Random EV thoughts.....

So I did a quick check of charger usage on the drive home from Drogheda

Ionity City North, both chargers in use. ID.3 and Taycan so at least they were using the kilowatts

Applegreen Lusk, there was an e-C4 at the ESB charger

Just a random Saturday morning and chargers were all busy along the M1

There's also Maxol Donabate and the airport, but I've a feeling they were probably busy as well

Really could do with some more chargers on that route 😬

In a scheme that was expected to deliver up to 200 public chargers per year, so far 33 have been delivered in the year or so the scheme has been active.

it’s fairly clear that the majority councils want nothing to do with EV charging.

They are approved not delivered. We have to wait for those 33.Then if you remember Co. Louth installed a pilot AC for 30+k. Maybe there is some interested party hence the big number.

The LGMA document clearly says there is no business case for LAs to install chargers. Grants mean something voluntary. You don't have to do it Then Dublin LAs say they rather install rapids which do not qualify for this grant. Then they say there is no space for rapids, and where there is space there is no power. It is good they have parking enforcement divisions cause that is making money. Mark is right it is govs fault for not driving the change, and leaving it to the uninitiated local councils who don't see value in getting more work on their plate.

Well I'm glad Bord Gais is doing so well out of the current energy crisis 😑

I get that business is business, but is a 74% rise in profits really justifiable. I mean that surely means that they're increasing prices at around 2x their cost increases, right?

It works out at around €78 per customer profit for the first six months.

They are being heavily incentivised to do so.

Any taxi driver not in an EV by now is certifiably insane. The subsidies are off the scales, basically they get the EV taxi for near zero total cost of ownership over several years. Even if you're addicted to the stink of diesel and your hobby is to give people cancer, you'd still be very tempted to go EV as a taxi man for the enormous financial savings.

Fair number of E-Niros as well around me too, they all just seemed to be in hiding today.

Might have spotted one blocking a petrol pump (while a Prius was blocking the charger) but didn't get a good enough look to see if it was a PHEV or EV

PS, the Prius moved after a minute, in his defence there was literally nowhere else to park

I think the taxi subsidy was closed for a while this year, from March or April. It got oversubscribed and ran out of cash, but should be reopening for the second half of the year

Who'd have thought that EVs would have been so popular as taxis? 😏

It's supply and demand. In the first grant year, grants were available until Oct. This year, the grant offers closed in Feb (or March?) due to huge demand but they can't buy an EV within the 3 month grant window. The NTA has offered to be flexible but the dealers won't commit any delivery dates to paper. So the taxi drivers are caught between a rock and a hard place.

Also, spare parts are a potential problem. I'm hearing stories of people waiting months for spare parts and not just EVs. A taxi driver can't be off the road for 2 or 3 months while waiting for a spare part to turn up for their new EV. In an auld Prius or Skoda, you could go to the breakers yard and get a spare part within hours.

@Dubwat - good points, but they didn't apply a year or two ago. And back then when I asked pretty much any taxi driver, they didn't want to know about EVs and they wanted to stick with what they knew. In many cases diesel for Irish taxi drivers and hybrid for non-national taxi drivers. Of course any EV taxi driver I spoke to was delighted with their choice.

Of course this wasn't just taxi drivers being behind the curve, the same applied to the general public as well. But of course the perfect fit of an EV for a Dublin taxi driver and the huge subsidy is what should have made them cop on quicker, I would have thought.

I'm an taxi driver who got his MG5 in Oct 2021. I am delighted with my choice but, as mentioned above, worry about spare parts. The MG5 is fairly basic inside and, for me, that's an advantage as there's very little of the customer to break (cf. spare parts). I couldn't imagine buying the €50-60k EV's with super-fancy interiors. Taxi EV's are perfect city cars. My average speed is ~30km/hr and regen breaking helps as well.

Yeah, even now, there is huge resistance and I don't understand it.

• Range anxiety seems to be a thing but I'd suggest city taxis drive 150km or less per day and any modern EV will easily cover that. I usually get two days out of my MG5 Long Range.
• With a few exceptions, we cannot refuse jobs under 30km. The implication is that we don't have to do jobs over 30km? But colleagues ask what about a Dublin - Belfast job? Yet when I ask how many of these jobs they get a year, the answer is usually none but they heard of this other taxi driver... In any event, I'd imagine 2 strangers in a taxi would be happy to take a coffee/toilet/recharge break halfway to Belfast?
• They seem to think Ireland is alone in the world conducting this 'EV' experiment. They don't notice that Amazon, Hertz, and the US Postal Service have ordered hundreds of thousands of EV's for their business. There are real world examples of EV's doing ~300,000km with functioning batteries but still there's resistance.
• A lot talk about the Prius/hybrid as a stepping stone but the grant will be long gone when they next need to buy a new taxi.
• Edit: one I forgot to mention is the accusation that I'm wasting time while charging. I say I charge whilst I'm sleeping. Or having a coffee break if rapid charging. They don't seem to think sitting on a rank is wasting time in this age of taxi apps!

The NTA has EV grant money for 3 years (€15million/year). This year, year 2, the grant letters were all gone by Feb. Applications are reopening for lapsed grant offers this Monday! But anecdotally you can't get an EV delivered this year for love nor money!

Seems like Mercedes have a fairly decent suite of EV’s out now….. the EQE is about Model 3 sized, or maybe slightly smaller….

Meanwhile in Enfield at the Tesla only supercharger site…..

Don't you know that BMW drivers are allowed to park anywhere they want? They are after all important people driving around doing important things 😜