If you think a Leaf has the same range or charging speed or options as a Model 3 you're deluded 🙄
+1 for this and make it tender criterion for credit card reader on each HPC.
The old 1.6d, eh? Many of them died just after the initial warranty. Friend of mine used to buy the cars with the wrecked engine and rebuild them to sell on for a substantial profit 🤣
But nobody ever buys a BMW because Ford Focus engines go cheap on donedeal.
Tesla motor $15k, has 8 year unlimited mileage warranty and a life expectancy of about 1,000,000km
BMW M5 engine $30k, has 2 year warranty and a life expectancy of about 250,000km
The former is faster, far less likely to go wrong ever and costs 90% less to run and maintain. Now you know why people are very quickly switching to pure EVs. And why this bothers workers unions in the car industry so much...
Ireland is cold. Ireland is always cold.
Battery Management systems constantly seeing the battery is cold and throwing kWhs of heat in to the battery to heat it up is always going to be unsatisfactory.
Irish government need to put out tenders for HPCs on the main road networks. Just enough carrot for someone to build the damned chargers and no more. No ongoing rent seeking. Whoever wins them builds HPCs. I don't care how many charging cards this means you need to carry with you so long as the HPCs are in place. The market can pull them toward unified charging model later.
Irish Government are paying EVs lip service if they continue to ignore HPC network.
Any idea where you seen this?
We are just starting to see the early Model S coming out of warranty (2014 Cars) so might be useful for future owners.
True.
What was your quote from the Ford main dealer?
imagine owning a PHEV you have both issues to worry about 😮
I searched for ford focus replacement engine, 4 adds with pictures, ranging from 1 k to 2 k.
I searched for tesla replacement motor, no adds, scrolled down, I see one forum entry of a guy who replaced it him self 7000$ bought from a scrap dealer.
Make what you want of that.
Try getting a quote for an engine replacement from any main dealer, based on this logic nobody will ever buy a car again.
Garages already work on cars they know little about, and don't have specialized tools for. There are also back street specialists for many brands and diesel specialists etc. Already garages are working on hybrids with large number of high mileage taxis. The reality is EV are far simpler than ICE. Actually swapping a whole battery has been completed by Irish DIYers, and in one case they swapped every battery cell, which required no computer software magic, just physically swapping batteries over. Replacing a bearing is relatively easy, every garage has bearing pullers and hydraulic presses for installing them. In fact I would say reluability of an old EV is higher than that of an equivalent ICE. Sure it's a risk of driving any car out if warranty but no one will be buying a whole new battery from a main dealer, same as no one buys a whole new engine from a main dealer for an out of warranty ICE. You do hear horror stories about old EVs with strange faults, but anyone who drove old ICE know they give lots of problems. Many old EVs are valued a lot more than equivalent ICE for good reason.
All independent garages are not going to invest in training and equipment until warranties start running out, which is starting to happen now with leafs, take hyundai, tesla and kia the next year or 2, so now you have people who might buy and asking these questions about replacement batteries and motors, only information they have is a google search on cost of a tesla motor for 15000$,
So the garage now has a choice, spend god knows what on the hope that some of the few early cars start breaking down or just wait and see, if the cars start giving trouble and the repair bill is expensive ask yourself this question, Who is going to take the chance on buying a 2nd hand EV ?
Why would you be so sure the motor bearings will go? And there is no way it would cost 15k to change them.
All the independent garages will have to move towards working on EVs, the cost of repair for popular ones will not be too excessive.
In an Irish scenario I think we would need to look at things like....
1) mobile charging delivered from a mobile battery in a van or a bigger battery on a truck. This can be DC charging so a car is turned around quickly.
2) in areas of less demand we can use something like a freewire Boost charger. This charger has a 160 kwh battery built in. Takes power from grid at 22 kw when no one charging.
Can then output to an EV at up to 120 kw.
3) a nuclear option is the battery swop idea - Chinese EV maker Nio offer this for their customers in China.
Final point.
Lucid have an EV that recently did 500 miles at 70 mph on one charge. This car can charge to 50 percent (250 miles) in 16 minutes if charger can do 350 kw charging.
Battery size on this car is 118 kwh.
A lot of work is being done on EV tech and the big limiting factor for EVs in Ireland is official incompetence not the cars or wider tech.
A big unaddressed concern is the cost of repairs out of warranty. When the motor bearing goes, and it does, what is the cost to repair? I have seen mention of $15,000 for Tesla
For me the wider Irish official incompetence that leads to a resignation that the
"public charging will never be right" needs tackling.
Because it also impacts many more areas then EVs.
We had in this thread talk of public transport not being workable. Which again comes back to the same incompetence.....
The question has to be - what does fit for purpose public charging network look like....
For me
1) should be something you are happy to use even 100 percent of the time if needed.
2) charging infrastructure in all car parks so you can charge while doing other things. (With power management strategies in place)
3) as a starting point - if an area is big enough for a petrol station then it needs public charging suited to that areas needs.
4) top of the range repair and maintenance of network.
5) consider developing dedicated charging sites with excellent on site facilities - ie Braintree in UK.
6) existing petrol stations could be used wherever possible
I am not pro diesel, but we regularly (once a month) drive Dublin Donegal 300km, non stop, mainly as the 2 kids will sleep for the full 3 & 1/2 hour drive on a Friday. Then we repeat the trip back on the Sunday or Monday. Stopping now mid trip is a disaster as kids wake up straight away. Long term when children are older we will stop mid trip.
I know a Niro should make that trip relatively easy, and if we had a home charger at the other end we could return with 100%.
We are a 2 car household, one EV. I am considering going to 2 car EV, but the cost benefit is on the boundary. Spending 34k for a Niro when existing car looks better and no real fuel savings will result does not make great financial sense. We will go 2 BEV eventually, something like used ID4 when it makes sense maybe in 3 years. I want to avoid public charging at all costs.
Just on the weather, not sure where in Ireland you are but Dublin gets less rain and less rainy days than Amsterdam.
The setup of childcare not being colocated with schools is an example of bad planning on our part.
Sounds like this thread should be called “Unhappy to own an EV in Ireland”. As a EV owner for 5+ years I’ve had 3 EVs and soon be moving onto EV #4. Initially it was the Leaf + diesel due to range issues, then once range and price points improved we became a 2 EV household two years ago. I get it that EVs don’t suit everyone, especially if the only car in the house as I remain stuck to my original stance that the public network is not fit for purpose.
But range/price point was the big issue years ago, now you can get a 400km range EV for mid 20s and luxury 350kms range EV for mid 30s which negate these points.
Why does everyone ignore the used market as an entry point.
I know there are apartment and terraced etc owners out there, an EV will never probably suit ye guys but there are also the niche folk with EV and PV that will be charging their cars for free (after initial investment) for 6/7 months of the year, look to that whenever possible and recognise that driving around in ICE is unsustainable in terms of resource depletion and health impact.
I get the kids to and from school and creche by foot/bike/skate and use public transport when I can. I'd never drive in to the city centre unless I really really had to due to equipment. I don't mind public transport and when I started out on this business I tried to do the smaller jobs using public transport. It just didn't work. It couldn't physically work. I tried it.
Clearly, you'd have to permit commercial and business use of vehicles for deliveries and if needed for actual work as in tradespeople.
A diesel with the same off the line performance as a Nissan Leaf is not bad for a diesel 😂
EVs best suit rural dwellers who don't have public transport, active travel alternatives. They also do more mileage so save more money. How often do you drive the full range of a diesel without stopping? Never I'd imagine as you'd be doing Mizen to Malin return and would take 15 hours.
A quick look at done deal says 20k gets you a 10 year old A7 with performance similar to a Nissan Leaf. I'm sure at that age the maintenance costs start to rise based on my experience with older VAGs in the past, timing belts, turbos, gear boxes etc...
To be fair Amsterdam has nearly same weather and temperature as Ireland. They have a cycle culture, cycle lanes everywhere and trans everywhere in high rise city centre.
I agree daycare with 2+ children typically needs a car, and modern child seats need a big car, and because everyone has specialist jobs most people don't work walking or easy bus commuting from their job. Often people switch jobs but cannot move house closer due to kids in school etc. It is a bad planning problem and lack of investment. The "15 minute city" idea where people can walk, cycle, bus, tram to everything they want is pie in the sky. I often travel 140km by car in an evening in addition to creche and work trips.
One thing I did do was move home closer to work, but that's unviable or impractical for many. I hope to reap the benefit of a zero commute, while my wife works from home. Having said that an EV works for me, but we have a diesel for regular cross country visits to relatives. The diesel often does not move weekdays.
Absolutely idealist and I love your enthusiasm. Like socialism or communism sounds great in theory but they never work in practice.
I hope you've actually used the public transport in Dublin. I'm telling you, I made a student loan and bought a Fiat Punto so desperate I was to escape it. Just the dead times when everyone had to get off and on the bus through the driver door were killing me. At busy stops we were still for more than 5 minutes. We have 2 tram lines which don't intersect as in you can't take a tram from South - West. The subway is in planning since forever and the light rail, runs on the coast as a leisure train. Then we build our estates with one single point of entry/exit, build fences around them (afraid of thieves I suppose), and later on we realize we have to go round and round to the corner shop. Or make a hole in the wall. (don't tell the thieves) Everyone wants to live in a house we build rows of them with tiny streets where buses can't get to and apartment dwellers are paupers. We make organizations against building the said apartments because it dilutes the value of the said row of houses which we were not going to sell but rent. Who cares the renters don't have access to public transport.
Here is my yesterday's timeline
I did the school run, went to work, met clients, picked up deliveries, extra activities for school, shopping. Didn't leave Dublin. Can you do this on a bus? Especially when is just one per hour? Can you bring your bike on public transport In Dublin? Is public transport dependable? As in would the cresche still be open when the bus will eventually get there?
No, but it means travelling to different areas around Dublin from Howth to Stillorgan with two large boxes of equipment.
I don't want to divulge too much info, but I can PM you if you want?
What sort of businesses? Car sales, petrol/ diesel sales? Car valeting, repairs?
There are always solutions to bad weather like appropriate clothing. No reason that with denser network of public transport options that people in urban or suburban areas should need EVs or petrol/ diesel vehicles for personal daily transport. People can / will adapt and manage just as they have for centuries.
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