Random EV thoughts.....

Damien Maguire of Bmw with Tesla motor conversion worked in this company in county Wicklow and this box claims 5kW charging rate, designed by him I believe.

About EV Rescue

It is powered by lithium ion battery technology so that the EVCharge 4kWcan provide up to 20km of range in half an hour if a car runs out of power. It has the ability to provide Level 2 AC charging with 240V of energy, topping up any vehicle with enough power to get to the nearest charging point.

https://jtmpower.ie/blogs/news/test

In practical terms unless they wait with you it's probably easier to tow to nearest charge point. Even at 20kW they still need to wait with you.

https://evbmw.com/

What are people's thoughts on the future of ev charging and charging costs.

With smart metering going forward, are we just going to end up paying stupid money for any electricity sent into car? The government are surely going to bring costs back to somewhere near what it's costs to run a diesel.

Are we in the golden age of ev ownership before they have even got going?

The way I see it, soon we will either be charged a transport rate for our units of electricity fed to car or will be required to declare mileage and pay tax based on that.

An ev with limited tech run from off grid solar pv could be the motoring hack in the future.

Well there is talk of a higher kWh rate for domestic ev charging so I reckon they must have figured out how to differentiate.

Plus if you are running a grow house and drawing similar levels of power to an ev charging' I'm sure the electricity supplier would be happy to charge the EV rate for the units.

And to give you an idea - I live in a small semi-D house in Lucan. An average house in Ireland uses about 3000kWh per year in electricity and 3000kWh per year for hot water. I produce 10000kWh per year in electricity (solar PV) and 3000kWh per year in hot water (solar thermal). If we had a net metering system like in most more advanced countries, my bills would be zero (including running both my cars)

Can anyone who owns an Id 4 tell me how you feel about it? I'm considering purchasing. Looking into getting solar panels

Hi @unkel, I’m looking to get an EV and living in a semi D with 3 solar PV panels. I have no idea what they generate but didn’t think it would be that much. Interested in charging as much from solar as possible - would love to hear more about your solar set up and how you get the most out of solar for charging?

Change road tax per km driven. You need to submit your odo reading every year and then this is checked when NCT is due. Dealers are also required to submit a reading on all cars they take in.

If you under declare your milage you then get charged the balance plus a penalty when the correct reading is submitted even if you've sold the car.

Several states in Australia have already or are planning to introduce electric vehicle road user charges. Rate is AUD 2.5c per km.

Rest assured the Govt wont be left wanting as revenue from fuel taxes starts to decline significantly.

There are various ways that they could bring in an increased charge for powering your ev.

It could be just based on overall useage so a household gets so much standard rate units and pay heavy tax on anything over that.

Government being government would likely trigger the increased rate on direct useage not allowing for anything fed back.

They could also trigger high rate as soon as a wallbox is used via any form of data link.

I guess the main point here is that if an increased electricity charge is the way they go, people should be looking at solar pv with a completely different set of calcs. The payback time on pv based on very high electricity costs would be very short indeed and a complete no brainer.

I have large south and west facing roofs. That corner is an absolute suntrap so would be ideal.

I spend over 3k per year on petrol currently so really a nice ev and enough solar to run it should be the way forward.

Best to check the ID.4 thread

But as an owner for the past year here's the quick summary

Car is great, easy to drive, buckets of range, comfortable and plenty of space

Technology is not as great, the software is fine, basically everything works, but there's a lot of functions are poorly implemented and annoying to use. It is getting better, but very slowly

If I were buying again I'd test drive a Kia EV6, IMO it's the superior car at the moment with better software, faster DC charging and the V2L addon

In terms of golden age for EVs possibly, I mostly consider it as a tax dodge, low tax, very cheap to refill, dodging all fuel duties and taxes and vat, half price tolls which are due to go away soon.

Main issue is public charging is lacking behind demand at peak times, so there is a downside particularly on very long trips with a small battery EV. It could be argued it's a help only to middle classes who own their own home, have a driveway and have the budget to buy an EV.

Long term road tax (remember they never set EVs to zero road tax, just discounted), mileage based on NCT readings or self declared during motor tax renewal. It's a thing brought up regularly that the fuel taxes and new car sales taxes income will need to come from elsewhere. So grab it which you can and solar panel grants may be reduced in the coming years too, an EV is a great way to soak up excess solar. They already removed grants from home solar batteries, so a much larger EV battery makes sense.

I was doing some ABRP planning today and noticed that it picked Tesla SuC chargers in the UK both directions

Obviously ones that have been opened up since it knows my car (ID.4) and wasn't using them until recently

One thing I'm wondering is if ABRP favours Tesla sites since it was originally designed for Tesla owners? I haven't set Tesla to preferred in any of the settings so it should be default

Or does it just go for largest number of chargers en route, which tends to be Tesla sites anyway?

Saw my first Merc EQE out on the road earlier, prob a test drive from the local dealership. Did not look particularly impressive at all, surprisingly small with an odd stubby boot. If I knew nothing I'd think 50/60k rather than the mad money they actually are.

I've seen a couple of EQSs on the road and while I don't really like the styling at all, they do look a bit fancy.