ESB eCars

markpb

Kramer wrote: »

Teslas too with their rear quarter located ports......all the same, all badly designed.

Now Nissan have it right, with that ideally placed, front centre mounted charge port. The Koreans too............smart feckers . Drive in, back out.

No, we have to give credit to ECars here for their logical layout...........

Why change it from the location of almost every car on the road today? And worse, why change it to a location which forces you to reverse out of parking spot, a manoeuvre known to be the most dangerous way to leave a parking spot.

eagerv

markpb wrote: »

Why change it from the location of almost every car on the road today? And worse, why change it to a location which forces you to reverse out of parking spot, a manoeuvre known to be the most dangerous way to leave a parking spot.

Or nearly worse having to reverse into angled slots in tight busy areas (Waterford comes to mind)

innrain

Tomorrow we have a year since ecars introduced the payment on the Rapid chargers.
I thought it will be beneficial to post here a case which would be the worst case scenario of long mileage and 100% public charging.
On 18/11/2019 I had clocked 17k km
Today 17/11/2020 42k km
Lower than the 35k km expected and below one can see why
ecars bill looks like that:

I would have to add some 150 quid @Maingau and some 15@ Easygo
The difference is free kWh at hotels and other destination chargers.
A bit more dig at the data shows that I have used rapid chargers 112 times for an accumulated time of 56:26:47 and average charging time of 30 mins.
While the accumulated time looks bad (don't want to know the accumulated driving time) the average is nothing more than a lunch break. And not once I've been charging alongside an ICE driver (sometimes with the engine running) who had lunch and I was gone before they've finished.
On my 06 petrol VWagon i would have burnt nearly 2000 l of petrol or produced 4.5t of CO2. Costwise the saving is probably a couple of thousands factoring toll and servicing. As a conclusion after 19 months of EV motoring and 42k km driven @ 1,000 quid I say is doable and ICE are dead for me.

Kramer

markpb wrote: »

Why change it from the location of almost every car on the road today? And worse, why change it to a location which forces you to reverse out of parking spot, a manoeuvre known to be the most dangerous way to leave a parking spot.

OK, you've convinced me .
If only ECars would get onboard now too :pac:.

In fairness, with longer/better oriented cables & slight changes, they'd be OK. Ionity work reasonably well.





Cables originating higher on the chargers are a big improvement & I've never struggled at any Ionity installs here yet (aside from ICEing at Cashel etc.).

MJohnston

Ionity's design works fine because it's 1 charging unit per vehicle.

The design of the ESB charging units would work best with a petrol station layout, and is really badly designed for a bay parking space layout like they currently use.

AndyBoBandy

The issue is though, 1 Ionity unit charges 1 car, whereas 1 ESB unit charges 2 cars.

I still agree though that longer cables (like on those Ionity units) would negate the need to have a favourable (left or right) spot for your car.

Kramer

innrain wrote: »

I thought it will be beneficial to post here a case which would be the worst case scenario of long mileage and 100% public charging.

Good post - great to hear from someone who will benefit from ECars monthly subscription plan.

That 3100 odd kWh total would equate to approx. 20,000km @ at 16kWh/100km, so a cost of 4c/km. That's not bad, in fairness, for public paid charging.

6 days plugged in - depends how much "wasted" time you had at DC chargers I guess. A cheap 2010 diesel should cost just under 6c/km.

Interesting & good to hear from someone 100% dependent on public charging.

16 Kwh/100 km is a little on the low side ?

Kramer

MJohnston wrote: »

Ionity's design works fine because it's 1 charging unit per vehicle.

That's true. Still, a slightly longer cable, emanating from higher up on the charger would help.
Another meter &/or more height would have allowed my Model 3 to park more conventionally at the HPC, Galway for example (there was a Model S using the other bay when I arrived).

Kramer

Deleted User wrote: »

16 Kwh/100 km is a little on the low side ?

Probably not - the poster does all his charging on the public network so not confined to motorway/high speed driving.
Our Model 3 SR+ has averaged 16kWh/100km over the last 10,000km approx, mixed driving.

AndyBoBandy

Kramer wrote: »

(there was a Model S using the other bay when I arrived).

Goddamn Chademo cars!!! the bane of my existence :D:D:D






(Joking of course)

AndyBoBandy

yeah, my Model 3 SR+ has averaged 13.9kWh/100km* since owning it (16,000km)

*a winter should see that figure rise a bit, but I'd guess no higher than 16kWh/100km

McGiver

MJohnston wrote:

Membership is €4.60 per month and provides a reduced rate of 33c per kWh for use of high power (150kW) chargers. Pay As You Go customers will avail of a three month introductory rate of 34.5c per kWh for use of the high power (150kW) chargers. From March 1st the PAYG rate will be 37c per kWh.

The pricing is bollox.

AC - 27c
DC - 31c
UFC - 37c

AC is too expensive and UFC is too cheap. The price should be a function of speed.

Nobody can compete with that 37c I think. It's rigged to prevent liberalisation of the market.

Germany / Austria / Czechia - 1:2:3 ratio or close to it.
CZ for example:
AC - 11c
DC - 22c
UFC - 33c
A bit lower price level, but you get the gist. The base is higher in DE / AT but the structure similar.

MJohnston

Kramer wrote: »

That's true. Still, a slightly longer cable, emanating from higher up on the charger would help.
Another meter &/or more height would have allowed my Model 3 to park more conventionally at the HPC, Galway for example (there was a Model S using the other bay when I arrived).

There must be some sort of massive expense or technical restriction involved with longer charging cables — petrol pumps have had retractable hoses for decades, for example. It wouldn't surprise me if ESB were just cheaping out by opting for the shortest possible cables.

Kramer

McGiver wrote: »

The pricing is bollox.

AC - 27c
DC - 31c
UFC - 37c

It's not proper ultra fast charging though. It's 75kW if there's already someone on the charger or someone plugs in when you are already charging.

No one will be happy paying 50% extra for 75kWs - they'd probably take the slower 50kW charger if it was 50% cheaper.

Gwen Cooper

McGiver wrote: »

Nobody can compete with that 37c I think. It's rigged to prevent liberalisation of the market.

Germany / Austria / Czechia - 1:2:3 ratio or close to it.
CZ for example:
AC - 11c
DC - 22c
UFC - 33c
A bit lower price level, but you get the gist. The base is higher in DE / AT but the structure similar.

I don't really think you can compare Czech and Irish prices. I'm Czech and I can tell you that there's a difference between 11c in Ireland and 11c in the Czech Republic. Lots of Czech people have a monthly income of less than €600, I don't think I personally know anyone who lives there and makes at least €1000 a month, with the exception of a friend's brother who happens to be a drug dealer

innrain

Deleted User wrote: »

16 Kwh/100 km is a little on the low side ?

My average after 42k is 15.4kW/100km. Most of my daily commute is the length of M50 where the position vs winds changes and the speed limit is 100 km/h which.
On the motorways I get 18-19 kWh/100km. The worst I got 24 kWh/100km driving against storm Francis (?). It was so bad that the wipers were hitting the pillar.

innrain

Kramer wrote: »

Good post - great to hear from someone who will benefit from ECars monthly subscription plan.

That 3100 odd kWh total would equate to approx. 20,000km @ at 16kWh/100km, so a cost of 4c/km. That's not bad, in fairness, for public paid charging.

6 days plugged in - depends how much "wasted" time you had at DC chargers I guess. A cheap 2010 diesel should cost just under 6c/km.

Interesting & good to hear from someone 100% dependent on public charging.

6 days including the standard ones; it's "only" 2 days on the rapid with an average of 30 mins per session. I had couple of overnights. Kilkenny comes to mind, where no hotel has EV charger and the fast wouldn't work, so I was forced to use the standard. Hogging as some might say. But the pay for the charge made this possible. Before was a bit frustrating and I was about to give up because of the abandoned cars or 10 mins which turned out to be 50.

MJohnston

I don't think anyone here doesn't know this really, but I've put together a visual reminder of why ESB's charger layout sucks so hard:



Now this layout would not work on tighter locations where there is no buffer between the parking spaces, but there's absolutely no excuse not to use the 'between the cars' placement on motorway service stations where there's copious amounts of room.

It'd work even better if the charging stations had 'passthrough' designs like the Superchargers.

the_amazing_raisin

MJohnston wrote: »

There must be some sort of massive expense or technical restriction involved with longer charging cables — petrol pumps have had retractable hoses for decades, for example. It wouldn't surprise me if ESB were just cheaping out by opting for the shortest possible cables.

There are practical limits, the cable needs to be quite thick and is often surrounded by a water cooling jacket for the high power chargers.

So longer cables add a lot of expense and are quite heavy

A lot of it is down to the charger design rather than the cables themselves. I saw some chargers in Norway where the cable comes out the top and has an arm which keeps the cable clear of the vehicle and makes it easier to plug in. They were a pretty cool design

MJohnston

cruisey1987 wrote: »

There are practical limits, the cable needs to be quite thick and is often surrounded by a water cooling jacket for the high power chargers.

So longer cables add a lot of expense and are quite heavy

A lot of it is down to the charger design rather than the cables themselves. I saw some chargers in Norway where the cable comes out the top and has an arm which keeps the cable clear of the vehicle and makes it easier to plug in. They were a pretty cool design

Yeah I was thinking you could do something with a rigid 1m or 2m arm that's mounted at a tall height, and a short charging cable runs from the end of that. Pretty sure I remember petrol stations that had that kind of design.

the_amazing_raisin

MJohnston wrote: »

Yeah I was thinking you could do something with a rigid 1m or 2m arm that's mounted at a tall height, and a short charging cable runs from the end of that. Pretty sure I remember petrol stations that had that kind of design.

This was the one I saw in a video, the DC converter is split from the actually charging plug, so the footprint in a parking space is very small


https://kempower.com/charging-solutions/products/s-series-charging-system/


They had this really cool load balancing feature where each of the plugs was capable of supplying 100kW but the DC converter could load manage them.



So if the site had 4 poles but was limited to 250kW, and 1 car was charging it would give it the full 100kW.
2 cars get 100kW each
3 cars is gets divided, but if 1 car is using 50kW then the other 2 still have 100kW
4 cars, 2 charging at 50kW means the other 2 cars get 75kW available


It's smart because with different cars having different charging curves you don't necessarily need the full 100kW all the time. If you aren't using the full power of the charger then it makes sense to allow someone else to use the excess over what you need

innrain

cruisey1987 wrote: »

...
It's smart ...

So here you know that you're not describing ESB/ecars with its 2kW AC
This is the video of Bjorn discussing the load balancing of different suppliers/chargers including the kempower.

https://youtu.be/EmuIolKO0qo
Informative 25 mins

the_amazing_raisin

innrain wrote: »

So here you know that you're not describing ESB/ecars with its 2kW AC
This is the video of Bjorn discussing the load balancing of different suppliers/chargers including the kempower.

https://youtu.be/EmuIolKO0qo
Informative 25 mins

Yeah that's where I saw them first, it's a great video


You can tell the Kempower ones would be good because apparently about half the people in the company are EV drivers


I dunno how true that is but you can tell their products are very practically thought out


I've always said the best way to improve the eCars network would be to force the ESB management to drive EVs and depend on eCars for charging. If they had to live in their own mess then they might decide to clean it up a bit

McGiver

Gwen Cooper wrote: »

I don't really think you can compare Czech and Irish prices. I'm Czech and I can tell you that there's a difference between 11c in Ireland and 11c in the Czech Republic. Lots of Czech people have a monthly income of less than €600, I don't think I personally know anyone who lives there and makes at least €1000 a month, with the exception of a friend's brother who happens to be a drug dealer

Wages aside, not sure what kind of people you know, the current average gross is ~1300 there (1600 in Prague) and I had more than that 9 years ago anyway that's OT :cool:

It's about the ratio of AC/DC/UFC. And in fact, given that the price level is half over there, the 33c there vs 37c here doesn't really match the price level here. It's dirt cheap here, but I'd say AC is too expensive here. DC is ~0.60c per kWh in the Netherlands with similar price level as here...

E.ON DE, yummy prices:
AC - 5.80 per session
DC - 8.72 per session
UFC/Ionity - 38.02 per session :eek:

The last one Makes sense only in empty Tesla/Kona etc.

McGiver

Kramer wrote: »

It's not proper ultra fast charging though. It's 75kW if there's already someone on the charger or someone plugs in when you are already charging.

No one will be happy paying 50% extra for 75kWs - they'd probably take the slower 50kW charger if it was 50% cheaper.

Still dirt cheap, compared to NL/DE/AT for example. 37c is peanuts for 150 kW even for 75 kW.

McGiver

MJohnston wrote: »

I don't think anyone here doesn't know this really, but I've put together a visual reminder of why ESB's charger layout sucks so hard:



Now this layout would not work on tighter locations where there is no buffer between the parking spaces, but there's absolutely no excuse not to use the 'between the cars' placement on motorway service stations where there's copious amounts of room.

It'd work even better if the charging stations had 'passthrough' designs like the Superchargers.

No need to reinvent the wheel - petrol station layout, Fastned. Or something similar to it as you outlined.

Kramer

McGiver wrote: »

Still dirt cheap, compared to NL/DE/AT for example. 37c is peanuts for 150 kW even for 75 kW.

But still dearer than Tesla supercharging, anywhere in Europe, or in the world in fact (I think :eek:).

Do you want ECar to increase charges? What will that achieve? It's already largely unviable from what I'm seeing & we, taxpayers are subventing ECars heavily already.

McGiver

Kramer wrote:

Do you want ECar to increase charges? What will that achieve? It's already largely unviable from what I'm seeing & we, taxpayers are subventing ECars heavily already.

Reduce AC rates to stimulate uptake, increase DC/HPC rates to allow competition to step in.

At these subsided DC prices there's no chance of any third party network competitors entering the market. Zero.

Bar Ionity or carmaker driven ones, which is more or less the same as Superchargers. They are oligopolistic in essence and can set any prices they like, as we have seen.

Superchargers are a private network so its pointless to comparing its prices with anything else - it's a closed system.

slave1

I just don’t get eCars, we have to face facts that EV ownership is still in early adoption phase and requires incentives, their pricing is a disincentive and I’ve already had two failed charge attempts from four stops at the Galway High Power unit, still undependable and yet they charge that much