Unhappy with owning an EV in Ireland

It’s about as effective as going on your local radio station to rant about the government.

I have loads of public chargers locally (few DC, many AC) but I still wouldn’t have bought an electric car unless I had the ability to charge at home.

Not sure if controversial or not but I also think that most public chargers should be for full EVs only and off limits to PHEVs. One really needs them, the other doesn’t.

I average 40,000k per year on EVs (originally a 28kW battery and now a 64kW)

I use the fast charging network very regularly and have never had a significant issue. However

1. I have home charging
2. The routes I primarily drive are very well served - allowing for redundancy in charging. IE if the charger I goto is broken occupied there is another one 20 minutes away
3. I don't live in Dublin - I live in a rural area (south galway)

If not for 1, 2, and 3 above I might be unhappy, but I'm not, I'm very happy.

I would not buy an EV if I did not have #1 and #2 and I'd be less likely if #3 was an issue

We've a 2.5 year old 64kW EV with 80k on it now. Daily driver for the work commute of 130km.

We of course have home charging and for the few trips to Cork/Kerry/Mayo have only spent about EUR 200 on charging at eCars/EasyGo stops so far.

So they do work very well as long as you can do the majority of your charging at home and plan your other trips beyond that!

No, just the charging network. Loved the Leaf otherwise. Now we charge at home and don't have to worry about the mileage we do.

So phevs should only charge at home? why? Because some poor EV driver is depending on it? I could easily buy a EV and trip over my bottom lip every time I have to wait at a charge point instead I am delighted with my phev and hopefully I can get a charge when and where it suits me.

I only ever see EV drivers complain about charge points or complain about phevs charging at them, far too much complaining is done here about cable length, about ECars , or the placement of a charger in regards to 15 different makes of EVs.

I am sorry that phevs are made to be charged up and drove around on electricity and don't use as much petrol as you think they should use.

Saying that its a hassle to plug in is a bit much, coming from a guy whos car only does 200km, FFS it takes what 30 seconds to get a cable from the boot and swipe a card and plug in? Less if its a tethered cable.

As a non EV'r, the problem I can't get my head around is the economics of charging. Land is very expensive and if you were to have the same throughput, in terms of energy dispensed per hour, comapred to fossil fuel service station, it surely would be horrendously expensive.

A petrol bowser can fill about 12 cars an hour, whereas an EV charger would struggle to fill 1.5 an hour. Then there is the markup you would need on the electricity to pay for the land and infrastructure, which would have to be massive. Given petrol stations go out of business due to vialbility issues, despite what look like better expenditure vs income prospects on the face of it, it hardly seems surprising there is an EV charging network problem.

People can’t usually fill up their petrol cars at home.

I’ve had an ID.3 77kwh since august. On Friday I drove to Dublin 130 km away in sub zero temps - did a days work. Drove to city centre for a spot of shopping. Drove to raheny and parked up for night. The following day I went out to donabate for a walk. And came down the m5o and home. Got home with 11%.

Two weekends before that we drove to centerparcs. Parked up for the weekend and drove home.

I have never needed to use public charging in six months of ownership.