Random EV thoughts.....

It's correct but in many cases you'll only get that curve if you plug in below 15% SoC

If you plug in at say 40%, then you won't get 125kW from the graph, you'll get around 75kW

That's been my experience at least, pretty sure I was being limited by the car

For example I recently got 18kWh in 15 mins from a Supercharger. Quick maths gives an average of 72kW. As I recall I plugged in somewhere around 30-40% after about an hour of driving on a warm day

I've gotten 125kW exactly once (back when that was the limit) from an Ionity charge after driving for 3 hours and plugging in around 10%

Seems to be a VW thing, other ID owners can probably chime in with their experience

I guess whoever designed it always waits until their fuel light is on before filling up 🤷‍♂️

They seem to have dramatically improved it with the newer generation of cars because they now have a button to precondition the battery. The cars will also precondition when navigating to a charger (the thing they were supposed to do in 2020) and will display the max available charging power, taking the guesswork out

Apparently the current version of software shipping on cars (4.x) is already EOL and Cariad are working on version 5

And then Cariad will probably be shuttered in favour of the joint venture with Rivian

It's Windows ME all over again 🤣

Fastnet charge curves are best case ideal curves. If your battery is hotter or cooler than ideal , typically 30 Celsius, then rate will be slower. As battery ages the speed may drop too.

Fiat are to have integrated charging cables, starting with the Grande Panda next year. Obviously only for AC due to cooling issues, and even at that, only up to 7.4kW. There will be another normal charging port for DC up to 100kW. I hope it also allows faster AC or the whole thing seems a bit of a waste.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/technology/fiat-integrate-charging-cables-electric-cars

You might be right. I assume it's just easier. I've seen it demo'ed and it looked convenient. Pros and cons as you say.

Good news for anyone travelling on the M1 and looking for somewhere for the kids to burn off some energy, Applegreen have significantly improved the play area in the Lusk service stations

Looks like the bathrooms got redone as well so they're less of a horror show

Bad news is there's still a single charger at each service station, so you could end up with plenty of time to spare if there's a queue 🙄

Is it too much to ask to get good facilities and good chargers in the same place?

Yeah it's very frustrating, there's Ionity in City north but that has nothing going for the service station

There's also Clonsaugh coming soon hopefully, but again not a place you'd want to spend any amount of time there

The Applegreen sites at least have some decent facilities (because TII probably forced them to) but a single charger per site

Unless you've a Tesla of course

If Applegreen would speed up their rollout, and increase the scope it would improve things a lot. At this stage 2 chargers per site isn't going to be enough when 5-6 is becoming the norm

And Applegreen don't even have 2 chargers per site 😬

When I got my EV there were a mixed set of no name tyres but decent reviews. One deformed (lowest load rating one) So I replaced them all with higher load rating sporty tyres. Definitely noticed a slightly stiffer ride and a slight increase in noise. The other half didn't notice. Ramps probably the only place I notice it.

The EV Charging arm of Applegreen has only been going a wet week. With 200+ stations in the country is it any wonder it's taking them so long to rollout chargers. I guess they identify the most lucrative sites and start there by dropping in a charger before moving on to the next.

For M1 travellers I can see on plugshare they are planning to install a charger at their M1 Balbriggan service station and slightly further off the motorway will be another charger at their service station at Balbriggan Shopping Centre. It should improve the situation.

Isn't it obvious it doesn't make financial sense to install more than 1 in a lot of these locations? Or at least it doesn't until EV's are a greater % of the fleet.

Entities like Applegreen, Circle K and eCars for example are not providing a public service. Where they install needs to make business sense.

While I agree with what you say will happen in the long term the reality today is that we're still in the early stages of adoption. The transition as we're currently seeing involves the rollout of one or two chargers dotted around the place. They will either be pulled out in time or additional chargers dropped in to create hubs as EV's become ubiquitous.

Until then the business case of installing multiple chargers doesn't stack up for a lot of locations.

Sorry your out of touch....

This is the M1 one of the countries main motorways. And north Dublin coast, beaches are real black spots for chargers. It's crazy there are not more charging hubs on this route.

It's not a transition. The M1 route is lagging behind, due to Applegreens shenanigans.

It's quite something to advise people the best place to charge on a route is not at the motorway services.