The key elements include six high speed charging hubs on motorways capable of charging eight vehicles simultaneously; 16 high speed charging hubs capable of charging four vehicles simultaneously; additional high power chargers at 34 current 50 kW locations; upgrading over 50 22 kW chargers to 50 kW, and replacing up to 264 locations with 528 charge points at the pre-existing pilot grade of 22 kW to next generation high reliability models.
????
I gave up on eCars when kept getting cut off trying to charge my Leaf a good few years back, onto the helpline and they asked had I anything charging in the car and I said yeah, my phone was charging off the USB, that's it they said, the chargers can sense that and will cut out, you can't have anything charging in the car whilst charging, I kid you not
'Grad' being short for Grandfathered yeah. Psych.
NI and ROI were all part of the same 99% government rollout in approx 2010. ROI got a lot of upgrades in 2020+ and went from free to pay. NI is still free using mostly 2010 equipment. The said in 2022 NI will get most old chargers upgraded/replaced to new models but maybe no new sites and once my nar completion they will introduce fees. Some 50kW chargers in NI are ChaDeMo only, no CCS and some are broken for 1+ years.
Mainland UK, is a totally different set up & app, but it's actually run by the same Irish team and seems to have delivered more, but probably received better funds.
Actually rollouts if ecars seems to be mostly based on matching funds or similar and they don't seem keen to capture the market possibly because it's unprofitable. Until recently it was not possible to charge for charging in NI but the law was changed to allow fees. Connection fees in NI are apparently much higher, and may be the reason Tesla, Ionity etc are slower/reluctant to deliver hubs. There is talk of changes to connection fees etc in NI but the NI network is a total disaster. See plugshare app for real status of the chargers.
we do have a good grad program….
As I've said before, Ecars should mainly be focusing on enabling charging in places where commercial operators won't touch, like providing AC chargers to people without driveways
That's a job for local authorities and not something a commercial operator should be involved with beyond picking up the contracts from councils.
They start training them young in ESB
I did see the famous eCars Hyundai Ionic last weekend, out for what looked like a family drive (unless it was bring your kids to work over the weekend day).
There’s every possibility that eCars consists of nothing more than one or two ESBN staff with no fixed budget managing an outsourced operation of engineers, call centre and PR agency. I’ve seen more than a few times where public sector staff are busy doing their job and suddenly a second role is landed on them because it looks like a small piece of additional work and some government minister wants the work done quickly and without guaranteed funding.
^^ Which makes their statement that they are not rolling out any new AC charger sites all the more bizarre....
So if they are not rolling out any new AC sites, and their DC 'hub' roll out is slower than molasses, what in the actual fcuk are they doing??????
The busiest aspect of eCars is Anna with their Facebook account constantly posting articles about all the new supercar/aeroplane EV's being developed!
Kind Regards,
I robbed this from the Ionity thread, apparently this is going to be the network by 2025, black markers are new sites
We'll see what happens of course, if ESBN are going to sandbag the whole process 😏
You're right that they're interested in mainly intercity routes, but those are the main money makers for ESB outside of the handful of DC chargers in Dublin
If the competition start eating into that revenue stream then there won't be much money making potential for Ecars, so it'll receive even less attention from ESB
Ecars in the Uk is a very different business, over there transport for London or the council etc identify the charger requirements and put out open tenders to companies to provide them. Ecars have won a number of these
The demise of eCars might be a bit premature. It’s hard to see a big expansion of Ionity here, their focus is on busy inter-city routes and their capital costs are huge. Tesla will almost definitely open to the public over the next year but their network is relatively small in Ireland so it will be positive for people who use those routes but that still leaves a lot of the country needing another network.
“The company (ESB) added that charging in Northern Ireland will continue to be free to use in the short term while it continues its network upgrade programme.”
didn’t realise ESB charge different prices in the UK depending on where the charger is located. Would they ever introduce that here ? Hope not
Feet under the table? More like bent over a barrel I'd say
Like I've said before, if IEOVA rocks the boat with Ecars then they'll just get the door slammed on their face and another EV owners group will get the airtime with Ecars
Personally I'm just holding out hope for the Ionity expansion and maybe Elon opening up the SuC network in Ireland. If those two go ahead then that'll be more or less game over for Ecars
Thanks! This gave me the keywords.
It only takes about an 1.5 hours for those to charge, there fairly economical, I am on 170 mpg.
Seen on Saturday a Taxi charging at a AC, check the app after it was there since 4 am, I presumed he finished his work Friday night and plugged in, still there at 2 pm.
He moved later on and a phev parked up and did not charge he was gone after 30 minutes.
If the car park is owned by Irish rail (heuston is but some next to train stations are not) then Irish rail allow charging cars to not pay for parking. Beware AC chargers now have an overstay fee after 11 hours, but it might not technically kick in if your car is full, but never tested it.
As said heuston may be busy, if busy consider using the "taxi only" charger on the right, to top up if not busy. The taxi only left charger seems to be 10kW max versus 50kW max.
I've used that charger. It's very finicky and it's one of the newer style chargers that came in for the 22kW AC to 45kW DC upgrades. You need to push the CCS connector into the unit HARD to get the connector pins to unlock. Took me a few tries the first couple of times to figure that out. Secondly, you need to do the same thing when initiating a charge, push the top of the plug HARD into the car's socket. These connector pins go in where the type2 AC normally goes. On DC they are used for signalling and it seems that that particular charger is very sensitive. Not the model or anything but just that specific location. It worked on herself's Ioniq28 only after following the above steps.
Chademo at that site seemed less problematic from talking to a leaf40 owner whilst we queued.
I had that at my local Tesco for a few months... guy who actually worked in Tesco and drives a Plug in Prius (yes, they actually exist) used to park in one of the AC charger spots, and never plug in... I can only assume he thought it was a personal space for his car because his car can plug in...
Anyway I posted it on the Irish EV owners FB page, and he then suddenly stopped parking in teh green space, but started using the regular space next to it.
Some people really are that stupid.
I'd photo the car, and post it on the Tesla FB & Irish EV FB pages and maybe it would shame the owner into not acting the pr1ck, noob or not.
Parked on golden lane this morning and plugged in no hassle.
Just came back and there's a black model 3 parked beside me but not plugged in. Basically he's blocking the charger. Either a new EV owner or someone who thinks that parking at an EV charger means EV's only regardless of charging or not.
Everything is on hold due to the public consultation. By Q3 we will have a new strategy. They will replace the chargers with new purple ones. ;)
Careful now Phil or you might not get invited to the annual eCars Dinner Dance/Christmas Party....
How is this bull crap not getting more attention? Especially when we supposedly have a highly connected body representing EV Owners who have their feet under the table with everyone who counts?
The 1st of the newly located units at the Mayfield/J14 Megá húb (the 50kW unit, which has since been replaced) was turned on 1 year ago today, with the hyper units being turned on soon after.
So today is Mayfield/J14's 1st birthday!!!!!!!!!
...and it's still an only child!!!
So we currently have about 16 hubs? (eCars definition of a 'hub'), so what does that leave us, only about 38 more to install before years end (as promised by eCars).... so we are looking at roughly 1.3 hubs installed per week from here on through to the end of 2022.....
Niiiiiiiicceeeee...............
I'm a taxi driver who uses the taxi-only charger (only 1 works properly) in Heuston. A car park attendant told me parking is free as long as you're charging.
I'm not sure I'd be making plans around the eCars AC chargers as they're invariably used by 2 Irish Rail staff (an ID4 & a beemer).
Could someone please clarify the access and parking rules for the ESB AC chargers at Heuston station? I do understand DC are taxi only or taxi priority, but I am specifically interested in AC. Would it be OK to drive in in the middle of the day and plug the car into an AC charger and come back five hours later? And if so, does one pay only for the charging, or is ther some kind of pay and display? Also how does one get into these chargers?
That’s a horrific experience, especially with family in the car!
had my first really bad experience of ecars though i dont use it much at all, but drove up north yesterday to Ballymena, charged in the Applegreen in Castlebellingham. Was going to a hotel and there was a charger near enough. So got to the hotel and had 100km left - checked the app and both slots were free, asked the hotel concierge to follow me down which he was happy to do, get there and both are in use - but app is showing they are free.
Up early enough this morning, again app showing both are free, I get there and there's a guy in his Tesla sitting in it, he says the app always shows this charger as free even when they are full - he's leaving his tesla in for the day.
So into the car with the wife, have 4 charges on my route back across the border - all CCS. Get to the first one - and its offline, called ecars "yeah its offline" but the app says its online - "sometimes that happens". Get to the next one and range anxiety is kicking in, I get there as chap in a beemer is trying to get it working and also on the phone to ecars. We leave after about 10 mins.
Get to the next one, and after a 40 min wait, I get my turn, after 30 mins, it turns its self off, call ecars - "oh theres a safety issue, its been in operation non stop today so it has to cool down for a while"
the 4th one we could have stopped at kept going red/offline in the app - so didnt even bother stopping.
So back into the car, pulled into the Applegreen Southbound at Castlebellingham, 10/15 mins on the CCS would have got me home (south dublin).
Taxi guy in a kia niro "its not working great", so i plug it in, but the screen is telling me to plug it in. Back onto ecars, not much help, gave up and pulled into the one further south.
Should have taken the diesel tbh!
you’d be very disappointed if your where.
