Random EV thoughts.....

So I went today to have a look at both the Kia Niro and the Hyundai Kona/Ioniq5.

When at the Kia dealer they used the SEAI grant as part of the deposit whereas the Hyundai dealer took the €5k from the total price.

Are The Kia dealers wrong here as everywhere else I’ve seen it taken away from total price. It makes the monthly PCP repayment go from €400 to €640 since the car basically gets €5k more expensive and I can’t put more than a 30% deposit down.

That utter boll%x if that's what they did. That is totally wrong. The grant comes off the purchase price and then u work from there.

They probably think they are doing u a favour but if u want to put down 30% net of the grant then u absolutely can.

Most dealers / finance companies do this, they treat the finance as the total price of the car, include the SEAI grant as part of the finance deposit, meaning that your max deposit is generally 30% which is made up of the SEAI 5K + the balance from the buyer, this allows them to stay within their finance formulas for max deposit and guaranteed minimum value. €640 pm seems very expensive for a Kia with a max deposit on PCP, a Tesla model 3 is about €500pm on max deposit

That is wrong, 5 k more on say a 40k loan will not shift the monthly by 60% unless the bullet is very small

I put down 10% on 38 and am on 540 monthly , with bullet of 17 if i remember correctly

It's PCP so not as straightforward - there will be different GFMV on different cost prices etc. or the dealer may use the same - you will need to look at the finance quotes closely.

Bottom line is if you want to put in the max deposit after the grant you should be able to.

Otherwise you are paying interest on money you would rather part with now that get a loan for.

I presume the E-niro is about 50k pre grant and 45 post grant roughly.

Make sure you are comparing apples with apples. Some dealers may have a very high GFMV (maybe the hyundai dealer is doing this) versus a lower one (could be what Kia are doing). And the Kona may be a bit cheaper too so that could affect it.

for anyone looking for a decent PCP/HP calculator:

https://www.pcp-calculator.com/PCP-loan-calculator.html

Looks like Coyne's Cross is the next Applegreen in line for proper infrastructure...

Don't eCars units usually get delivered not in boxes, so this is a good sign...

I know one about 2 years finished. All houses are council. Roads are council. No driveways, no marked spaces, no chargers, possibly ducting. The layout means often you cannot park near your house meaning carrying shopping long distances and no easy ability to keep an eye on your car from the house. I know similar older estates like this, say 15 years old, and petty crime on cars is high, and no hope they are getting chargers soon. While there is a management company in theory, in practice nothing gets done while shared bins areas are regularly set on fire.

I think it is for those building with planning permission applied after a certain date in 2021(?) There are some exceptions which probably builders pay hard money to take advantage of.

There is a video from the housing agency and the SEAI regarding the grants for apartments if someone is interested. They say there the new builds after March 2021 have to have the charging infrastructure provisioned hence don't qualify for grants. For those living in apartments might be interesting to see how they intend to run the grants.

like the headline, same old story…

Didn’t know about this

”we can reveal that EV charging prices will not be displayed on site until 2023…

Ionity’s 71 cent high powered rate will go to 73 cent on November 1st.”

Bit of a more balanced article, although I'm slightly annoyed they only used EI rates given there's better options out there

I've never gotten the idea behind people not shopping around for electricity when they own an EV

I mean it takes like 20 mins to change provider and I've known people to drive 20 mins out of their way every week to save 2c on a liter of petrol

Re: public charging, I think anything under 70c/kWh is the cost saving point for me coming from a petrol Golf. Plus savings on servicing and tax. Although more expensive tyres will eat into some of that cost. You'd be a bit mad to get an EV and only use public charging though.

I think the question of whether you can live with public charging or not is very dependent on where you live and how you drive.

Up until recently anyone living near a Lidl could charge for free on AC, and if you only need to charge once or twice a week then it was pretty easy to find a day you could plug in and walk back home then collect your car a few hours later

Same goes for workplaces that provide free charging. I know of one business in Dublin which has ~16 AC charging spaces and is looking at installing many more than that in the next 12 months. Currently the charging is free for employees but I imagine they'll start charging something to prevent abuse of the chargers

Not even the cheapest home charging rate could beat free charging

And as Liam said, if you're regularly using public charging then the subscription plans can offer pretty good value. I imagine for example that Applegreen will have a subscription plan, and anyone living near Ballymount in the near future is likely to have plenty of chargers available for a 30 mins top up one or twice a week

You mean the Ioniq 5 that went up just 2k over those 18 months?

If we are going random regrets, regret is that I didnt take a punt on a M3 in Jan this year and put a deposit down before the price increases

:)