Unhappy with owning an EV in Ireland

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.

Well I am coming from a place where I drive a PHEV of my own and my siblings EV a couple of times a week.

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.

Clearly not driven around the north of Ireland all day. That’s our companies main area although we do have clients all over Ireland.

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.

It should be doable to develop a totally fit for purpose network for charging EVs.

Remember - the technology to make this work largely exists TODAY....

Where the thing is struggling is that the Irish way of doing things is to rely on the numpties at ESB eCars to do the job.

Say what you like about Easygo but they are at least willing to try and get out there and put chargers into various parts of the country.

Granted they are overly reliant on Lidl sites at the moment but that shouldn't be insurmountable for them.

We really need a focus on how other countries do it.

Theres really good practice internationally that we should adopt.

Like Dundees charging hubs.

I really like some of what Norway does - like Bjorn Neyland explaining once how Oslo airport had over 700 charging points.

We can manage grid demand too - in fact EVs can help manage the grid by acting as energy storage when not in use.

The charging of the cars can also be supported with battery storage. The Freewire Boost charger even has a battery built into it.

The Freewires battery can take in power at 20 kw when not in use and put it back out to a car at up to 120 kw. Will still as I understand it - charge an EV at 20 kw if chargers battery fully drained.

Need to think beyond the limitations of what ESB eCars can do at present

I read somewhere recently that most EV owners have an older ICE or PHEV in the household or regular access to an ICE/PHEV as a second car. From what I see locally that holds true. Therefore most EV owners shouldn't be unhappy with owning an EV in Ireland as they shouldn't have range or charger anxiety.

So you like the Phev because you don't have to stop for 30 mins on a long journey to charge an EV when you can keep driving. But at the same time you are going around charging a Phev at public chargers??