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Tech Talk with Jess Kelly

EVs: Charger access, rented accommodation and scrappage

18 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 15.469 Jess Kelly

Yeah, you're very welcome along to Tech Talk. This is Jess Kelly with you here on News Talk. Coming up over the next hour, Derek Riley of Nevo.ie is here with the latest news and reviews in the world of EVs. And he's going to answer some of your questions.

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Chapter 2: What is the latest news in the world of electric vehicles?

15.91 - 24.3 Derek Riley

Plus... People around here understand that when I say no, that's the end of the debate. I'm not two years out of a dorm room anymore, Charlie. Look around.

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24.28 - 45.563 Jess Kelly

yet the social reckoning is on the horizon we look ahead to that new film and revisit the story it tells as always you can email the show tech talk at news talk.com or you'll find me on instagram at jess kelly nt but we're going to start this week with our dear friend derrick riley of nevo.ie derrick how are you

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45.813 - 48.941 Derek Riley

Very, very good, Jess. I'm in the country, which is always a plus.

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50.083 - 64.235 Jess Kelly

It's half the battle. And so there's no envy on my part this time round. There's plenty to talk through, as always. Regular listeners will know that at the end of every segment, I throw out... offering people to send in questions for you to answer.

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64.315 - 86.029 Jess Kelly

And the last time you were on, we got quite a few because what stood out to me last time was we covered sort of a full breadth of offerings in terms of EVs. We had some notions ones, we had some smaller, more compact ones that are more affordable, obviously, and people were intrigued. So if you don't mind, if I could just throw some of those questions to you and get your take, if that's all right.

86.87 - 98.084 Derek Riley

I think a lot more people are interested now since we've had the scrappage scheme, which we'll talk about after these questions as well, announced recently and it's coming on the 1st of July. So a lot more people have, their interest has been piqued.

98.545 - 118.679 Jess Kelly

Yeah, no, it's great. It's great to see. So we will talk about the scrappage scheme, but let's start with an email here from Sennan who said, Hi guys, I want to ask about the viability of having an EV when you live in rented accommodation without access to a home charger. It seems to detract from the convenience when you can't charge overnight at home. Any input or thoughts would be appreciated.

118.719 - 119.644 Jess Kelly

That's from Senan.

120.755 - 136.252 Derek Riley

So a couple of different things with Senan. Senan, your management company can avail of a grant from the SEAI, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, and what that will do is it will fund towards the rental company or the management company putting in a charger for use of tenants.

Chapter 3: How can renters access EV chargers without a home charging option?

537.358 - 556.434 Derek Riley

So I always go longer if you can and put it somewhere that it'll suit a lot of different cars because you might change your car in three years time and obviously the charger is still going to be there. So you want to be able to reach all four corners of the car in the car parking space. And then there's a smart charger or a dumb charger. Really, the dumb charger is like a socket on the wall.

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556.534 - 571.988 Derek Riley

You can't tell it when to stop, when to start. Some cars will allow you to do that. But then there's smart chargers. So the one that I have at the moment is the new Zappy Glow from My Energy. And it can do both. You can turn all the smarts off. It'll just be a dumb socket. Plug in, it'll charge. Plug out, it'll stop.

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572.589 - 587.385 Derek Riley

Or you can tell it, I only want you to turn on between 11 o'clock at night and 8 o'clock in the morning. So my tariff is with SSE Electricity. I know that's when the cheaper rate is going to be for me. And it'll only, even though I plug it in at 7 o'clock in the evening, it'll only kick on at 11 o'clock at night.

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587.626 - 604.388 Derek Riley

And then the following morning, it'll kick off at 8 o'clock in the morning because that's when it goes into daytime rate. And so you can be a smart ers. And then there's some of them out there that will say, I'll only put energy into the car when there's enough solar. And so it'll divert the solar energy into your car. And so, yeah, there's a couple of different things.

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604.428 - 621.051 Derek Riley

There's lots of different shapes and sizes and colors out there in the marketplace. So there's a bit of research to be done. And then you might talk to your local electrician and say, well, what ones are you fitting? What ones are causing you less hassle? What do you recommend? And your electrician will tell you what he recommends or she will recommend differently.

621.031 - 636.945 Derek Riley

So yeah, there's a bit to it and a great point and thank her so much for sending in that email, even though she's gone through the wars and gone through the stress of not doing it herself. She said, you know what, I'm going to save people some time and email Jess and Derek and forewarn people like that, for sure.

637.245 - 649.135 Jess Kelly

Yeah, we love any other sort of little tips and tricks or indeed questions, always send them in, techtalk at newstalk.com. Can I ask my required stupid question of the segment bit now, please? Do you mind?

649.175 - 650.937 Derek Riley

Yes, you're allowed now, yeah.

651.659 - 663.423 Jess Kelly

So, you know, when somebody has the charger outside their house and maybe they're gone away on holidays, what's to stop somebody pulling into their drive and using their charger and using their electricity?

Chapter 4: What support is available for installing EV chargers in rental accommodations?

829.37 - 834.579 Derek Riley

Lots of people talking about it, lots of people interested in it. And I think it's going to be a raring success.

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835.16 - 855.293 Jess Kelly

We were chatting about it here in the Newstalk office when it was announced. And one of the questions that came up was about that balancing or the distribution of the ratio of it. And as you mentioned, you know, there's a higher portion available or, you know, the allocation is higher for those outside of urban areas.

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855.273 - 870.287 Jess Kelly

And a few people from those regions of the country were making the point that it may not be fully practical or maybe those people would think it's not fully practical to have an EV because of the infrastructure. So we always mention your beloved Belmullet in examples like this.

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870.707 - 891.574 Jess Kelly

But if you're living outside an urban area and you don't have, you know, multiple hotels and shops and shopping centres and all the rest where you can charge along the way, I suppose I'm curious as to the rationale here. Is it not better that we get people in urban areas where the infrastructure is good to make the move across and avail of the scrappage scheme?

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892.617 - 907.741 Derek Riley

Great question. And the reason that they've said this is because in more rural areas, the likes of Belmullet or Donegal or Dingle, it's more so the only option that that person has is car. There isn't a public transport bus network, Lewis network, train network, etc.

908.161 - 914.912 Derek Riley

And so if you're in Donegal, if you don't have a car, the only way that you can get around is either walking, cycling or the very infrequent bus route.

914.892 - 943.465 Derek Riley

in the area and so they're saying we're going to be people are going to have cars anyway we're going to give them extra money and allocate more funds towards them so that they if they want to go electric they can go electric and the vast majority of people in the country have a driveway can put in a home charger and so you're not having that issue with having off-street parking because i think one of the relation to uh like we talked about the rental accommodation off-street parking so in more urban areas it's sometimes even difficult to get that home charger

944.373 - 953.235 Jess Kelly

But again, to the point of in the Belmullet or the Donegal or whatever it is, is the infrastructure there? I suppose you would need the home charger, right?

953.587 - 972.155 Derek Riley

100%. Home charger number one. And then public charging, because even the most affordable electric vehicle that we had, that we looked at on Evo, after the grant is under €13,000 and you're still getting 200 kilometres range, that's getting you halfway across the country. And there's going to be another 600 fast chargers around the country on national primary and national secondary roads.

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