How long until we see €2 a litre and will it push more to EV's faster?

Liam, would those 500km be in Ireland/UK? I find covering distance more tiring in 'the home countries' than in most of the European countries. I think it's down to traffic volumes and motorway design/availability. In Ireland you couldn't do that 500km on motorway alone. Whereas in France you can do that in 4 hours on sparsely used motorways so there isn't a mental toll.

You're looking at a 30min stop on a 6hour drive. Most people especially with kids on board would be stopping for at least that long anyway

What's the recharging etiquette at Motorway stops for EVs?

Does everybody recharge to 80% and then free up the charger for others?

Yep. Even 25 years ago I would drive Paris - Lyon or even Grenoble regularly in one go. Stop and then into ze mountains.

The math's for the proposed 1 million EVs the government want to have on our roads by 2030 are not great though, KPMG have a little blog on it saying 41k EVs to 1350 public chargers as per the end of last year - a very general 30 EVs per charge location and people generally think this isn't enough (I don't have an EV to comment)

Now consider you probably need 3 times as many charge points as petrol pumps to keep a similar turnover of vehicles AND they all have to be DC fast charge (most people arnt jerks and will move their car from the petrol pumps before going for food, an EV driver doesn't have that option)

So yeah as far as I can see even if there is very decent investment in DC fast chargers charging stations are going to be totally swamped in the future if everyone is stopping for 30minute charge breaks (think any big GAA match in Dublin) so people are going to have to wait their turn, even if a petrol station wanted to put in 30 DC fast chargers the ESB would likely tell them to jog on, even a "slow" 50kW unit draws more peak power than a typical primary school.

I really hope there is some decent battery breakthrough to reduce prices and increase range to get the average affordable EV up to the 500miles /700km range a normal diesel car will do to break the psychological barrier, lets be honest the VAST majority of people don't give 2 sh!ts how their car is powered as long as its affordable, they can rely on it, they don't need plan out their trips and it doesn't negatively effect their day to day life.

I'm not buying a car for most people, I buy cars for me.

I know people that work with battery technology (ev car batteries) and what they tell me is that what they're working on will be a massive jump forward.

It's in the not too distant future, that it will be available, then I will consider my options.

Northvolts giga factory, will be producing battery tech for the motoring industry, and what's in the pipeline will make current tech look like old hat.

Its good to see the UK being proactive in that regard but providing them with an 8MW grid connection is different to actually having the grid capacity to service them or if in fact any service station will want to pay for that connection long term but yes I have seen some great developments in dedicated EV stations with renewables and battery storage in the UK however back here in Ireland I have not heard of anything similar even being planned so its a bit moot and lets be honest its the EV drivers that will end up paying for all of it.

Ireland certainly doesn't have the current grid capacity to be handing out 8MW connections around the country especially if their usage will be during peak demand hours.

A typical ESB application for a primary school was around 49kVA with gas or oil heating just below the CT metering threshold, I haven't done one under the newer TGD L with heat pumps.

An apartment connection is 12kVA, 43x12 = 635kVA + landlord power but the ESB diversify this considerably to assume most apts will never use their 12kVA and never all at the same time but they are not so lax about it these days in the age of heat pumps.

630kVA is just a standard ESB transformer size, the heat map is just a general indication and that spare capacity is not yours its the ESB's, the load on that transformer will vary significantly if everyone uses their electric showers/immersion in the morning - everyone goes to work, load drops off - everyone comes home and cooks dinner in the evening etc

If there is any even slightest chance your DC chargers will overload the ESB transformer by sucking power to warm up everyone's cars on a frosty morning when all the heat pumps are going and everyone is taking showers then you will have to pay for a new 2nd transformer or to upgrade the existing one, because if it fails they have to pay for it and why would they risk that when they can get you to pay for a new one now 😄

There's Public transport available to Dublin from every county in Ireland. No need for everyone to be driving private cars to croke park.

The solution here is a combination of park and ride with AC charging for some as well on enroute DC chargers. Also half the counties in the country wouldn't need a charge on a return trip to Dublin

They're not in the UK, try Sweden.

You might want to read up on what they do, and what they will be doing with their Giga factory.

It's a little sad that you get so upset that someone doesn't currently want an EV.

What you present here is a theory and not practice. Yes they can be reused, however, it is not being done. There are not enough raw materials to make enough automotive batteries to replace ICE engines for many years to come.

Very true. We might have to remortgage to cover this year's kms.

A few years ago to deal with the pain, I got an ATMB tag so that I don't have to know how much we're paying 🙂

If your emissions are 0, it doesn't matter what you multiply it by, the answer is still 0 so your formula needs work!