ESB eCars

Amen to all of this. I remember being 3rd car in a 4 car queue for a chademo charger in 2018 where I couldnt reach another charger and I knew at least half the queue were there for the free charging vs me needing to add another 15+kwh to get back to meath.

When was their initial goal to get that done again, 2020?

Re: the whole queuing conversation — I think it's not only just that there are more charge points per location now, but also if you pass somewhere with all charge points occupied, it's now much much easier to say "I'll keep going until the next one"

I was even out in rural Mayo there over the weekend, and never once struggled to get somewhere unoccupied with faster than 50kW capacity — plus I didn't need to charge as often anyway compared to the BMW i3 I had back in 2019.

Anna ☝🏻

If you can't fit 8 cars in the parking spaces can you still claim to be able to charge 8 cars at once?

The charge points are right alongside the famous N18 hump-back bridge but to get there from the nearest motorway exit they are 2.3km from M20-J2

This satisfies the definition of "near enough" as it's within 3km of the motorway network

https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/ev-chargers-grant-scheme-ireland-32130286

Racing is/was on in Leopardstown and the M50 was busy with traffic, a number of race-goers were parking in Carrickmines and walking across the M50 bridge. So I suppose a good few of them were topping up before parking up and heading back home. I'd say a few left the cars on charge too at the HPC as it was cheaper to pay the overstay fee there than Leopardstown's parking charge.

Actually I found out that it was an all-day disco event. Day-glow minis and pop-socks seemed to be all the rage on the Luas anyway - and that was on the over 40's!!

Kerry were playing football in Portlaoise yesterday. I'd imagine the pumps and the food jobs were busy there as well

I wasn't there long enough to observe it beyond the point when I departed, but the food court was thronged at 13:00 alright with Kerry fans but only three of the chargers were occupied, but at 15:30 the food court was half as busy but the charger queues were longer when I posted that. I'd estimate that the queues were around the 10 to 15 min mark alright. I suppose it's not too bad considering the day that was in it, but it indicates further problems ahead as sales growth continues.

Every time i mention having waited (like over 2 hours for a charge on the M1 3 weeks ago), someone else posts an excuse for it.

People seem to be blind to the terrible state of the charging infrastructure in Ireland. We need to have it so that when you are down to 30km left you can reliably locate and pull into a hub and get charging straight away.

See, its always someone elses fault.

Reminds me about 10 years ago i posted that i was stuck waiting for someone to come out and fix the charger in Finglas at 5pm on a Monday as it was broken. People came on and said it was not a problem and the problem was me and that I should have driven to the charger at Dublin port instead.

The charging infrastructure is muck. End of story.

What happened to cause you to wait 2 hours?

There's definitely still an element of strategy to it, SharkMX. On Sunday as I traveled from Limerick I checked the availability of the chargers in Obama Plaza before I passed Birdhill. My alternate was Circle K in Roscrea, but it was only just in-range of my remaining charge. I got into Obama with 9% (30km) on the battery, and Roscrea was another 14km away.

Trying to do all of that checking while on the road isn't always possible, especially if you don't have an integrated navigator with knowledge of the chargers (I've an 2019 Kona with just basic Android Auto). But yes, you're right, EV driving isn't ready for the mainstream yet as we don't have a sufficient density of high-speed charging locations to make up for pinch-days such as a warm Sunday in June.

Where? I'm guessing it only had a single charger so that sounds like one of the Applegreen sites

2 hours is definitely bad, this is why we need proper hubs that can charge upwards of 8 cars at once

Unfortunately the M1 currently has 1 hub if you're in a non Tesla, the Ionity hub in City north. Applegreen had a lot of promise but seem to be majorly dragging their feet with adding more chargers to their M1 service stations

The current EU directive is for hubs every 60km, so I don't think your 30km idea is going to fly