How Many EV Chargers Does Ireland Need?

Now that the conversation around electric cars has moved on from out-dated myths such as range anxiety, the broader media conversation is now focusing on the issue of charging infrastructure.

While many publications will tell you that we need more charging points – and they’re not wrong – they often neglect to inform readers about the varying types of charger, and seldom do they focus on the quality of chargers over the quantity of them.

Today we look at how many EV chargers Ireland actually needs, and why we should focus our investment on future-proofing the charging infrastructure, rather than just focusing on increasing the volume of those available – and how this could save money and resources in the long term.

Listening to the experts

This article was inspired by an insightful statement made at the 2020 Irish EV Summit.

Simon Acton, Owner of NextEcoCar and Chairman of the Irish EV Owners Association, commented: “In reality we probably don’t need as much public charging infrastructure as people think we need, as a large proportion of people will charge their EVs either at home or at work, unless they are completing journeys beyond the range of their vehicle.”

“However, people are so used to needing to go somewhere special to fuel their vehicle that many still perceive that the same will be required when they drive an EV.  So we need effective public education programs speaking to what it’s like to live with an EV to help people understand that there is a paradigm shift required in their thinking.”

We hope that our work at IrishEVs, and this article in particular, will be part of that paradigm shift.

Three-pin or Super-Fast?

While every single three-pin wall socket in Ireland is a potential charging spot for an electric car, that isn’t always the best option as it will typically need to charge for a minimum of eight hours to top up from empty.

Slower chargers are great for homes, parking garages, transport hubs and workplaces, where cars are likely to sit for hours on end, and slower charging is generally considered to be kinder to the longevity of the car’s batteries.

However, to date Ireland has primarily invested in slower chargers.

While these are fine in the locations mentioned above, they do not meet the demands of people driving longer distances, especially those driving on motorways. As such they will only have a short shelf life and we need to look at future-proofing our charging network to add capacity in order to avoid wasting money and resources on unnecessary and obsolete chargers.

In addition, Ireland is still behind many of its European neighbours for the availability and accessibility of its chargers.

Convenience and accessibility

While Ireland does need to increase the number of chargers that it has available, it also needs to look at the quality of those in operation already.

While there are many thousands of public charge points across the island of Ireland, they are not always in the optimum location or in the optimum state of maintenance.

While charging providers are looking to save money by not including a charging cable – as this can be a major maintenance cost if they are damaged or vandalised – this has a major impact in the usefulness of their chargers, and can cause issues for a driver who does not have a cable with them – not to mention the reduced boot space caused by having carry a cable around that shouldn’t be needed.

We must also address the complexity of charging in Ireland today, as the wide number of charging operators can mean having several apps installed on your phone and not all of the chargers are as easy as simply plugging in and pressing a button.

Crashing apps and chargers with simple, and small, dot-matrix screens with little information available to help first-time users can be a major hindrance.

Then of course there is the issue of accessibility for users in wheelchairs or who have other personal requirements – the topic of a broader upcoming article – which are seemingly rarely taken into account by any of the charging companies.

How many chargers does Ireland need?

To understand just how many chargers Ireland actually needs, we reached out to a number of sources from across the charging and EV sectors to understand the data that they have available.

One such contributor is UFODrive, whose electric rental cars have covered millions of kilometres across Europe over the last few years. Their data highlights that Ireland would benefit from adopting the approach taken in the Netherlands, where there are 30 supercharger destinations each offering over 20 charging points.

Aidan McClean, CEO of UFODrive, said: “Ease of use with simplicity of interface between the car, the driver and the charger is the number one priority – it has to be easier than the petrol pump experience to encourage mass adoption.”

That said, we must focus on developing a charging infrastructure that is not only fit for purpose now, but which is also designed to meet the growing needs of electric cars in 10 year and 20 years as the number of EV drivers grows, and vehicles evolve to support faster charging speeds.

This will reduce the need to upgrade charging points, and the unnecessary consumption of metals and concrete – as well as the emissions that construction creates. After all, the only solution for the Climate Crisis is to do more with less.

We must not fail in this simple, but critical, task.