Random EV thoughts.....

cannco253 wrote: »

First long journey tomorrow as schools are now closed and might be in Dublin.
Just coming back to the Dundrum chargers am I right in thinking that the eCars x4 are 22kW, while the 7x PodPoint and 2x Garo are 7kW?

I've no problem paying for 22kW on eCars where they show as active, but Plughshare has them as under repair from being fenced off even though there seem to be plenty of recent checkins. Anyone know how PlugShare updates sites that are marked as not working, can any user mark it back as in use or do you have to request admin to correct it?

The car park was fenced off during the lockdown. I used them since so your good. Busy though. Ecars on level 2M and pod point level 2. Users on plugshare keep messsing them up a bit.

Any know the details of the EasyGo charges? Do they have a monthly or annual membership charge?

I’m sure this is covered somewhere but can’t find it in a sticky. What are the essential apps to download as an EV owner? I’ve downloaded PlugShare and eCars.

remoteboy wrote: »

I’m sure this is covered somewhere but can’t find it in a sticky. What are the essential apps to download as an EV owner? I’ve downloaded PlugShare and eCars.

The raisin covered the essentials, I'd add Needtocharge App if you're going to be using the public infrastructure.

Means that if you're away from the car, others can contact you to check when you're due back.

Basically an easier method than leaving a note or a phone number.

A leaf 30 with some Unkel style negotiation.

You'd need 14-15 to start looking at Ioniq28

cannco253 wrote: »

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/motors/government-s-electric-car-plans-are-fundamentally-flawed-says-leading-dealer-1.4603576

“We are importing high-emitting used vehicles, completely negating the acceleration of battery electric vehicles we see in 2021. To the end of May, there were 3,951 EVs registered while 22,152 used cars more than four years old were imported. This is caused by increased prices caused by increased taxation caused by fundamentally flawed Government policy and Brexit,” said Murphy. “If a consumer could afford to spend €10,000 on a car last year, that got them a three-year-old car; this year it gets them a five-year-old car. If this trend continues, our emissions from cars will increase, not reduce, and the answer is less taxation not more. Affordability is key to the car market and the car market is key to reducing emissions.”

What does €10,000 buy you in the used EV market these days?

Capitalism hard at work as always

The problem isn't affordability, at least for car manufacturers anymore. They can buy batteries and build EVs at near cost parity to ICE card, within a few years it'll be cheaper to build an EV

The problem as always is supply and demand. Demand for EVs is so strong that basically every car produced is being sold. If you're selling everything you make for €30k or more then there isn't much reason to drop prices

While I'm no fan of VRT, I don't think the government can realistically influence car manufacturers much. If for example VRT was dropped to 0 on all EVs then that would drop the price by a couple of thousand on a new EV.

Would real prices drop by the same amount? No, the dealership would drop prices by maybe 500 and make some more money

Until someone comes here and starts selling EVs to under 20k new then there's going to be no incentive for others to do the same

cannco253 wrote: »

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/motors/government-s-electric-car-plans-are-fundamentally-flawed-says-leading-dealer-1.4603576

“We are importing high-emitting used vehicles, completely negating the acceleration of battery electric vehicles we see in 2021. To the end of May, there were 3,951 EVs registered while 22,152 used cars more than four years old were imported. This is caused by increased prices caused by increased taxation caused by fundamentally flawed Government policy and Brexit,” said Murphy. “If a consumer could afford to spend €10,000 on a car last year, that got them a three-year-old car; this year it gets them a five-year-old car. If this trend continues, our emissions from cars will increase, not reduce, and the answer is less taxation not more. Affordability is key to the car market and the car market is key to reducing emissions.”

This really sounds like the complaining from vested interests. Reminds me of opinion columns from "savvy investors" about the property market circa 2007. He's arguing for a slow transition utilising the "emission reduction capability of hubrids and PHEVs". We know their emissions reductions are dependent on consumer behaviour and lots of PHEVs that got grants are being driven around on dino juice only.

cannco253 wrote: »

IT publishing a lot of stories recently about EVs, electricity supply and the environment. Here's another one from today.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/electricity-supply-concerns-spark-emergency-plans-for-dublin-1.4608199

Scaremongering or real?

I wonder how long it will be before people start blaming "all those electric cars" for some of the problems.

There's nothing about EVs in that article though? It all seems pretty factual to me and is clearly pegged to the closure of two power plants. I've noticed during the pandemic that Irish people seem to have a weird problem with the media publishing factual stories when those stories contain bad news.

Yeah I remember this came up a while back

Basically it's a worst case scenario, if we lose several key generators, plus the UK isn't exporting to us, plus we hit a demand peak then we'll be facing brownouts

I think the electricity market has this basically accounted for by time of use pricing. If there's a shortage of electricity, then the price will skyrocket and in turn the big consumers will consume less to avoid paying hefty prices

For things like data centres, they can do stuff like pausing backup operations or other non essential stuff. They can even throttle the CPU cycles to consumer less power and generate less heat, which in turn reduces the load on cooling

I doubt that EVs have the market penetration yet to cause any real difficulty, and as other pointed out, most EVs are charged at night when demand is low

I'd say in time there may be a need to the grid to do load shedding with EV consumers. This will probably be more focused on things like DC charging hubs where they might limit them to 50kW or less to avoid demand peaks. It could also affect fleet consumers like bus & truck depots who won't want to charge during times of peak demand

ELM327 wrote: »

And this is why I will never have a smart meter.
One look at what happened in Texas shows why the consumer never benefits from this.

The ones who had backup generators or batteries were fine

I'm with you on this one, I'm going to try and put off a smart meter until I have to. It's annoying because in theory they're an excellent idea, but as usual they come with a hefty price tag which is reflected by the increase in unit rates

I think those agile tariffs really only make sense if you have Solar PV and batteries. That way you have an alternative for when prices are high and you can't avoid consumption

ELM327 wrote: »

When we move house I'm going to ensure we have a large PV array with storage, along with a generator. Get them installed before they force smart meters on me.

When you move house, you'll be lucky if it's not to one that already has a smart meter.

ELM327 wrote: »

When we move house I'm going to ensure we have a large PV array with storage, along with a generator. Get them installed before they force smart meters on me.

Ah come on now, we'll never get you back in a Tesla if you're throwing money around on non-essentials like that! :D

It'd be nice if EVs would come with proper V2H capability without having to spend €5k on a V2G charger, which you generally can't control much anyway.

If you could even feed 3kW AC back into the house it'd mean you could have a small battery at home and use the EV as a booster when needed

the_amazing_raisin wrote: »

Ah come on now, we'll never get you back in a Tesla if you're throwing money around on non-essentials like that! :D

It'd be nice if EVs would come with proper V2H capability without having to spend €5k on a V2G charger, which you generally can't control much anyway.

If you could even feed 3kW AC back into the house it'd mean you could have a small battery at home and use the EV as a booster when needed

the new Ioniq 5 does exactly that.


But I dont want one, I want another tesla and it's the first thing I'll be doing when we move. Day 1 of move in day, i'll be either ordering one or shopping on donedeal for a used one with free supercharging.

And it's not non-essential.