ESB eCars

Yup a load more. Interesting that Kinnegad plaza has easy go chargers and not ecars. Could do with faster chargers there seem to get a bit of use.

It's a bit weird to think of charging at 50kW through the night

I think that some tricks with MCS connectors have been spotted (Tesla Semi) and there's EU rules coming into force around providing truck charging. So we might start to see a few in the next few years

I imagine they'll be restricted to the busiest motorway routes, M1 and M7 probably

I wonder if Ecars will even bother or will it be Applegreen and the like. Given Ecars are currently being booted out of the TII sites, which are most likely the first places we'll see truck charging, then I think they'll never get the chance

Delighted

You couldnt really fit two ccs ports to be used simultaneously for mass market use. The levels of BMS and intercommunication would be expansive. Whatever about dual AC charging, dual DC charging would be very difficult to implement beyond test bed cases IMO. How does each charger know how to regulate voltage etc. Unless you had two separate packs, or two packs that were connected in parallel for use in driving but could disconnect for charging, and have a ccs connector on each side?

Two packs would be simple from a charging perspective but probably difficult from a usage perspective, what happens if they're out of balance

I think 2 CCS ports wouldn't be too bad. You can control the voltage and current from each charger so they should match. You'd need some sort of regulator to smooth out any minute difference, but it doesn't seem too costly considering the truck probably costs a couple hundred grand to begin with

Having said that, a single connector being able to supply several megawatts is definitely a cleaner solution 😁

This article really belongs in the Random EV thoughts thread but since we're talking about electric trucks...

Some definite good and bad points in the article

Good points are that the truck was carrying 20 tonnes of oranges (they said tons in the article but since it's Europe I'm guessing it was metric tonnes)

I still struggle to find actual payload values for trucks but 20 tonnes seems good? It's certainly better than the 6 tonnes I saw some YouTube geniuses were calculating the Tesla Semi could carry

Other good point is the company ordered another 18 trucks to be delivered this year, so despite the difficulties they must see value in them (if it was one or two trucks I'd call it greenwashing)

Bad points would be the 20 charging stops needed to cover the 3,000km distance, around 150km or Leaf30 range between charging stops 😭

It also took a week instead of 4 days in a diesel truck

Partly this was because the route didn't have many truck chargers so the driver had to use lower power car chargers. Better and more powerful chargers would presumably have sped him up

Still, it shows what can be done

I bagsy not load sharing with that, if it plugs in to the AC43 on an old ESB triple-header. 😁

Yes I think it would have to be a single connector. My software based theory was linked to what Rivian does, it's a 400V pack nominal and all the drive motors etc are 400v but the battery can via software series connect to 800V to charge at 800V.

No, I'm delighted that one side of a 180kW charger isnt wasted providing a 50-70kW plug for chademo which is a dead standard. By all means on a 50kW have a CCS and a chademo, only one can be used anyway. But on a charger configured to load share between both plugs like the HPC are, it doesnt make sense to have a chademo plug.

Ecars have already confirmed no new chademo installs from 2024 and it looks like they are doing that already.

And no, I havent owned or driven a bimmer for years since my second e60.

What does that have to do with the delight of someone who once drove a BMW?

Careful, next somebody is going to say you could link several carriages together with a single driver and then we'll have reinvented the train again 😁

Because it's obvious he's delighted that finally HPC's are being installed and configured in such a way that will ultimately benefit the vast vast majority of EV drivers, and are no longer installed with 50% of said HPC being reserved for a tiny minority of EV drivers.

I'm going to throw sand into the wind here and guess that ELM couldn't give a rats ar$e about Nissan Leaf drivers... or the misery they may or may not face.

New month, same argument, and notably almost always gets started by a non-chademo driver

I read in boards.ie the new Athlone busses are 2 X CCS and the chargers they use seem to be 2 X CCS type.

Back on topic I think kinnegad was a supermacs driven easygo install rather than plaza group, and easygo said supermacs were paying for the free early usage. I wonder if ESB were even offered the site, while the layout seems an afterthought 2 X 50kW next to each other was advanced at the time and the location near the exit means it's rarely ICED. It's also quite close to the building once parked and you can keep an eye on your car for the emergency stop brigade.

I presume esb will apply for any future government tenders and there is talk in NI they need to reapply for existing sites to get future grants and the possibility existing NI sites may be given over to someone else winning the tender. That might be why they are not rolling out in NI late 2023 as promised, they may be waiting for future grant money, similar in ROI with lots of talk of future grants why would someone roll out now instead of delaying and lobbying for favourible grant terms that suit their plans. I am not saying that's the right move, but announcing new grants for public charging but not actually making them possible to apply for just causes confusion and delays.