ESB eCars

E cars even listening to the grumps about min balances.

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Dear EV Driver, 

Following our previous correspondence regarding a change to the minimum account balance required to start a charge, a number of drivers experienced difficulties charging due to the minimum balance increasing from €/£5 to €/£20. In response to customer feedback, this will revert to €/£5.  

This change will come into effect immediately. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. 

To reflect this, the pricing terms are available at https://esb.ie/what-we-do/ecars/price-plans.

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I was just wondering if that was partly because of the letter

Nice to finally get a win for once 😁

I expect they had hundreds of failed charges where people gave up due to incorrect minimum credit. It looks like you need to manually top up and change settings in app.yourself to charge without issue, at least that was my experience.

You'll need to check your Audi charging card because they might apply their own overstay fee

In general, you should move your car if it's charged and free it up for someone else

Was the SoC high? Although I'd expect more even above 80% SoC

Definitely sounds like a site limit, although it could be temporary.

I get the feeling ESBN can quietly throttle the chargers, possibly to the site's grid limit

About 8.30 this morning, no other chargers in use. SOC around 40%.

eCars always blame the car. To be fair, that’s probably the correct answer a lot of the time but it’s no help when it’s definitely not the right answer.

LFP batteries do not like cold. If you drove there without a 2 hour motorway or yolo drive beforehand, or without setting preheating, I'd expect a max of 50-70kW. I get 70kW on ionity with no preheating up to a max of about 130-140 if I preheat. Even with an hour of motorway before, 70kW is possible in cold. These are not like li-ion standard, li-ion lfp is a different chemistry

Damn, the Ecars chargers there were crap but the more chargers the better

Hopefully soon Applegreen put extra chargers in where the Ecars spaces are now

I suspect you're correct, the Applegreen chargers there are still a single unit, so we're back down to SPOF on the M1

Roll on Ionity Belfast, at least we'll have reliable charging in NI (never thought I'd say that 😬)

Very little notice, that's a disaster now on the M1. Expect queues over bank holiday and general chaos. I expect the physical units will be there for a while causing confusion. Missing units on app will cause more confusion. Things are getting worse before they might get better.

According to plugshare app entries for some of these sites some of these are already powered off with no advance notice.

Might be that someone hit the E-Stop and never disengaged it. I've had to do it a couple of times when the charger sh!t the bed and locked the connector into the car. I always remember to switch it on afterwards

Also heard of a few people ending charging sessions that way, they must have some selective sight to miss the "emergency" part

I'm guessing they ran out of parts and didn't want to order more if the chargers were going to be removed soon anyway

Still bad form, they could have decommissioned the chargers anyway and replaced them with newer units if they ended up staying in those sites

Of course if they decommissioned them they'd have to report fewer chargers in service, but if they're broken then it can be swept under the rug 🙄

Some positive news, looks like an 8 car hub might be planned for Blanchardstown shopping centre

https://planning.agileapplications.ie/fingal/application-details/95289

The application doesn't mention Ecars specifically, but the picture of the charger and graphics for the spaces match what they'd normally do

I suspect this hub will get plenty of business from people in the area looking to charge, the current chargers there seem to always be busy

Not sure if they'll get a lot of people pulling in from the N3 though, traffic around there is usually pretty bad and they'll have the option of the Maxol charger in Mulhuddart soon. And the Airtricity hub in the middle of nowhere in Ballycoolin, if they're willing to chance it