Fine introduced for misuse of EV charging bay

Yeah, you're right. I'd probably be fine since there's enough chargers there that it's rarely full (it's a unicorn among ESB AC sites) but it's not exactly in the spirit of fair usage

Still, it does present a possible legal challenge that if the charger is broken then someone can wriggle out of a fine

I do think that enforcement of the fines will be basically nonexistent, there's far too many ways to get out of it.

Remember that picture of a jeep owner from the US who attended a Type 2 holder to his car so he could pretend he was using the free charging spots? Some genius here will do something similar and the cops won't be bothered disputing him

Ones at train stations or park and ride is unlikely to have anyone coming back within a short time either.

I think there's plenty of circumstances where someone might legitimately be plugged into AC for 12 hours or more, so 2 hour limits aren't going to work unless it's somewhere that enforces that limit on all other cars

If that's the case then they shouldn't have put an AC charger there, a 50kW DC would be more suitable

I don't see any case where someone is sitting plugged in and gets a fine. You'd need to pull the charging session history and see that the charger hasn't been active for hours, which parking wardens won't be bothered doing

The fine will be to discourage ICEing and EVs blocking chargers and not plugging in

Actually I take back my last point. Parked today at a free charger intending to chare the 330e (near the door in a busy car park), but as I was getting out I saw a Tesla who had followed me in and was waiting for the space. So I gave up the space drove away, only to find no other space in the car park, and had to drive to another car park. I walk back past the door on my way in, only to see that the Tesla hasn't even bothered to plug in - they just wanted the space...

I think this will be effective in keeping chargers free. Noone wants a fine no matter how remote the prospect of enforcement.

We have 5 charging spaces at work. Since the middle of November my company has started charging the people using our chargers in the work car park €1 per kwh to charge and you arent allowed to park in them unless you are charging. They are all empty all the time now that there is no more free charging at work. They said it was to encourage people not to overstay in them as more people have EVs lately and were complaining they couldnt get into the chargers because a few people were staying all day. But it was really because the bean counters realized charging is now costing the company a fortune.

People started then charging their cars in the car park of the hotel across the road. Now I hear the hotel have noticed and are going to outsource their chargers so that you need an app to pay and charge. Not sure how that will work, but someone told me they were at a hotel recently in Dublin where that was already happening. They were paying €1.75 per kwh at the hotel charger via an app.

I dunno, given the speeds you see people belting up and down motorways and N roads, I'd say people will always chance their arms.

But hopefully it will cut it down a bit

I agree that paid charging is a great way to discourage abuse of chargers, already seen the difference with Ecars and as you say others are starting to catch on

I think €1/kWh is a bit much for workplace charging. Doesn't need to be free but at the same time they could probably sell the electricity at cost. Business rates are generally a bit higher than night rate, so people will still only use it as needed

That runour has been flying around for years, I doubt it'll work out at all. If you started getting taxed for using your charger then everyone would just switch to using the granny lead

I'd believe the idea that it's for grid protection, there's a lot of research projects going on at the moment around how best to use EVs for grid balancing. You'd probably see the charger being tied to the prices of electricity, so if it shoots up suddenly then all the chargers throttle to reduce demand

Some people would switch to the granny lead alright. I actually have only ever used the granny charger as long as ive been driving an EV, but im sure they are working on that problem too.

Yeah there's still so many ways around it that I don't see any reliable way to enforce it

I don't doubt there's a few politicians who would like to enact a system of mileage based taxes, but it would need to be a system that can actually be enforced

Fixed charges on car type are much easier to track and enforce

The closes thing I could see happening would be a tag on and off system for motorways and major N roads, so longer distance travelling is charged for

Yeah absolutely, I just reckon €1/kWh is a bit high for workplace charging considering public charging is around half that price

If someone is paying for the service then I don't really have an issue how long they stay, assuming they're actually charging and not just blocking the space

For motorways it should be pretty simple, similar systems work well in Europe

There's an argument that introducing tolls on all motorway travel will shift traffic to smaller roads.

To an extent that is true, but it'll mostly stop people hopping on the motorway for one exit and causing unnecessary congestion

When I was pushing to get one of the allocated spots, given I was the only EV driver at the time, I was told if they did that then everyone would get an EV and want the same treatment!

Nonsense