Now that the government has opted to adopt the electric car in Ireland , there is buzz of hype around it. It would appear that the only good thing about installing 3500 charging points is the hope that there will be more electrical use in the country.
There are some good points and some bad things about being an early adopter of technology especially in cars, like the mobile phone, there is still no common charger and considering that the mobile has being around for 20+ year now, there was ample time to agree on a common charger.
With petrol and diesel cars there’s a common connector, the common chargers that the ESB plans to install , 3500 of them, will likely have a common 3 pin plug that can be used to connect up using what ever charge cable that came with the car.
The fast charges are a different story as each manufacture will probably use different battery technology, it will be based on lithium ion or better, but to fast charge (10 - 20 minutes) there will be a custom charge cable as to get 100KW to 200KW of power transfered in 10 – 20 minutes would take quite a chunky cable and all the necessary electrical equipment to allow this to work correctly.
The problem I see is that there are going to be alot of different car manufactures competing to get their car and their technology at the top ( patents and licensing = money ).
Ireland runs the risk of having spend alot of money on infrastructure to support just a minority of car companies and their version of the electric car.
Before we sink money into a project there should be a debate on what is the best strategy for Ireland to take in electrifying our car culture before we waste more money that we cannot afford to loose.
If we are to benefit from being guinea pigs, then Irish firms should at least benefit from the cash injection that OUR government is putting into this, we have no car manufacturing plants in Ireland and Eamon Ryan’s idea about us developing the software to run on these cars is a load of hot air, the software is not going to off the shelf, its going to be custom build for each car, the development of the software will be by a dedicated software development team usually based close to the manufacturing plant.
I suppose it’s another way for Eamon to waste another 200 million ( 3 broadband).
And update:
I read an article about the roll out and a great quote:
“Given the dire state of the public purse, it would be better to let others pay for the demonstration of all-electric vehicles and roll them out in Ireland when, and if, the technology is ready,” said Tol, who believes it is too early to know if we are getting Betamax, an early version video cassette, or VHS, which won. “It’s a gamble and it’s not smart,” Tol concluded.