Electric Vehicles (EVs)

[Cultured_Bogan]

What I want to know is how he hell we will power these electric cars once they close down all the coal power stations , solar don’t work at night , battery’s aren’t big enough to hold the charge and the wind doesn’t always blow

Very true, however reliance on coal should be reduced as much as possible. Selling solar back to the grid costs nothing to generate for the power company and utilises existing infrastructure, and they just onsell at a premium to homes without renewables.

 

[crazycat]

I just want one that will give me normal highway speeds and 1000klms a charge and is a family sedan and a reasonable price. Then i'm in.

What Car gives you 1000km a tank?
Seriously. I know BMW was bragging about an Extra tank capacity SUV. Cant remember if it qas Diesel or petrol but it was huge, close to 100L.

That car is NOT coming at a reasonable price.

400km is qbout what you are getting, some 500k. Yes people.have gone around Australia in a Tesla.

If your crossing rhe Nullabour, sure. Otherwise putting in Charging stations is Quite damn reasonable.

 

[Cultured_Bogan]

I just want one that will give me normal highway speeds and 1000klms a charge and is a family sedan and a reasonable price. Then i'm in.

What Car gives you 1000km a tank?
Seriously. I know BMW was bragging about an Extra tank capacity SUV. Cant remember if it qas Diesel or petrol but it was huge, close to 100L.

That car is NOT coming at a reasonable price.

400km is qbout what you are getting, some 500k. Yes people.have gone around Australia in a Tesla.

If your crossing rhe Nullabour, sure. Otherwise putting in Charging stations is Quite damn reasonable.

Yeah the long range model 3 will apparently give you 580km but according to previous posts that relies heavily on regen braking and not indicative of highway ranges (articles I've found show that it'll give you about 490km at 110km/h.)

 

[TillLindemann]

"UK electric car inquiries soar during fuel supply crisis"

As petrol stations in parts of the UK started running out of fuel on Friday, business at Martin Miller’s electric car dealership in Guildford, Surrey, started soaring.

After what ended up being his company EV Experts busiest day ever, interest does not appear to be dying down. This week the diary is booked up with test drives and the business is low on stock.

“People buy electric cars for environmental reasons, for cost-saving reasons and because the technology’s great,” he said. “But Friday was one of those moments where people said, ‘Do you know what, this is a sign that we need to go electric’.”

While scenes of chaos play out at petrol stations across the country amid shortages, for many electric vehicle (EV) dealers the fuel crisis has led to an unexpected surge in inquiries and sales.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/27/uk-electric-car-inquiries-soar-fuel-supply-crisis

Article goes longer, but you get the point. UK is already well ahead of Australia on EVs, but I think their current fuel crisis will be a tipping point to mass adoption.

SLR 🙂

Haha I've already been spruiking the same story on the Sunrise thread.

 

[Magpie_Magic]

What I want to know is how he hell we will power these electric cars once they close down all the coal power stations , solar don’t work at night , battery’s aren’t big enough to hold the charge and the wind doesn’t always blow

Very true, however reliance on coal should be reduced as much as possible. Selling solar back to the grid costs nothing to generate for the power company and utilises existing infrastructure, and they just onsell at a premium to homes without renewables.

Without coal and oil the world will face starvation and little power for decades.

There is nothing in the pipeline to power ships and planes other than oil for decades.
The Toyota CEO recently said that if all cars were electric the grids would be totally overloaded.
The transition will be slower than people think.

 

[Cultured_Bogan]

What I want to know is how he hell we will power these electric cars once they close down all the coal power stations , solar don’t work at night , battery’s aren’t big enough to hold the charge and the wind doesn’t always blow

Very true, however reliance on coal should be reduced as much as possible. Selling solar back to the grid costs nothing to generate for the power company and utilises existing infrastructure, and they just onsell at a premium to homes without renewables.

Without coal and oil the world will face starvation and little power for decades.

Did you read what I said? You can have a balance of both. It would be prudent to diversify your energy load. Having your eggs all in one basket either way is reckless.

 

[Magpie_Magic]

As for electric vehicles themselves they are a good concept but probably hydrogen better.
Problem with EVs for me is the cost for what you get. The build quality on tesla seems ordinary and they look "cheap" somehow, and aluminum isn't easily repairable.
I know their quick but their means of power delivery makes them a little boring and apart from first lot perhaps I see them have poor resale value and bugger all collectabillity.

But would be good at say 20k for daily use and we could still have our "cruisers " for the weekend.
Life's getting pretty boring as it is.

 

[patwalker]

Very true, however reliance on coal should be reduced as much as possible. Selling solar back to the grid costs nothing to generate for the power company and utilises existing infrastructure, and they just onsell at a premium to homes without renewables.

That's not quite true for the most part. Solar peaks in the middle of the day when there is little to no demand. Quite regularly the price per MW paid by AEMO to the producers is negative meaning that it actually costs them to make power. As a result, much of the solar power produced is effectively wasted. The other issue solar in particular causes is a massive surge of power and subsequent drop every morning as the sun rises?drops or as clouds move around.
The electricity grid is already running WELL above it's designed maximums particularly in NSW and all the EV chargers which pull huge currents are only making it worse. The conundrum is that while all this "cheap" solar power is being produced most people are at work and therefore not charging their cars. They come home and do it at night which means that the vast majority are being charged by coal fired electricity as most homes don't have batteries to store all that solar. And even if they did it would need to be huge to store enough energy to charge an EV. There are also losses to consider, converting it from DC to AC to run the charger then back to DC is pretty inefficient but can't really be helped unless you were to store the charge at a much higher voltage than normal specifically for the EV. It's a great idea but it's a long long way from happening on a large scale. Especially with a government unwilling to invest in the future.
For me, Hydrogen will still be cheaper and easier to roll out long term even with EV's headstart.

 

[Cultured_Bogan]

Very true, however reliance on coal should be reduced as much as possible. Selling solar back to the grid costs nothing to generate for the power company and utilises existing infrastructure, and they just onsell at a premium to homes without renewables.

That's not quite true for the most part. Solar peaks in the middle of the day when there is little to no demand. Quite regularly the price per MW paid by AEMO to the producers is negative meaning that it actually costs them to make power. As a result, much of the solar power produced is effectively wasted. The other issue solar in particular causes is a massive surge of power and subsequent drop every morning as the sun rises?drops or as clouds move around.
The electricity grid is already running WELL above it's designed maximums particularly in NSW and all the EV chargers which pull huge currents are only making it worse. The conundrum is that while all this "cheap" solar power is being produced most people are at work and therefore not charging their cars. They come home and do it at night which means that the vast majority are being charged by coal fired electricity as most homes don't have batteries to store all that solar. And even if they did it would need to be huge to store enough energy to charge an EV. There are also losses to consider, converting it from DC to AC to run the charger then back to DC is pretty inefficient but can't really be helped unless you were to store the charge at a much higher voltage than normal specifically for the EV. It's a great idea but it's a long long way from happening on a large scale. Especially with a government unwilling to invest in the future.
For me, Hydrogen will still be cheaper and easier to roll out long term even with EV's headstart.

Fair comments.

 

[patwalker]

It's not at all uncommon to see garden sprinklers on transformers to cool them off in sydney on hot days while everyone has their aircons running. When SA went dark a few years ago what should have happened is that we should have cut them off to deal with their own stupidity but instead we were forced to carry even more of their burden by changing the safety limits at which the SA/VIC inter-connectors open off. They are now building a NSW/SA inter-connector so that we can prop them up further. WHEN they manage to trip out the entire eastern seaboard you will be looking at around 10-12 days for everything to be livened back up. The kicker is that the suburbs with the most solar, such as inner city sydney will be the LAST to be turned back on as they are inherently the most unstable. All the electric cars will have gone flat and the people who pushed the hardest for renewables will be the ones who suffer the most when it all turns to shit. I'm not against renewables, but i think we've gone down the wrong path with solar. The infrastructure just isn't up to keeping up with it and still nothing is being done to support it. As more and more people start charging EV's the local smaller transformers are going to start to fail and the government are going to have egg on their faces, unfortunately they'll just blame the guy before them. We should be building new -gen Nuclear stations but it'll likely never happen because of Japan's huge mistakes with Fukishima.