Random EV thoughts.....

The tide does indeed come and go twice a day, but for 1-2 hours either side of turning, it’s very slack, so in a 24 hour period, you are only getting maybe 16-18 hours of full flow, with the rest of the time being very slack and not able to produce anything….

I did over 500km 5 years ago in an ev with 2 stops and a quick splash and dash. And I was doing 120 plus. Dublin to cork to Dublin EV rally. We only had SPOF 50kW chargers then, and I couldnt afford a Tesla then so I was in the poor mans tesla (Ioniq28!).

Now, in 2023, that should be easily doable on one 10-15 minute stop. Just avoid ecars. All motorways in Ireland seem to have great coverage. Even removing superchargers, I'd be able to do that drive at 120+ in my base model 3 with one charge.

I charge only at public chargers and I deliberately don't use ESB DCs. From a frequent user perspective for 13 quid a month I have access to Ionity at 35c/kWh which is cheaper than the daytime electricity at home. (not to mention cheaper ESB rates). Then you get multi chargers per location which actually deliver power. I have not used an ESB DC other that for testing purposes since May of 2021. I never drive under the speed limit, and the climate is set to 21 Celsius since I bought the car..

Now I watched the video and my conclusion is that it is trying to show the perspective of a completely novice, noob is you want, at EVs, charging and all that. I think it is a genuine thing, and shows the effort required to educate people when getting into an EV. Unfortunately he's right the infrastructure is not there but also the mindset needs to change. At around minute 5 they say they have stopped at Cashel for number 1 but didn't charge as they have only an esb card. Personally I would have charged there and went directly to the airport where I would have charged to 100% during the 2.5h stop. That is the biggest change in mindset that the EV drivers and charging networks have to do. Charge while parked is a great advantage the EV ca get. You don't need to go to a petrol station to get electricity. Case in point, Cork airport has a number of DC and AC chargers. Why not charge there? The piece at J14 shows how poor the only ESB hub is. Mind you the last unit the Delta was brought in last as the efacec never worked properly. Ionity is waay better bet. Why was that required I don't know as never drove a Mustang EV, but my car is at 25% now and it reports 131km range. From J14 to Dublin is around 70 ish? I would definitely get home without stopping so again a novice perspective. Yes, Mark we want more videos like this but a little bit of planning doesn't hurt.

I agree there's definitely some steep learning curve which I think puts a lot of people off. The total lack of good information isn't helping

For example about a year ago I was chatting with a woman who had just gotten an EV6. She was saying the salesman told her that driving up North is easy and there's a fast charger in Castlebellingham

Yeah, THAT Castlebellingham 🙄

Anyway she tried it out with her other half and they were unsurprisingly annoyed to see the massive queue at the ESB charger

I mentioned to her that there's a much faster Ionity charger at City North and she said she had no idea it even existed

You'd think the Kia sales team would know about Ionity since their parent company is one of the owners 🤦‍♂️

So there needs to be some general advertising around EV charging I reckon. There's billboards advertising cheap fuel, why don't we have a big billboard on the M7 saying "Ionity, Ireland's fastest charging network, located at Kill and Cashel" or something like that?

Funny you mention that - I was reading up over the weekend about the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro expansion project currently being built in Aus.

Thats a big-arse battery....

The first platform allowing access to Tesla’s Supercharger charging network is Chargemap. Owners of a Tesla or other EV can now use their Chargemap Pass to charge at a Supercharger. The service is limited to France for now. Still, the compatibility of the Chargemap Pass will soon be extended to all Superchargers approved for all-electric cars in the rest of Europe.

It does do 2 at a time there, I'm often there and have no issues charging when another is actively charging. I even checked and we were drawing 11kW each!

Wouldn't work for me on Monday. Once one car was charging it wouldn't start a charge on the other side. Happened a lot there recently.

Fair, I do see site limitation at times there, sometimes the chargers are limited to 3kW each side. Strange setup. I have been there recently with all 4 in use though. It's one of my favorite park and charge locations as there is a tesco and dealz on site so good for doing the shopping if I'm in dublin.

I guess it's to do with the fact that they're renting the land from a forecourt operator. The likes of Circle K might not want to advertise a charging network which will likely be a competitor in the next few years

I wonder will this change with Ionity going for bigger hubs like Mornas which have a shelter and a big Ionity sign on the top

It'll be a long time before we see that in Ireland however

I'm going to go on a limb here and suggest that it's probably cheaper than a 1.5MW grid connection 😉

TII won’t give permission to put advertising signs along a motorway. (I’m not sure about their policies for Dual Carriageways like the N7.) That’s why you see advertising painted on the side of trucks parked in a field.

I'm going to go even further out on a limb than before and suggest that painting "Ionity, high speed EV charging, located at Cashel and Kill" on a couple of trailers and paying to park them in a few fields along the M7 is definitely cheaper than getting a 1.5MW grid connection 😁

I think his dublin to mayo and back is a specific reference to a recent EQS coast to coast video from Derek Reilly where he said he could go coast to coast to coast in it