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.
How did you get 35c on ionity? That's really good and blows my earlier figures out of the water!
Although you should accept that it is only useful if you live near such chargers
It is true to say that south Dublin has a vast amount of fast chargers, it isn't true, however, to say that most of the small town homes in our country have driveways. In fact the opposite, apartments and terraced houses is much more the norm.
In any case a saving of €1.25 (or 1/4 of the monthly sub) per 100km driven is hardly a case to say EVs are cheaper considering the added hassle
We own/drive 3 EVs starting from April of 2019 no home charging. The 2019 one is on 70k km, the 2021 one on 45k km and the 2023 one on 12k km. On average over 30k km a year, lockdown included. I haven't used an ESB DC charger since 2021. I have Ionity with 35c/kWh and Tesla with 40ish. Otherwise AC charging, some at work some at convenience locations. Before EVs I used to get a fill of petrol at every 5 days, 70ish each time. Last month my whole fuel bill was 70 due to some free charging.
Currently driving a rental petrol Qashqai in Spain and my average consumption is just shy of 10l/100km which is nowhere near the advertised 5.2 figure advertised. So my petrol bill would be much higher than equivalent electric.
Regarding the Taycan charging for long at a DC charging most likely someone with no DC charging experience who believes it needs to charge to 100% all the time.
I'm in Dublin, but come from Banbridge originally so make regularly journeys on the M1 and further up to Belfast.
The big problem is having insufficient public charging solutions to meet *ALL* charging needs.
If you're based in NI, then I see your frustration! It was quite shambolic but moves are afoot.
In my location it's gotten much much easier. ESB have been rolling out their hubs that are capable of charging 3 CCS cars at once. Applegreen have also rolled out a multi DC charger location. Outside of my immediate locale, Applegreen entering the market has added extra infrastructure. Northern Ireland has seen huge increases in the amount of DC charging available to me.
@10-10-20 totally agree with their being a lag in infrastructure vs requirements, but I think we're in a massively improved situation than we were 12 months ago.
Model 3
€800 Est. Electricity/yr
Petrol Car
€1,000 Est. Fuel/yr
We've assumed a fuel economy of 6.4 l/100 km for a comparable petrol powered car. We've also assumed the national average of €0.55 per kilowatt-hour for residential electricity (assumed for 100% charging) and €1.63 per litre for petrol over 10000 km.
According to Tesla, savings are only 200 euro a year, if I had no access to home charging night rate, it would really want to be something special, which in my opinion most cars are not, let alone any EV.
@liamog as I think you'll agree, there are two types of roll-out of infrastructure: leading or lagging.
Tesla rolled out a leading infrastructure - they provisioned more DC chargers than they had customers to use them and this then become a sales tool to promote confidence in the charging infrastructure. That's well and good when you're well funded.
Almost all other charging providers are rolling out a lagging infrastructure where the customer usage drives the future investment. That's problematic as there has to be pain felt by the customer base while the network expands, and this keeps pricing up. That's where the negative impressions which @DownByTheGarden mentions comes into the conversation as it's only too easy to share bad-news-stories and spread FUD.
But yes you are right about the fact that we've now hit the inflection point and the fuel providers are now looking at their future customer base and realising that there are threats on the horizon.
Heres an easy question for you. Has getting a charge got any easier since the recent uptick in EVs, or has i got worse?
I would strongly disagree with that point. The biggest thing currently holding back EV uptake is public charging infrastructure. Public charging infrastructure only expands as it becomes viable to run. To be viable it needs more customers. A customer who charges the car once a week is 13x better than a customer who charges 4 times a year. The best way to ensure there is a usable charger when you need it is to increase the number of chargers that are installed at any one location, this will only come from people using them.
For some reason people have a warped view of the EV charging space, they seem to think it will be the first market in history where increased demand does not lead to increased investment. We've seen in the last 12 months that the numbers of EVs on the road has reached a critical mass where commercial expansion now makes sense. No surprises that we've seen Applegreen move in to the space, with Maxol, SSE, and others following.
They are not good for the general uptake and impression of EVs though. So choose your poison.
They're called customers, and they are better for network expansion than a person who uses the charging network 4 times a year.
The big problem is the amount of time people without home charging collectively take chargers out of circulation for.
But I can only see per kwh prices at chargers going up anyway. I dont see them ever coming down.
Should a person who lives in South Dublin where there are a large number of accessible DC chargers take their car back to the dealers because there aren't enough charges in a town with less than 10,000 people in Waterford?
This is exactly where the ridiculousness comes in, we all know there are areas of the country where the charging networks are sparse. The sparse areas tend to be in places with low populations and places where off street parking is common. Anybody thinking of buying an EV should consider their local charging situation, whether that be installing a point on their drive, or assessing local opportunities to charge.
It's only scary to diesel and petrol drivers because they keep listening to drivers who's only experience is running an EV with home charging.
But if you don't have home charging, as is the argument that is being made above, what do you do?
The challenges and costs of reliance on public charging networks are massively overwrought
Are they really though? Just yesterday there was a porsche charging for 1.5hrs yesterday at the only DC point in Dungarvan while a queue built behind him... All AC points in the town were also taken and I'm not aware of any cheaper AC or DC charging rate than 50.9c. Scary stuff to a petrol or diesel driver
The reality is the majority of people are happy enough paying the same (or even higher) price per km for public charging as other drivers pay for fossil fuels.
Some of this may be due to expensed / BIK incentivised EVs, I think a lot of it is that people simply are conditioned to handing out €100+ every week or two to fuel a car.
While eCars and others prices may have risen last year to match rising wholesale, they are not falling today because the market is bearing the price. Price has also moderated demand, even as the elwctric fleet expands, allowing them more space to build up capacity.
Notice how new operators enter at 75c (or 99p in UK). Because they will get it.
Notice how no operator competes for custom on price (discounts when available have commitment fees to ensure they apply only at high volume). Because they don't have to.
This situation will probably persist (unless there is an intervention, or an aggressive market entrant), or if we reach a time where there is way more supply than demand.
People who want to buy a car that happens to be an EV. The challenges and costs of reliance on public charging networks are massively overwrought in the heads of people who haven't actually tried.
Don't do X which I haven't tried because it's not possible even though people who do do X say it's much easier than I think, is a classic internet trope.
Why? Because home charging is so much cheaper. You need to factor home charging costs into your figures to get the proper running costs of an EV.
Yes, electric cars are €1.25/100km cheaper based on always using the ESB AC chargers on the €5 a month membership... Who could possibly do that realistically though?
Personally I do a mix of home and on the road, why?
So as I said, the diesel was costing more per km. If price sensitivity per km driven was the only reason a person bought a car we'd have a much more boring world.
Do you not charge at home ?
The cheapest ecars member rate is €0.509 /kWh
Assuming the average of 17kWh/100km that means €8.67/100km which would get you 5.4L of fuel at €1.60/L
My last diesel mondeo 1.8L did 6.2L/100km so €9.92/100km or €1.25 more per 100km... For that I had 5 minute refills, no monthly subscription and waiting for pumps to become free was 5 minutes maximum
I'll believe it when I see it, 2 reviews that saw hikes last year and no reviews in the first 8 months of this year. It's obviously too lucrative for them to reduce prices
The press release from ecars on this is particularly interesting. Especially the third location down on their list of "Other locations where high-power charging is available:"
https://esb.ie/media-centre-news/press-releases/article/2023/08/08/esb-launches-high-power-ev-charging-hub-at-barack-obama-plaza#:~:text=ESB%20has%20today%20launched%20its,as%20little%20as%20six%20minutes.
There was media coverage of the official opening of the Obama plaza chargers and media were told by ESB ecars of price reductions in coming months
OT for the thread but I'm starting to think that it can work in certain areas. I've noticed a number of EV owners in Sandyford using the ubitricity (Shell) lamp-post chargers on Three Rock Road while residing in the apartments near-by.
I suppose if you have a large enough battery and your consumption demands aren't massive, you can probably get away with charging like this once or twice a week.
Then I was just looking to see what Ubitricity were charging per unit and I noticed this new feature (not sure it's available in Ireland yet):
The concept there is around the free overnight availability of the parking spots before the office workers arrive in for the day-shift. Plus DLRCoCo get some overnight revenue from having the chargers in position.
So that's an example of how on-street charging can work if you don't have home-charging. Of course how that scales is another thing...
Did you actually try it, or are you basing your prices on the Pay&Go rates that you'll pay as an infrequent user? If they're worried about a charging costs in public, then they should also avoid buying a diesel or petrol car which cost even more per km than eCars member rates.
Anybody who asks me about venturing into EV ownership the first thing I tell them is, if you can't charge at home forget about it as public charging is just too expensive. Obviously everyone will have to public charge at some time or another and pay the price, but I'm sure you know that...
Article in IT yday goes someway to explaining their rates.
