Random EV thoughts.....

insolvent Tritium is being acquired by Indian charging company Exicom

https://www.electrive.com/2024/08/08/tritium-to-be-acquired-by-exicom/

"a"..."charger"...?

Seasoned EV drivers will drive past single site chargers towards hubs where they are less likely to encounter a queue, a broken charger without another one next to it, and possibly a better food offering. In the future old small petrol stations that serve local gas guzzling owners will struggle to survive. Most EV drivers will charge at home or work, public charging will be expensive and avoided. Public charging will mostly be performed on longer inter city trips at hubs. Apartments will eventually get chargers and possibly supermarkets will join the game with 50+kW chargers. It's unlikely a local petrol station with no real grid connection and room for 10-30 cars will be viable even if they had chargers, the grid upgrade and usage would be low. The whole business model of drivers visiting once a week and buying groceries and overpriced coffee and moving on after 5 minutes may be a world away. My (very young) kids thought the red petrol station was a fire station, as they had never been there and did not know what a petrol station was ! ⛽ I want a hub 300km from where I live or 150km+ so I can top up when I need it. Everywhere within 150-200km of my home is home charger range.

In some ways, just installing a single charger is a very bad idea.

Even if it's utilisation is high, very quickly you get a reputation as full, and similar reputation issues if it's down for any reason. First impressions are everything, and it's hard to recover from that.

(There's a petrol station that I avoid, purely because they served me horrible sausage rolls once. Irrational but I'm not taking that chance when I'm hungry and on the way to work.)

The problem is though, it's very hard to justify that extra investment up front for more chargers. There's also the issue that the install price doesn't necessarily drop the more you install.

The first X number is probably cheap enough, but once you hit your electricity supply limit, it's a big step up to install N+1 chargers.

and kicking out the competition more like

If Paulstown on the M9 can have 2, surely the M1 locations should have at least 2 too?

Media is both Anti EV bias and milking it with click bait for some time now.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058325642/increase-in-anti-ev-media-articles/p55

Haven't looked at the embedded videos but it's likely they aren't in synch with the rte article. My problem with the rte article is it ignores the media role in spreading fud, it's effect on sales, price war effect on new and used prices and also taxis seem to embraced EVs with a passion.

But it's good to have a conversation about where the market goes from here.

There is still a few free public charge points...

Even if they install the second charger at all their sites it's debatable if it'll be enough

Ionity seems to regularly have most of their chargers in use during the week. Just did a spot check and 3 chargers are in use on a random Saturday

Those Applegreen sites could probably support 8-10 chargers each and see a decent turnover of cars

Although between Ionity in City north and Toome, and Circle K in Clonsaugh I suspect they'll carve out the majority of charging business

Possibly both batteries are dead in both keys. It happened to us a few times, the main keys give a warning, and the spare keys rarely used have a flat battery. Beware there are lots of different battery sizes and types. They can be difficult to change and you could break the key. Bring it to a car parts place or a jewellery place and they will fit one for you.

Central working not working wouldn’t be related to a key fault, more likely a fuse blown. If it’s the remote locking thats not working and the coin type battery in the key is dead, then that’s an easy fix. Those key batteries rarely last more than 12months on a car with KESSY. Guide here on replacement for a MK7 Golf;

https://youtu.be/FVyLFuVqjlk?si=tbaYPYajQ1M7-2Ti