ESB eCars

But during those struggles I couldnt have afforded a car, let alone a new car of any sort. I had a 15 year old ford fiesta!

The people who can buy new cars are already switching and increasing the number of people buying EVs. In 3-5 years you'll see Konas, Niros, leaf62, first Teslas etc dropping to sub 15k, and the original leaf and zoe below 5k. The day of the 500 quid car would be gone. There's always intrinsic value in an EV's battery.

Relating to the ecars price increase however, most people who can afford a new car and choose an EV, will have their own driveway. I've rented a house and owned an apartment before buying my current house and was able to charge at home in both the rented house and the apartment. I wouldnt (and didnt) buy an EV before I could charge at home. That was when AC and DC public charging was free!

Like it or not, the next step to a mature market is the removal of grants and making it BAU. Look back 10 years ago to 2012 and everyone got ten grand to buy a leaf or zoe which could only do 100km. Now we are getting evs with ranges of 400-500km plus in the real world. Even with 20-25k, you can buy a car with 400km range.

I firmly believe that public charging should be self funded, otherwise it will be abandoned.

The fuel (ice fuel) subsidy is even more ridiculous IMO lets not go there

In an ideal world, youre right, you should be able to rely on public charging. This is what happens in Netherlands for instance. But if you have a cheap state run monopoly, what incentive is there for private market entrants?

No ted I don't as I can't bring my home charging rate with me when I'm on the road

Well you can bring it with you on the first (insert your cars real world range here) km of any drive you ever go on where you start from home….

I’ve a 400km round trip down to family in Waterford and the first 250km of that is covered by my home charging rate, so I’m only concerned about the 150km I need to put in out in the wild..

Credit to bonkers for some actual analysis of the public charging price increases

They gave examples of a trip from Dublin to Galway with home charging + a top up at Ecars (€15), an Ecars only example (€38) and a diesel comparison (€40)

I didn't fact check their figures but it looks about right

Much better to show a true example of charging costs rather than just assume everyone uses DC chargers all the time

Interesting news from RTE

Makes you wonder what the justification is for our current prices

Price of supply is locked in for a period of time.

So electricity you are using today was bought in at a price set some time ago.

You won't see the reduced price until future supply bought at reduced price comes through from supplier.

Its frustrating

Exactly. Wholesale prices rose 12 months before we even saw increases. Supply companies generally hedge future prices. The ones that didnt just went bust

Few holes in that comparison but it does mean that in January that 400km trip on fast chargers alone would cost about €20, coupled with the hassle of finding a charger V finding a filling station

Interestingly €38 would get you about 60kWh on fast chargers, if that's to do 400km, are many cars capable of 15kWh/100km?

He was referring to the example Bonkers gave of a 400km trip using fast charging only

Like I said I didn't fact check it and the article didn't mention what car they used as an example

Taking my ID.4, I get around 19kWh/100km average so that's about 84kWh accounting for losses or €57 at ESBs highest rate

Using a diesel, assuming 5l/100km at €2.10 per litre, you're looking at €42

So pick the right combination of cars and charging and diesel is cheaper

Of course, if I didn't have home charging I'd be signing up to the We Charge plus plan which gives me all DC charging for 47c/kWh and Ionity for 35c/kWh, bringing the trip cost down to a more affordable €30 or so

15kwh/100km is just above Ioniq efficiency and is right around what I get in my Sept 22 M3. The X that it replaced would get 250-300wh/km and etrons regularly get over 300wh/km.

You can only compare prices per kWh same as you can only compare ICE fuel prices per liter/gallon.

It's very easy to cherry pick times where ICE and EV are similar or EV more expensive. But it ignores the reality, which is the majority of EV owners charge at home the majority of the time. There will always be edge cases. Same as you don't expect a 3 series BMW to do the same MPG as an X5 BMW, you dont expect the same wh/km from different classes of EV.

I'm ok with the current level of pricing. If I weren't or I needed to charge regularly I'd take out a subscription to Ionity. that makes it about 30-35c per kWh.

I still think your logic is flawed. Yes you need to account for a certain amount of DC charging, but you need to be doing a lot for it to make a diesel car cheaper

And by a lot, I mean over 60% of your driving

And anything over 3000km of public charging makes one of those subscription plans worthwhile

At that point you can literally do 100% of your driving on public charging and still be cheaper than diesel. It isn't much I'll admit, maybe a 5% saving, but it's still there

Yes, they have fallen, but there's a lag, supply companies hedge electricity forwards. There was almost a year when wholesale prices were rising but end user/supply company pricing for end users didnt rise

No its not. There shouldnt be market interference. This silly idea of 200 euro grants is also ridiculous.

Neither are related to ecars really. But if anything, look at the prices that other companies are providing, applegreen, tesla, ionity, they are all 50-70c/kWh. That is the market rate for ev charging. If it wasnt market rate then no one would use them

Renewable energy producers are recording record profits. , energy resellers aren’t.