ESB eCars

You have to draw the line somewhere and vote with your tyres. I already do that whenever possible and use the SuC only, given a choice. Luckily your 150c/kWh is not there, so haven't had to divert 100 km.

I would not give eCars any pricing ideas, the prices are bad enough as they are.

Just an example: last summer we did a road trip of 8k in kilometres. Would have cost me roughly 2k in charging at 150 c/kWh. That really would have eaten in the hotel budget.

I think thats the price of owning an EV. If you go outside normal short range use, they are a total pith. Luckily in Ireland we dont have massive distances to drive. Wait til the electricity at the chargers starts getting taxed like Petrol too :) Then you will really be in for a shock.

That’s a pretty tough sale for anyone thinking about switching to EV, especially for fleets or anyone without home charging. That kind of price would just ensure the continued sale of ICE vehicles.

Not really, the vast majority of people have home charging, don't run fleets, and aren't driving more than 300km in one go on a regular basis.

I really don’t think that most drivers would.

If I was sitting with an ICE at home right now and I was thinking about switching, do you think that paying more than €1/kWh would be an attractive proposition? You're right that it wouldn't have a significant financial impact on me but people are rarely that rational, they would just see it costing more to drive an EV and decide not to buy one.

You're also missing the point about fleets. It doesn't matter that they're not the majority, it matters that they do far more mileage than most private owners. Some of them routinely do more than 300km in a day. The price of DC charging matters and doubling or trebling the cost of that would make most companies switch back to ICE.

And that's the difference between AC and DC charging.

They do this in Holland and Norway already, very well. Any resident can request via their local municipality an AC charger be installed on their road if they don't have off street parking. These would be at a cost similar to local day rates.

DC, especially 100kW+, are an en route charging and different. 50kW DC could be a sweet spot for charging at shopping centers etc.

It has not been resolved. Its getting worse every year.

Anecdotally, I've experienced zero queueing in the last two years. My two most frequent trips (Dublin to/from the west and north-west) have both seen a big increase in the number of fast charging sites available, each of them with multiple plugs per site so no more SPoF crap. New operators like Circle K, Applegreen and Weev have entered the market (or grown significantly), Tesla have opened some of their sites to non-Tesla vehicles and EasyGo have done a decent job of installing slower 50kW chargers in smaller urban locations.

The whole country went mad for diesel back in the 2010's because they were saving maybe 20% on fuel. Charging an EV at 70c/kWh is the equivalent of €2.10/L which might go some way to explaining the drop in demand for EVs and the plummeting resale/trade-in prices being experienced

It was more so a result of Govt Policy. Govt reforms in 2009 of the vehicle registration and motor tax lead to the dramatic shift from petrol to diesel cars. Fuel savings were an additional benefit.

Norway is an example where policy settings can drive EV changeover like the Irish Govt did with diesels.

Norway imposes hefty vehicle import duties and car registration taxes, making cars significantly more expensive than in most other countries. By waiving these duties for electric vehicles, Norway is effectively subsidizing EV purchases at a level that other countries couldn't afford. [Source:WEF]

And whilst Govt policy is always the biggest factor in determining the new car buying habits, you do make a good point on prices. But equally it does coincide with the fact that EV incentives are being tapered back in Ireland as a result of Govt policy at the same time.

Eitherway, it would be good to see Govt investigating if price gouging is going on in ESB public charging rates.

Sorry, to be clear, I was playing devil's advocate to try and understand what that poster was saying. I agree with you, I think the infrastructure has gotten much better. I've been driving EV for 9 years and IMHO it was at its worst in around 2017-18 (just before fees) and has gotten much better since after covid.

So many EV drivers ive spoken to insist they never had to queue. Even ones im talking to who are in the queue behind me insist they never have to queue. 2 weeks ago i was in a queue for hours and had the same conversation in the queue yet again. She says "Ive never had to wait to get a charge". A neighbor insisted one day that she never had to queue while in the house talking about her EV. All the while not recognizing me that was talking to her for an hour while i was waiting to plug ion only a couple of weeks before.

Its chargers per EV that is the problem. As the number of EVs grows the amount of chargers available is not growing fast enough. People who just state the number of chargers are increasing are not actually stating the real picture. There seems to be some sort of EV rose tinted glasses. I assume its because someone spent a lot of money on their car and dont want anyone else to know that sometimes there can be drawbacks.

The phrase "Suits my needs" or "good planning" or "you shoulda done x, y,z " comes up a lot when talking about EV issues. These are excuse phrases. For example someone comes on complaining about the price at a charging station or that they want chargers on their road and it turns out that they have an EV but no home charging. Out comes the "Suits my needs" but not the "bad planning" that is the apt phrase.

There are good things and bad things about EVs, same as any car. Dont be burying your head in the sand to the bad things or they will never get sorted.

Personally in the past year I have queue'd for charging twice. First one was in Riga last summer and it was a painful one, an hours wait. The second time was 2 minutes at Ionity, Cashel.

I have public charged 55% out of the 3134 kWh used in the past 12 months according to the Tesla app so pretty good track record here.

Generally when I'm in the car, I have four little ones with me. If I had to queue, you can be damned sure I'd remember every painful Wheels-on-the-bus-are-we-there-yet-I-need-to-go-wee minute of it!

The new 4 x dual 200kW hub at the Crescent shopping Centre in Limerick seems to be live

https://www.plugshare.com/location/556336