My way or the Highway!

As an EV driver it may certainly seem churlish to criticise the recently announced EV Charging Infrastructure En-Route Grant Scheme. The 'more the merrier' may seem like the right response but sadly this is a flawed scheme heading down the wrong road!

The flaws in this scheme were highlighted to me from a recent 600KM journey I took travelling from the South East to the South West and back again. I should also state upfront that my critique draws on my views as to how public money should be spent. So I'm not just saying that this a badly designed incentive I'm also saying it's a bad use of public monies.

The first alarm bell was raised before I even read one word of text describing this scheme and this was when I saw the map graphic being used! The map shows that familiar 'hub and spoke' motorway/primary route map. Of all the journeys I have taken across the country in the last year my travel on the motorways has been the least stressful around charging. Yes, I get stressed about what I have to pay for my charging at motorway service areas, Yes, I get stressed about not getting anywhere close to the stated KW rating, but not about finding a charger (as long as I'm prepared to wait!).

In fairness the scheme does state that these new 'recharging pools' can be within 3KM of an NRN exit so it seems not intended to put these pools into existing motorway service areas, but why not!

What would be interesting here is to understand the thinking of the scheme designers around this 3KM condition. To answer this you need to decide which way they assume the traffic is flowing!

In scenario #1 the EV driver is traveling along a National Route on a long enough journey to warrant a charge. Having these off motorway charging pools gives them more options on where to charge, surely a good thing? Here the traffic flow is off the primary route you're travelling to a charge 'pool' and then back onto your primary route again. The assumption here is that the EV driver is happy for 'any port in a storm' and 6KM roundtrip off the NRN is a small inconvenience!

In scenario #2 these charging pools are seen as funnel points for EV drivers going onto the motorway/dual carriageway. They use these charging pools to 'top up' before they drive their longer distance (at a range eating 120 KMPH!). Here the traffic flow is one way onto their primary route. The assumption here I surmise is that the EV driver will gladly detour a few KMs in order to fully charge up before heading out on the NRN.

I do suspect the designers of the scheme had the 'off/on' objective in mind, i.e provide more charging locations near the routes with the higher volumes of traffic! On these high volume routes there surely will be plenty of EV drivers who would gladly drive a couple KMs off their route to get a charge, goes the logic!.

Someone somewhere came up with the 3KM limit from an exit. Could this suggest some driver behaviour modelling was done? Was there a EV driver survey conducted to show that 80% of EV drivers would drive 3KM but this fell to only 20% when asked to drive 5KM. I doubt if any such modelling or survey was done and the 3KM was probably a 'sounds like a good number' choice. As an EV driver it makes no sense! If I really really needed a charge would I decide not to exit for one of these charging pools because it was at 5 KM?

In reality no driver, whether BEV or ICE wants to go off their route to get fuel. This scheme is titled 'en-route' charging but is paradoxically incentivising an 'off route' charging model.

If the intention is to actually provide more charging points before your get on a national route well that is a good idea, to a point! If I am going on a long journey I may have to drive 10-20KM anyway before I even get onto a motorway or dual carriageway. So if 'en-route' I could top up before hitting the motorway this is something that would be beneficial.

OK, so if I don't agreee with the locations for these charging pools then what about the pool itself. Here again the design brief is curiously not fit for purpose!. The pool must be capable of delivering a min of 1200KW and have at least four 150KW chargers. So, we could have 8x 150KW chargers, 4x 150KW and 12x 50KW chargers, or would 3x 350Kw chargers and one 150KW charger satisfy requirement. This brings me to the question of what exactly is the net desired outcome here. Is it to have more high power chargers or is it to have more charge points? The fact that this is not clearly stated in the selection criteria is another flaw! We need to be clear what is the objective of this public money spend. If I am 'en-route' somewhere I want as fast a charge as my car can take, if I am at my destination I would be happy with a 10KW AC charger! This 'en-route' scheme should be forward thinking of the types of EVs coming onto the market and specify a min of six 250 KW chargers (with two CCS leads), i.e. 12 charging locations. With a grid connection to deliver at least the rated max to each charger.

However, I can't get away from the suggested locations of these pools. Here a look at the evolution of petrol forecourts would be useful to see my annoyance.

I can remember 'pre-motorway' driving and I can also remember the disussions around the number and spacing of motorway service stations as the network belatedly started to roll out (God bless that Tiger!). There was absolutley no shortage of places to fill up my tank and the range of a full tank then would easily surpass that of an extended range Tesla today! But somehow all us ICE drivers were up in arms that these new motorways stretches didn't have enough service stations on them. No one back then suggested that if you were foolish enough to get on the motorway without enough fuel for your journey you could just drive 3 KM off the motorway to 'top up' and get back on the road again.

Despite the fact that there is no motorway stretch on the island of Ireland long enough to empty a tank of diesel it was deemed necessary to have service areas roughly ever 50 KMs. Bizarre in hindsight really for vehicles that absolutley didn't need to refuel if the owner simply topped up his or her tank at the dozen or so petrol stations within 5 KM of their home. Can any of us remember why it was seen as so critical then to have 'refuelling' stations so closely spaced on our motorways?

Roll forward 20 or so years and now the acquiescence to range paranoid ICE drivers seems not to apply to EV drivers. Somehow or other it is now makes sense for EV drivers to refuel anywhere but not on the motorway! Discrimination surely! ICE drivers who boast they could travel 50 KMs on the vapours left in their tanks get pride of place on the motorway and are spoilled with choice of 20 or 30 refuelling stations. The EV driver is alloted a half dozen charging bays, if they are lucky!

A good government scheme would be to mandate that all existing NRN service areas should have equal number EV charging stations as petrol/diesel stations. The operator has to pay a levy for every fossil fuel pump he has above EV stations. The money should be used to grant aid this transition and if the operators won't comply use the levy funds to grant aid those who will!

Going back to my own 600 Km round trip I realised that all this Government money wouldn't have helped me on my journey, as I avoided all motorways. What I did find was some of the new excellent ESB high power charging stations along my route. Not 'pools' appended with a long umbilical cord to motorways but one or two units in towns along my way.

Either evict fossil fuel vendors from the public motorway network or scatter 150 KW chargers across every town and village in Ireland, but please don't let us all drown in these 'pools' of ignorance!