ESB eCars

eCars was created to ensure it would be possible to travel around the country in an ev, with no extra requirements on avoiding queueing or higher charging speeds. We have an open capitalist(ish) society where private sector investment is desirable. This was done with the understanding and preference that people would predominantly charge at home.

eCars brought the ev landscape from nothing to the point where there is proven viability for commercial operators on intercity routes. Now they should 1 make sure there is at least 2 chargers at each of their rapid charge locations, and 2 develop the market for those without access to charging at home by increasing the supply of destination chargers appropriately sized for the amount of time a user can expect to be at the destination (e.g. 1 hour for gym/supermarket, 2 hours for shopping centres, 8-10 hours for railway stations/park and rides) and set the time before overstay charges apply appropriately.

eCars get a lot of flak for the choices they have made, but who has done better? Ionity & Tesla have their networks to sell extra cars. We're only getting to the point where commercial operators not affiliated and financed by car manufacturers can justify the rollout of charging hubs.

Why are eCars exempt from criticism because most of the other operators are owned by manufacturers? They made some consistently poor decisions over the years like using 22kW chargers when most vehicles only support 7kW and 11kW, continuing to roll out 50kW chargers when most new cars support 100kW+ or and maybe worst of all, having a wide-spread network of poorly laid out, single charge units instead of a more focused number of sites with multiple units. That’s nothing to do with their source of funds or their reason for existence.

Tesla IMHO got the balance right. They gave AC chargers free of charge to anyone who would take it and they have a decent network of reliable, high speed chargers. My only criticism is that it’s not wide spread enough.

I wonder if eCars were too focused on Leafs for the first 6-8 years of designing the network and didn’t see the market charging as quickly as it did? Now they have a huge network of old units which will require extra maintenance, eating up their budget that should be going into expansion or upgrades.

In terms of 3 spaces for 4 cars they claim they may have only been allowed 3 spaces by the site owner but even if they laid out the second charger over a bit and only marked 3 spaces it may be possible for the 4th car to park in the unmarked space.

If they dropped the 22kW AC socket from their 50kW chargers and put a 7kW socket nearby as a backup then for probably no real cost they would have a better 3 space layout.

Applegreen will show what a real hub should be in Ballymount and I expect it to busy and profitable without (I assume) any government support.

While esb may be constrained on sites and funding some of their choices seem crazy and they have not delivered on their promises made after funding was in place. Lots of promises in NI for years yet basically nothing happening except broken chargers staying broken.

Its not a great picture.

But I think the argument is that we should design rapid charging locations with a petrol station type layout.

This type of idea

https://youtu.be/1FFGbzyvmnk

I've a 16.5kW AC charger in my car so the eCars 22kW are fantastic (for me) and I wish every car had faster AC. I'll accept that ESB might have been ahead of the curve on this one but the change in market caught them out, that's a risk of being early. FWIW I'm fairly sure I've shared a pillar with another car and still gotten 16.5kW so they probably are 22kW each side which makes sense since a few of them have been replaced by a 50kW DC charger in the past.

What we have to remember is that in 2013 or whenever.

Chademo and fast AC were the main game in town for charging.

CCS wasn't really in the picture as it is now.

Now there are a number of options for 22 kw locations going forward.

1) we can change them to 22 or 44 kw DC.

2) use a charger solution similar to the freewire boost. Where a DC charger has a big built in battery - can take power in at 22 KW AC and feed it out from the build in battery at 100 kw.

Effectively the charger is battery storage and takes in power when no car charging.

3) knowing that cars increasingly have 11 kw AC we can set up for twice the number of chargers. We could look at power management strategies so that if one car is charging - it can take a full 22 kw if its able to use it (ie its a Zoe).

4) upgrade the power supply where possible to the site. This can be for HPC or to have lots of destination type chargers.

Because in a car park situation - then a current supply that can do 22 kw x 2.

Can do 7 cars at 6 kw each.

The bigger problem however is the epic lack of urgency not just with ESB eCars but Govt and other players too.

Ireland doesn't know what a top class infrastructure looks like yet.

Which will make non EVers slow to commit to EV and allow rhetoric from Healy Raes and others gain much more traction.

Danny Healy Rae currently wants to look at biofuels and LPG.....

Because that's a stalling tactic by him to encourage a slow down in the EV adoption.

He hasn't worked out yet it seems how to make money from EV charging.

Make sure all would be HPC 's 350 kW or higher for each CHAdeMO plug. :)

In a bizarre turn of events you'd make Ireland the best country for those Chinese made EVs with their Chademo derivative flast charging (BGT or something, can't remember)

So you might inadvertently make EVs considerably more affordable 😂

That would be very inadvertent

Not interested in rolling out more AC chargers, and incapable of rolling out intercity motorway hubs....

They are creating a nice little niche for themselves of 'wherever and whatever we choose' to install.... and 9 times out of 10 it looks like they are going after the lowest hanging fruit...

To be fair your model 3 charges at 16kW, so not far off 22kW. A lot of cars are maxing out at 11kW

I think it's fair that the 22kW is an option, it does generally require more hardware

I think if I had something like a free workplace charger, or was dependent on a destination charger frequently then I'd probably go for it. In my current situation I mightn't bother

Really, is that the SR or all of them? I was sure I've seen Bjorn charging at 16kW on AC