ESB eCars - Thread 2

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123687401#Comment_123687401

Yeah yeah, the main point is to try any ensure that your local TD or whoever knows that chucking a few DC chargers in the back of the local supermarket isn't going to work

Especially if it's costing people 67c/kWh, they'll just stick with petrol and avoid the hassle

I'm not actually expecting the Minister for Transport to email me back and say "stellar idea, let's get started immediately"

The idea is more to make the career politicians who most likely have never driven an EV aware of the difficulties faced when living on public charging and that there are alternative options available than what Ecars are selling them

MojoMaker

You'd almost think a good first step would be to incentivise all TDs and county councillors to switch to electric modes of personal transport and be the political vanguard for a serious move on climate awareness.

But no. Diesel all the way, with one or two exceptions.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123687486#Comment_123687486

One of my local green party councillors was driving an EV. Pretty sure it was a Leaf or a Fluence so he was definitely living the EV drivers dream

I remember contacting him about the lack of chargers locally and he did bring it up but hadn't gotten any traction

Another example was the mayor of Berlin handing back their government fleet Mercedes EV because he couldn't afford the time between meetings to charge it

Skipping the question mark around why the mayor of a city is driving across Germany a lot, he had a personal driver and the author of the article questioned why the driver couldn't bring the car to be charged during a meeting

Anyway, I agree that there's a severe lack of leading by example in political circles. The Dublin based TDs should all be forced to cycle to the Dail, might make use of that overpriced bike shelter

joe1303l

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123687486#Comment_123687486

Highest Civil Service mileage rates are for ICE vehicles with a 1.6L engine or higher. Hence the widespread use of diesels I expect.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123687466#Comment_123687466

Then make your main point without making demands for solutions that are impractical.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123688240#Comment_123688240

Write your own letter then 😉

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123688489#Comment_123688489

Of all the things I'd feel motivated to write to TDs about, facilities for private car owners in private apartment blocks will be fairly low down the list of priorities.

shanec1928

anyways.. Perhaps we get back on topic

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123688549#Comment_123688549

I must have missed the news but have Ionity gone up by 3c? Fairly sure they were 70c at one point. Fairly sure the Ionity power subscription price has gone up similarly from 41c to 44c

If so, then it seems ecars price hike was only the start of a chain reaction

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123688749#Comment_123688749

Base price is still 69c/kWh, maybe it was just the discounted price?

Red Silurian

Notably the price increase over the weekend passed off without much time given to it on the airwaves. If the largest petrol retailer increased their prices by 20c over the bank holiday there would be justifiable outrage and wall-to-wall coverage.

Looks like the ESB got away with it again

Calahonda52

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123688232#Comment_123688232

Yep. ev one is the middle one

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123688909#Comment_123688909

Possibly. Maybe worth keeping an eye on the competitors as well.

I say competitors, what I of course mean is "other businesses in the cartel"

To give ESB their due they do email us when they increase their prices

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123702960#Comment_123702960

I think the cartel like behaviour will continue for the foreseeable future. In many places there's still only one option for a fast charge and it isn't like installation or operation costs are going to go down soon

I've always said for the frequency that most people use DC charging, it's worth paying a premium if you get a quality network in return

This is why I don't mind Ionity, Tesla, Circle K or Maxol charging what they do. There's almost always a good number of high powered chargers at every location

I get annoyed at the likes of Applegreen or Ecars doing the same because they often install 1 or 2 chargers at most and they are often not giving full power or broken for weeks at a time

If I had to pick one particular gripe with Ecars pricing, it's their AC charger prices. They should really be a lot cheaper than DC but at 59c/kWh just aren't worth it

It's funny that Ecars say that AC chargers aren't economically viable, most likely because they engineered that situation with their pricing and installation rules

dball

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123697682#Comment_123697682

I presume this is a daily rate - or would it be a monthly rate - what if i travelled 800km on the 1st of the month and another 800 km on the last day of the month?
Or is it an annual rate with the rate increasing after every section of kilometers travelled?

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123704129#Comment_123704129

Annual rate

Calahonda52

AR, include easygo in the list of crap setups

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123705710#Comment_123705710

I honestly forgot they exist 😂

I'll give EasyGo some credit, they got in when there were very few CPOs willing to invest in Ireland

I get they have a lot of issues with installation costs, but they seem to have been pretty well overtaken by ePower when it comes to bidding for hubs

I'm not sure they'll survive long term and might end up merging with another CPO

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123703354#Comment_123703354

If flogas can charge me 12.5c/kWh between 12am and 9am and make a profit on it there's absolutely no justification for ecars to be charging 68c or Instavolt to charge 85c for the exact same product. It's pure profiteering at that level!

Like you I have very little need for public charging but when I go to sell on my car I'd like to have the biggest market of buyers possible. If our public charge network remains prohibitively expensive then anybody without a driveway will have zero interest in buying our cars. If you are content with that then you are in the right frame of mind.

To be fair to Ionity and Tesla they offer decent subscription offers to bring down the cost of charging, Tesla are as low as 30c/kWh despite receiving very little public funding to develop their network by comparison to the publicly owned ESB

It probably makes sense that AC charging isn't as profitable. If in the space of an hour you can get up to 50kWh into cars as opposed to 7 or 11 that's a huge multiplier. Of course ESBs AC chargers were practically free with the states subvention so more lifetime profit again.

Calahonda52

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123705908#Comment_123705908

They have a contact with eir to replace phone boxes with CPs.

It's being done by county at no cost to the LA's.

My concern is that if they go belly up that the kit won't be serviced.

Keep well

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123707067#Comment_123707067

Easygo are also at almost every Lidl, handy in a pinch and the cheapest on the market at the moment

Their hardware and software are not unique so if they go bust I'd fancy the chances of somebody else taking them on

New ecars site opened today at the tesco in fermoy, the tesco in fermoy is a new build and didn't exist 2 weeks ago so deployment seems to be getting faster at least

mfceiling

ESB charger on 3 rock road in Sandyford. If anyone has forgotten their cable.

JohnC.

What's that eHub branding about? Not seen that before.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123728696#Comment_123728696

It isn't a public Ecars hub, it's for EVs that can be rented for a short while. ESB are doing it in partnership with some car rental companies

There should also be Ebike rentals nearby as well

zg3409

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123727363#Comment_123727363

City cars short terms rental, go car , yuko etc

https://esb.ie/what-we-do/esb-ehubs

zg3409

Santry

https://www.plugshare.com/location/1126544

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123733067#Comment_123733067

Wow, 1 single charger, top notch work there ESB 👏

Should we take bets on how long it'll be before the cables get cut off?

MJohnston

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123580782#Comment_123580782

This finally got repaired this week — took basically 2 months to do so!

MarkN

you can make cars charge as fast as you like, as long as ecars design spaces like this, EV drivers are screwed. Won’t let me place the correct link for some reason!

https://youtube.com/shorts/IvwFJyzIDRQ?si=2VTsiPg95jf1EEYy

joe1303l

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123753620#Comment_123753620

Paying eCars prices to charge a PHEV surely doesn’t make much sense either ?