ESB eCars

I'd swear EV owners won't be happy until DC charging costs €2/kWh with a €5/min overstay fee 😁.

Where's the incentive for a provider to spend more on extra chargers & infrastructure? What's wrong with having a single charger, in high demand, with high utilisation & consequently, high profitability?

Private companies remember, in business to maximise profit.

Not a public service provider & no responsibility to ensure Jacinta has minimal waiting time by spending loads more €€€s on a ultra high speed, multi charger hub.

It's absolutely fascinating how people, EV drivers, will argue with other EV drivers & demand more charges for themselves & punishment for other EV drivers, because private companies want to maximise profits & government do nothing.

Public charging (AC & DC) is now prohibitively expensive & very few people will sit on a charger paying close to €1/kWh, unnecessarily.

Petrol & diesel costs have come down significantly recently while public charging has increased 2x or 3x, yet no pushback by EV drivers, save for calling for more charges to punish those with bigger batteries who may need to stay over 45 minutes (& pay for it!).

Kramer for Taoiseach 😁

Unfortunately the Mad Lad quit boards in protest yesterday 😭

He truly lived up to his name

How is it selfish? Someone needs the charger and they were there first

We're not talking about someone sitting on a DC charger all day because it's free

It's a paid service, it's first come first served. You don't have some sort of automatic priority because you're waiting in the queue

Think if it like this, imagine you were at the coffee shop getting a round of coffees. How would you feel if the person behind you asked you to get a single flat white so they can go sooner?

Okay so you poked a hole in my analogy, does that mean it's okay to tell someone at a DC charger to p!ss off because you think they've been there long enough?

You can ask if you can go ahead of them for sure, but they're not obligated to say yes. From their perspective, if you need another 5 mins to get what you need then why would you sacrifice 30 mins to let someone else go ahead?

Sorry, I wasn't trying to undermine your analogy, more thinking out loud. I've never been asked by someone to skip in a coffee shop, whereas I have in Tesco. So I was trying to compare the EV charging letting someone in scenario, with a scenario I was already familiar with. I definitely don't think people should be kicked off regardless of how long they are there as long as they are still charging. But is it unreasonable of someone to ask if they can get X minutes of charge? That's the bit I'm undecided on.

The issue with the charging networks is that in many cases you are are forced to sit on the charger for 45 minutes or longer taking the full available power all the time while, if the network was better, you could get enough juice in 15 minutes due to higher speed/better availability than the current 50 kW chargers allow.

We'll be heading to Killarney at the end of December and as far as I can see there is no guaranteed way to actually be able to charge in the town. So I will have to take a detour to the SuC in Tralee and charge up to 100% just to ensure I'll get back there on the return leg. This is a pretty major tourist town and having one 50 kW DC charger within miles and 1 or 2 frequently ICE'd AC charging units for public is not good enough in 2022. It was already bad in 2015 when we did our first trip there on an EV but now the situation just looks pathetic.

The hotel where we are staying has two charging sockets. Whether they are ICE'd, or in use, or free remains to be seen. But Tralee seems to be the only doubled up DC charging setup in all of Kerry. Ecars have 150 kW charger there also so it's the only place where you are guaranteed not to get stranded and not to have dodge the 45 minute fee.

I'll bet the three other chargers also helped

I was using Ionity Stafford a few months ago, it's a busy enough sites. Often seems like all 6 chargers are in use

When I arrived there was one other car charging but the site was full within 10 mins and by 15 mins there were two cars queuing

I started getting anxious about blocking the charger so I told one of the guys queueing I'd only need another 5 mins. He looked at me like I was some lunatic, he was probably afraid the crazy Irishman was going to rob him or something

In the end, he ended up taking another charger as one car left before me, I'd say he was waiting less then 10 mins

Like I said, proper hubs fix everything

Sorry I'm a bit lost even after reading this saga.

So @ELM327 is on a 50kW charger, drawing 50kW.

And you want him to move to an 11kW AC as soon as a smaller battery car arrives?

If I am reading it right, then that's flat out ridiculous.

The most likely explanation is they moved the unti and haven't updated the map

If the unit has been decommissioned then it should be offline in the app

Honestly I reckon they get the lads who got fired from Eir

Some of them try their best, like remotely rebooting the chargers and stuff. But there's not much they can do remotely, they're often just waiting for an ESB technician to call out

And since it's the same technicians who do all the other ESBN work you can guess where Ecars is on the priority list

It has been dodgy for years. I've seen it throttling really bad, or knocking one car off when another connects (one DC, one AC). I'd say it needs to be replaced but doubt they'll bother. It'd be nice to see Circle K do something themselves with that site as it's well placed.