Last year saw some significant shifts in the electric car landscape in Ireland. Sales of electric cars continued to increase, albeit at a slower rate than in previous years, especially once the lower SEAI grant for buying an EV was introduced in July. Nevertheless, we’re buying more battery-powered cars than ever before, and one — the Volkswagen ID.4 — sold so well that it was actually the fifth best-selling car overall for the year.
Which then raises a long-standing question: where are we going to charge all of these electric cars? The charging network in Ireland has often been criticised for being sparse, unreliable, expensive to use and failing to meet the needs of those who don’t have access to their own driveway and home charger (a key enabler of those electric car running cost savings).
So, where do we stand? And are we any closer, at the beginning of 2024, to meeting the expected needs of a mass-market adoption of electric cars?
The answer is a complicated one, partially because it’s hard to estimate just how many active and functioning public EV chargers there are. Many are older points, which are either broken or otherwise out of service, but the latest estimate from Electromaps is that there are 1,055 charging ‘stations’ across Ireland, most of which have at least two connection points, and many of which have more than that. The final tally for individual charging connectors is somewhere north of 2,500, thanks in part to a massive increase in the second quarter of 2023 that saw public charger installations grow by some 129 per cent - according to the EV Country Attractiveness Index (EVCA).
However, the EVCA also noted that the third quarter of 2023 saw a sudden sharp decline in charger rollouts, as the year-on-year increase slowed to just 18 per cent. According to the EVCA: “Ireland has retained eleventh position on the EVCA Index. Despite a month of BEV sales decline in September 2023, and a low rate of charge-point growth, Ireland has continued to develop its fleet of BEVs and public charge-points over the course of Q323. Providing further clarity and incentivising continued growth Ireland’s Budget 2024, announced on 10th October 2023, extended the vehicle registration tax relief and benefit-in-kind tax rates currently enjoyed by BEVs until 2025. With the development of a national delivery plan for en-route charging due for release in late 2023, Ireland could reinvigorate its BEV market moving into 2024.”
However, even with that kind of optimism, the number of charging points still falls short of the 4,700 that the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) reckons that we need to keep pace with EV sales right now, and well short of the 20,000+ chargers that Transport & Environment says we’ll need by the end of the decade to support a total shift to electric-only sales.
In 2024, thankfully, the roll-out will continue. According to the ESB: “2023 was a record year for the construction of new EV charging hubs by ESB ecars. We constructed a further 16 high-powered charging hubs (representing 84 additional charge points) in Ireland, including Barack Obama Plaza (Tipperary), Kinnegad (Westmeath) and along the Wild Atlantic Way. To date, we have built 35 charging hubs with another two in construction. Carrickmines and Blanchardstown in Dublin will both go live in early 2024. Our focus continues to be on providing charging hubs on high volume routes, such as motorways and national routes, with amenities that are well-lit and accessible to all. We have also been working on improving the existing chargers on our network, upgrading rapid chargers around the country from 50kW to 100kW, enabling quicker charging and less queuing for our customers.”
Other operators are rolling out more high-speed charging hubs. IONITY — a company created and funded by a group of electric-car-making companies including BMW, Mercedes, Ford, Volkswagen and Hyundai — is currently building several new charging plazas, including three in Northern Ireland, one of which is a massive 11-bay plaza on the outskirts of Belfast.
SSE, a company well-known for its domestic electricity supply services, is also expanding into public charging. The company is about to activate its first fast-charging plaza in Mullingar and has plans to start work on at least one more plaza per month throughout 2024. These are more aimed at commercial vans and heavy trucks, but they’re certainly capable of use by car drivers, and SSE says that it has plans to expand in the car sphere too.
Maxol says that it also has plans for a roll-out of high-speed charging hubs across Ireland, with “plans for multiple site acquisitions” in early 2024.
Charging speeds are also on the rise. The ESB has said that it’s upgrading all of its older 50kW fast chargers to 100kW speeds, while Maxol’s sites will concentrate on mostly 150kW chargers, with some 200kW units and a smattering of 50kW for older cars. IONITY’s chargers are all 350kW units, and while SSE’s initial plans revolve largely around 150kW charging, a spokesperson told us that the plan is to later uprate those units to 360kW charging, when suitable power is available on the grid. Meanwhile EasyGo is continuing with its plans to install 50kW charging at locations such as supermarkets and converting old Eir payphone sites into electric chargers.
Belfast-based Weev is also rolling out more charging points, and while it’s generally more focused on the Northern Irish market, it will spread out its network in the Republic, part of plans to expand to a total of ten megawatts of charging capacity on the island of Ireland. Weev already has 136 individual charging points across the country, with nine of these being fast chargers of at least 50kW output.
Charging company Fastned will also make its Irish debut this year, with plans for two 300kW charging hubs in Northern Ireland.
All of which will help, without question. Ireland’s public charging network has improved and expanded out of all recognition since we began our electric car journey more than a decade ago, but there’s still some way to go. Network reliability needs to improve, as does the sheer physical availability of charging points to bring an end to lengthy queues. The EU’s new legislation, requiring fast-charging points at least every 60km on major routes, will help, but many are warning that it’s too easy to meet that regulation with a single connection, which could lead to more, rather than less, frustration.
And while it’s true that the majority of electric car charging will almost always be done at home, the fact is that if we’re all to keep mobile into the next decade, a lot more needs to be done to install sufficient charging capacity across Ireland.
Carzone - 16-Jan-2024