ESB eCars

Won’t be long now before the pallets are back up again. I believe they are still sitting near the charger at the ready. What a tosser.

Without knowing where your destination is its hard to give more detail, but I wouldnt be concerned at all. Definitely a top up at Athlone and then another top enroute somewhere along the way. There are still enough 50kW eCars in Mayo.

I tried ABRP and found it was was too conservative. The best planner is Tesla's own on board display - it is highly accruate. Get familiar with the trip energy meter and give yourself a 10% allowance and you'll be grand. The single biggest influence on energy consumption is driving style and given your cargo you're not going to be having a heavy foot.

If you do find yourself going into single digits then simply slow down. EVs, especally the Teslas become amazingly efficient at slow speed - Ive learnt this from experience. I had 30km to my charge point with 3% left a couple of weeks back. Dropped to under 50km/h and made it still on 1%. Even then there is still a bit of juice left - kind of like when a fuel gauge hits empty.

Worst case scenario - you end up having to wait until someone finishes their charge.

I would go to Ionity in Athlone. Google maps shows only 6 minutes/18km difference N5 vs M6 from Dublin to Belmullet. Add Ionity Athlone as waypoint on your ABRP route. Is the journey time so badly affected?

And there is a 50kW available if it is being used. But the Ionity as a one off will give you piece of mind - I have never seen all 4 stands being used at the same time. Also I suspect the October bank holiday is not going to be as busy on the roads out west as the summer, especially given people can also fly again.

Thanks all for your help.

I'm going past Belmullet so our normal route would be M4/N4, N5 via Longford to Swinford, N26 to Ballina, etc. There's a string of 50kW charge points along the way as well as the 150kW at Ballinalack so I'd have some comfort that I could keep going to the next one if I arrive at a busy location. Most of the charge points seem to be located in the towns so we could combine food/coffee/toilet stops with charging which would be handy.

Taking a detour to Athlone doesn't look like it would add much time and I can't imagine availability would be an issue. The only downside is that the only food option seems to be McDonalds which I guess the kids won't complain about 😀

Carrick is also an option. It has two charge points and it's slightly closer to Belmullet so we'd arrive with a higher charge which would be handy.

I also have an upgraded 16.5kW AC charger so I could pick up a decent amount of range if we can have lunch or coffee breaks near an eCars SCP.

I updated my original post just now. 😀 It's actually 314km each way via the shortest route. I've a 75D MX so the range is 250-300km ideally and probably 200-250km at this time of year. I've done very few drives of any distance (thanks Covid!) so I've no idea what kind of range I can realistically get. I'm not sure I'll be able to granny charge there (awkward layout) but there's a 22kW SCP at a playground in Belmullet and a Tesla destination charger at a nearby hotel (only 5kW, that's not much use) so I suspect I'll be making use of those while we're there.

I think Andy was counting Mayfield as both a Tier 2 and 3 site, since by ESB's own definition of a Tier 1 site (8x HPCs) Mayfield doesn't count