Everything you always wanted to know about electric vehicle (but were afraid to ask)

moggins7 wrote: »

Basically is there a best/ cheapest way to charge on the public network? Is the ESB PAYG card the only way of charging publicly or is there another that will do it cheaper? Is there a card you can use with all chargers?

I will charge infrequently on the public network, so it makes sense for me to have an eCars PAYG account. It means if I use their DC ‘fast’ chargers, I pay €0.33 per kWh. If however I had a subscription account, I’d only pay €0.29 per kWh, however with this account type there is a €5 per month service charge. I would only expect to use eCars fast charging if making any long trips out of Dublin and back on routes that aren’t served by Tesla Superchargers.

Then you have the eCars AC chargers, which are (currently) still free to use. I’ve used 3 of these in the last week, and for an hour charging on these, I can get 11kWh which would give me about 60km of range in my Tesla Model 3. So the AC network are nice to use as a destination charger, but wouldn’t be suitable for long journeys unless you have one available at your final destination (I’d need about 4.5 hours to fully charge my M3 from empty on AC, so not exactly terrible either)

For example I live in North Dublin, and last week we drove down to Bray and charged for free on AC for about an hour, this hour of charging effectively gave us a free trip home from Bray (we arrived in Bray in about 65%, charged to about 80% and got back home on about 65% again).
Then the following day, we left the house at 80% and drove up to Bettystown, charged for an hour, and returned home with something like 85%

I opened my eCars PAYG account with €20 credit in it, and still have the full €20 as I’ve only used their free AC chargers so far and I’d rarely expect to use a DC fast charging station, but I know it’s there for an emergency, or for a long journey etc...

The only 2 apps I’ve used so far is ESB eCars and PlugShare (plugshare is great for giving details on the various charging stations like if you have to pay for the parking space at a charger, who runs the charger, as well as showing user uploaded photos/reviews of said charger).
I’ve also signed up to EasyGO and have their app, just in case I’d ever be stuck near a Lidl with a charger (I believe these are free to use, but you still need to be registered with easygo to use them).