts to make it less attractive even if they were more of them.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972397#Comment_121972397

your post has no credibility once you open with live 1000kms from work. Doubt many will read past that line

but what if they were not so expensive? What if we had policy makers who incentivised low CO travel.

What if we had mass transpost options and low cost of entry EV travel? For those of us that can’t cycle to work every day

Too Radical?

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058344840/what-ever-happened-to-on-street-charging

How close. They include hybrids in EVs so I found a figure of 110k at the start of 2024. That would look be 44% of their target.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972419#Comment_121972419

You realise they are currently going the other way. Decreasing the incentives.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972455#Comment_121972455

what do you mean “didn’t matter”?

EV charging = doesn’t matter?

Green Party promises things they don’t deliver = doesn’t matter?

Statistics = don’t matter? They can be shaped to suit?

Or something else?

Flinty997

Ask Google auto correct. It spat that out.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972460#Comment_121972460

I assume you’re referring to your own post?

We can’t ask your google anything! Otherwise I’d ask for your bank account details, you mothers maiden name and your first pets name😁

If google done that, then I’d be killing that app.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972362#Comment_121972362

Party positions can change in 14 years since that article. You can either have a pop at the green party, in which case you should go find the politics forum. Or you can do something effective and tell any of your local election candidates that it's a problem that needs solving.

I think it's only FG/FF that will support any initiatives for private motorists.

mfceiling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972324#Comment_121972324

I don't believe these hubs are the answer. Thousands of people sharing a hub. You have a hub which is 5 minutes away. With a cold battery you will have an initial low charging rate. This means you will have to wait much longer to reach your desired charge level. Now imagine you are waiting behind one or two cars. You could in theory have to wait an hour or more.

I will be asking my local councillors when they come canvassing what their proposals are.

Currently my closest charger is an AC charger in Rathmines in a Tesco car park. The minimum payment to park is €2.50. The gates close at night at 10.

I see regular updates on twitter where lamp post charging is flying along in cities in England. Here we have around a dozen. That's pathetic.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972929#Comment_121972929

That's what the Dublin Council report found. A hub has more value than install many thousands of on-street charging spots which have very low utilisation.

The numbers indicated they didn't expect on-street AC to have paid back its costs within 10 years. As a municipal service it could make sense, as a way of charging people's EVs without providing subsidies to private car owners it doesn't.

Having operated an EV with a local hub at a supermarket for 18 months, it's far less hassle than you'd think, a lot will depend on the details, but they're taken input on the experience in Dundee, Oslo, and Birmingham so it's not like they've just made it up.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972929#Comment_121972929

I see there's a roadside charger in Chelmsford Rd Ranelagh. But on Plugshare one of the photos its blocked by two ICE cars (Iced). Not sure how you resolve that.

You could argue you don't need to charge everyday and if you do urgently need a full charge, you can hit a high speed DC charger hub.

Have to say if I didn't have home charging I really wouldn't bother.

HBC08

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973056#Comment_121973056

You last line sums it up for the vast majority of people.

Now,when you have governments saying you won't be able to buy a ICE car in the next decade can you see where some of the anger is coming from?

Personally I've chilled out about this subject.

Government can't force people into EVs unless it makes economic sense to the user and is also more or equally convenient.

We can be here all days arguing over and back but that's the simple truth of it.

Flinty997

They won't be able to, they won't have the numbers of EVs or Chargers.

ColemanY2K

These should go hand in hand with standard, fast and HP chargers. Where I used to live in London they were located on every lampost on streets where homes didn't have a driveway and a few hundred metres away there was standard 22kW chargers located in the municipal car park on the main street.

They're small and cheap bits of kit. They should imo be rolled out to every city, town and village in the country.

As said above they should be seen as complimenting the existing charger network rather than relied upon as the main source of charging for an EV.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973159#Comment_121973159

We don't tend to place our lamposts at the side of the road, we tend to place them on the inside of the pavement instead. It would cost a lot of money to move the lamposts to the side of the road and equip them with charging ports.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972404#Comment_121972404

In theory if we had more of them then competition would reduce prices

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058344840/what-ever-happened-to-on-street-charging

The plan was for 1,500 public charge points around the country by the end of 2012 and every town of over 1,500 people having at least one.

This definitely didn't come to pass

And the Examiner article says that the target was to have 250,000 EVs on the road by 2020, how close did that come to happening ?

Not very… According to the SEAI, at the end of January 2024 – there were “over 110,000” electric vehicles, including plug-in hybrids, on the road in Ireland.

Money guide Ireland estimate there were about 34,000 Electric cars registered in Ireland (not including hybrids) as of January 2023.

New targets are currently

• 175,000 electric cars on the roads by 2025
  • Achievable if 65,000 EVs or PHEVs are sold this year
  • Does not take account of older EVs being scrapped
• 945,000 electric vehicles on Irish roads by 2030, down from 1 million, with 845,000 of these being private passenger cars
  • If "by 2030" means December 2030, ie 2031 it would require 835,000 sales in 6 years or a little over 139,000 per year
  • Does not take account of older EVs being scrapped

Personally I don't see these targets being achieved but Eamon Ryan was on the radio saying we are on-track, ICE cars sales are going to end by 2035 so assuming most will be gone by 2045 we could have a real problem in the second hand market if new sales don't pick up between now and 2030

Royale with Cheese

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973056#Comment_121973056

Ha, you actually picked the worst charger I've ever come across to complain about there and you missed the real problem. I drove down there once to plugin, there were no cars parked anywhere near it which I thought was a little weird. As I was plugging the car in some locals walked past and told me that the road was a clearway in the mornings and evenings on weekdays. You would be clamped for parking there at this time, and that's where they decided to install a charger. Pathetic stuff.

prawnsambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973212#Comment_121973212

I think your maths is a bit off (though still an impossible target). It's almost 7 years to the end of 2030 if you're using the data up to the end of January 2024.

Also if you are to compare like with like, you have to remove commercial vehicles from the calculation since there are so few in the fleet right now. So it should be 845 - 110 leaving 735 divided by 7 gives you just over 100k a year. Which is coincidentally the average total car sales over the last three years.

TL;DR - Impossible target to meet.

mfceiling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973223#Comment_121973223

Just about to post the same. Little to no thought when that was installed.

mfceiling

My nearest "hub" is SuperValu at kimmage. Always busy. Always. Mainly by taxis!! 3 chargers in a shopping centre cannot be realistically called a hub in fairness.

Dundee have given ev charging proper thought. Unfortunately the same can't be said for Dublin.

Plus the population of Dublin is 10 times that of Dundee but I bet we don't have 10 times as many chargers!!

HBC08

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973125#Comment_121973125

This is the point I've been making for years!

I feel like an eejit for ever having been worked up about the utterances of Eamon Ryan.

Generally the real world and everyday people have a greater say in what happens than extremists like Eamon Ryan.

kowloonkev

EVs will be like the CD of the motor industry. They will come and go relatively quickly when something better comes along. Huge investment in infrastructure is probably going to be wasted.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973302#Comment_121973302

Dublin hasn't implemented its hub strategy yet. We've the couple of mini hubs that eCars rolled out but no deliberate planned deployment. It works in other cities why do you not think it will work when done here?

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973223#Comment_121973223

Fair enough. But doesn't negate my point about it being blocked.

It's a growing problem with Hubs. I was at one in petrol station the other day and an ice car went out of their way to park in the charger bay. I assume in an empty car park they were doing that thing of parking beside the only car they could see. They moved off after a few minutes, maybe they realised.

mfceiling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973331#Comment_121973331

So that's why all car manufacturers are moving away from combustion engines to electric drivetrains?

I hear this rubbish on twitter every day. Ev's are the betamax of years gone past.

Still to hear what this magic "something better comes along". And no it's not hydrogen.

10-10-20

Did I just see that ubitricity abandoned their charging lamposts in Sandyford and Malahide as they weren't seemingly moved over to the rebranded company, Shell Recharge? Nothing in the media about it and some of the chargers appear to be on free-vend.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973350#Comment_121973350

Any takers for the atomic bus

https://youtu.be/hj8agXYwC2o?si=H8rRePGOrRrQIzD5

Fr Tod Umptious

My taking from all of this is that EV hype has been going on for longer than I thought.

To be clear I'm an EV sceptic, as in I don't believe they are the answer as a way of fueling transport.

This is 14 years old, and it never came near being a reality.

And it's the same with so many things to do with EVs.

Ready any thread here and you'll see things like "well once the battery tech catches up", or "once the charging network catches up".

But it never catches up to the extent that EV can become viable alternatives for much of the population.

They continue to be too expensive, the product range too small and the charging options too limited for greater adoption.

liamog

Ah yes, range of cars, options available and charging network haven't changed since 2010 when 15 I-MIEV's and 2 Leaf's were sold compared to the 79 different models sold so far this year, and we have a substantially better (though not good enough) charging network.

Plenty of cars with decent range now available at normal price points for family cars, still lots of gaps in the small car market, but there are a lot of them launching in the next 18 months.

mfceiling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973341#Comment_121973341

The answer is in your first line.

Dublin hasn't implemented it's hub strategy yet.

We are light years away from where we need to be if we are to encourage the uptake in EV's.

It may work "when" it's implemented but I still think high powered chargers are more for use on motorways where there is a better chance the battery is warm and will take a fast rate of charge.

If I need to charge tonight at SuperValu in kimmage I will be driving 6 or 7 minutes to start a "fast" charge. The battery in the car will be stone cold and I'll be lucky to see between 50 and 60 kWh from a 150 charger.

This will be the problem with the hubs. Full of fast chargers and almost every car pulling up with a cold battery. The government really need to look at slower chargers being a viable option and not being pushed aside because "cost".

Fr Tod Umptious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973556#Comment_121973556

Plenty of cars with decent range now available at normal price points for family cars, still lots of gaps in the small car market, but there are a lot of them launching in the next 18 months.

A EV 7 seater is €80k, a diesel one is half that, and that's before you even get into the discussion about range.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973691#Comment_121973691

7 seaters are quite niche. Very hard to find a petrol 7 seater and manual. Does that mean petrol and manuals will never catch on. because that the leap you are making.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973474#Comment_121973474

The Tech "as is", obviously works for some people who have two EVs or are on their 2nd or third EV.

You obviously have the numbers in Norway to see how it can develop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_Norway#:~:text=As%20of%2031%20December%202021,and%20176%2C691%20plug%2Din%20hybrids.

Flinty997

I don't think EVs will be the answer for everyone or everything.

But they certainly work for a lot of people.

prawnsambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973757#Comment_121973757

Yeah, in 2023 MPVs (M1 and M2) totalled just over 700 units sold. If you include large SUV (E3 - which is in the luxury bracket and wouldn't be considered an average family car) it would be another 2.5k. A tiny fraction of the total sales for the year.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973691#Comment_121973691

Maybe pick one of the many other cars in the list of 79. It's a bit ridiculous to claim the available options haven't changed since 2010 when there were 3 EVs available versus the 79 different options now. What makes you think the auto industry is going to stop launching new models this year?

...Ghost...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973691#Comment_121973691

the options for 7 seater are awfully limited, but there are some tens of thousands less than 80k. I was considering the opel e-life 50kWh for about 50k. It just didn’t seem worth it in fairness compared to the Zafira for example. There is not any real focus on vehicles above 5 seats and it’s a shame.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973596#Comment_121973596

So, your claiming hubs won't work as a strategy in Dublin, because we haven't implemented a hub strategy yet. Ignoring the study which evaluated the experience in Dundee, Oslo and Birmingham finding that it was a viable option, and more workable than rolling out mass on street AC.

I don't think Dublin is particularly unique in the world, if it works in other places it should work here.

Fr Tod Umptious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121973810#Comment_121973810

It's a bit ridiculous to claim the available options haven't changed since 2010

I never claimed that, I just said options are limited.