Random EV thoughts.....

Ive a 2017 smax which doesn't get driven regularly, often going a week or more between drives. It's never shown the slightest sign of dampness between drives. Just sit, start up and drive off. If a car is any way damp inside it's leaking water somewhere, which isn't a problem for new cars

and another story on RTE

https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2024/1217/1486781-electric-car-prices-battery-ranges-2025-guide/

I'd hate to think what the cost of motor tax will be on those cars in a few years time. Especially when the government of the day is faced with billions of euro in fines…

Edd China fixing a Leaf with a welded contactor instead of replacing the battery pack (£150 vs £6000 or so)

Probably could do it even cheaper by replacing the contactor itself instead of the whole assembly

Great to see some of the better known car mechanics on YouTube challenging the idea that a fault in the battery pack requires a complete replacement

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121586463#Comment_121586463

Quote from last January.

I saw a talk from the Irish company goplugable and I quickly signed up while listening to the talk.

Today I got a phone call from a UK number while in work at 11:40am. The caller explained he was from goplugable and that someone wanted to pay to use my home charger. He said they cannot see my home exact location nor contact details until I approve. I asked when and he said 2-5pm today. He said I needed to approve in the app. So I went into the app, logged in, and found the request and sure enough today 2-5pm. So I approved them messaged the person with my mobile number and address, but I think they could see those details at that point. I also changed my zappi from night timer to instant. This could be done remotely from the charger app. The goplugable app suggested around 10 euro for 3 hours and around 20kWh of energy. This seemed to assume a 3 hour booking would consume around 7kW of energy per hour. This is a presumption in the app.

So then I waited. I could see on the charger app an EV charging around 2:30pm. I messaged the missus there may be a strange car in the driveway. The booked time was 2-5 but I could see from my charger it was actually 2;30-5:30 which may have caused a parking issue if we came home from work and wanted to use the space. We have plenty on street free parking so not a concern but may be for others.

After I reviewed the results. At the time of request I noticed no pop up notification from the app with a request, no notification at start of charging, no notification at end of charging notifications. Notifications are allowed for this app on my phone. No emails, no alerts, no sms etc. It's something they could improve on. I did not find the app that user friendly and difficult to contact support. It also does not give you a way of ringing the person using your home charger, just in app messaging.

The original price around 10 euro seems to be before their fee, then also vat is taken off. I may have underpriced my offer,when I actually thought when I set the price it was high enough to deter time wasters and more for those stuck or trying it out. My 10 became 7.24

The biggest shock was I can't get any money out until my balance is 50 euro. Considering I would be lucky with 1 user per year, it might take 5+ years before I have any hope of getting any money back. It might be possible to work around it by topping up to 50 then refunding it but I have not tested that.

This seems crazy, electricity costs alone were probably 5 euro, tipping into peak electricity pricing from 5pm.

Another surprise for me was the calculated units consumed according to their guess was 18.84kWh while my home charger said it was 20.69 units. Thus they underestimated the actual electricity consumption by 10% leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

Pricing from others seems to vary a lot with some that don't seem to understand the kWh rate structure, basically 7 units per hour. Many others are more expensive than public chargers.

I joined up for the thrill to test it out, and to help someone stuck on low charge where nearby public chargers were busy. I could radically increase my pricing but then it probably makes no sense to users. I'll probably just remove my home charger from the options list.

I did wonder could I mount a pedestal unit on the public street outside my house and start becoming a public charger provider, it could be useful to undercut ESB and for those nearby with no home chargers.

I do worry about goplugable's long term viability. Lots of similar apps with myenergi and zapmap going in on the home charger resell game, options in plugshare app to list home chargers too. I can't see it reaching critical mass alone as a stand alone app.

Motor tax changes cannot be retroactive

Precedent. In ireland when we change motor tax assessment it is on a go forward basis. Look at 08, the revisions to the CO2 band.

They'll find a way to get the likes of the 520d off the road.

In the the UK a new M5 will be around 700 euros to tax.

Quite something to be blaming the greens for drs when most of Europe already had it and your example of Norway has variations of it for decades.

Not entirely sure Ireland's going backwards on emissions is something to be happy about.

They could require an emissions NCT test every 6 months for all old diesels instead of annually. NCT centres should have capacity for this additional test as more EVs enter the national fleet and hit the 4 year old mark. Initially do it for 20 year old diesels, a couple of years later reduce to 15 year old and by 2030 for any diesels over 10yo.

Sure people just bypass the DPF filter between tests so what's even the point in trying? I'll wager that a lot of diesels in Ireland aren't even performing to their manufacturer specs

In this weather the majority of them will have the emissions controls bypassed, so every diesel driver in a town is spewing a nice cloud of lethal particulates at any pedestrians. It's nicely at head height for children as well, keeps the doctors busy with lots of respiratory issues at least

Look at the hoops people jump through every NCT to get a diesel to pass. Refill the adBlue, fill the tank with engine cleaner and drive around in 2nd gear for a day or two, potentially get the EGR and DPF fixed

And the same people will complain about an EV being inconvenient?

Roadside testing is probably all you could do and expect to work

I would say not getting your range is not an equivalence with poisonous pollutants.

The point is that having to do twice as many NCTs per year would be a way of discouraging people from hanging on to old diesels without increasing tax bands. "Ah, sure it wasn't worth the hassle any more hanging on to the auld Audi 80…".