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Starting lead acid batteries should have plenty of capacity to start in even the coldest weather we get here - unless the battery or the engine is sick.
But note that if the battery is substantially discharged, it can (rarely) get cold enough for the low S.G. electrolyte to freeze - which will do permanent damage to the battery.
From today's Australian.
Jeremy Clarkson cuts to the chase so well.
- Jeremy Clarkson
Columnist
https://i1.wp.com/pixel.tcog.cp1.new..._location=none- The Weekend Australian Magazine
- 12:00AM November 10, 2018
- 7 Comments
The electric car is coming. Be in no doubt about that. We’ve had Teslas for the past 10 years and in the next two every mainstream manufacturer will jump on the bandwagon. I recently borrowed an electric Hyundai Kona, which the company will not be selling in Portugal any time soon. Not with a name like that. But what about elsewhere? If you’re thinking of going pure electric, is this the sort of thing you should be looking at?
Well, let’s get to the problem straight away. There simply aren’t enough public charging points. And if more people start buying electric cars, things will get worse long before they get better.
The Hyundai arrived with no cable that allowed it to be plugged into a simple domestic socket. I’m not surprised. I know someone who did that and his home caught fire. Also, the charging time from a domestic circuit is measurable in weeks. Instead, I was given a cable to plug it into one of the charging stations you see in supermarket car parks and service stations. But I didn’t think I’d need it. I mean, the Kona has a range, Hyundai says, of up to 480km and I was planning a round trip of barely half that.
However, the range-ometer in an electric car is a weird, speculative thing, so after I’d pottered about in London and driven to Oxfordshire it said there was only 210km left. Would this be enough to get back? This is known as range anxiety. It’s a thing with our friends electric.
I didn’t want to take the risk so went to a posh hotel where six charging points are provided. One was broken and another was occupied by a Bentley Bentayga with a personalised registration that I won’t tell you to save the owner embarrassment. In Portugal he might be called a Kona. Eventually, though, I was having some lunch, knowing that the batteries were being topped up nicely, which of course they weren’t. An hour later, only 27km had been added, so I carried on with lunch until I was too drunk to drive the car anyway. Eventually I found someone to take me home in it, and asked him to pop to the supermarket, where the batteries could be fully charged up. He plugged it into the port, which said he must download an app that would let him pay for the electricity. But the app wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of the charging point, and neither would anyone on the number provided. So we had to waste all the power gleaned from the hotel looking for an alternative.
The upshot of all this is that if you buy an electric car at the moment, it will be very expensive and you won’t be able to go anywhere in it with any certainty. One day, if charging points are as reliable and as common as petrol pumps, and top-up times are drastically shorter, you can make the plunge. But now? No. You’d be mad.
And that’s a shame, because the Kona is a likeable little car. It is completely incapable of putting its 395Nm of torque onto the road, which means every time you stand on the throttle it torque-steers like a 1980s Saab Turbo. This is hilarious.
It is also bloody fast. It’s not the 0 to 100km/h time that impresses, it’s the immediacy with which it takes off. One minute you’re doing 60km/h and then you’re doing 600km/h. And the steering wheel has been wrenched from your grip and you’re in hysterics. And a ditch.
It’s good-looking too, and for an electric car in which every joule is precious, it’s very well equipped. My test car even had a heated steering wheel. You’d need a very long lunch to charge that up.
In fact, I loved a lot of the Kona very much. It’s practical, far too powerful, spacious, nicely finished, well specced and handsome.
This, then, is a car that can run. But when it comes to infrastructure, we haven’t learnt to walk yet. So like all electric cars at the moment, it’s completely and utterly useless.
Fast facts Hyundai Kona electric
Engine: Electric motor (150kW/395Nm) Battery: 64kW/h
Transmission: Single-speed, front-wheel drive
Price: About $50,000 (on sale in Australia early 2019)
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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OMFG , Clearly this bloke is a complete idiot and has no idea whatsoever.
All Good, Im happy for him and his troglodyte followers to keep lining up at and paying at petrol stations while my car charges for free when i'm sleeping.
I thought it was a good article, pointing the fact that there is not enough infrastructure out there for EV's yet.
So i buy an ev, and can only charge it from home, which at this point in time won't be free. Then what? Theres 1 charging station and thats 20+km in the other direction from where i have to travel.
One day, one day.
Deal with it or keep buying petrol, your choice.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vern
The most amazing difference between say, 1910 and now is that the electricity grid reaches to nearly everywhere a passenger car driver wishes to travel to. In 1910, your new fangled petrol car had to buy fuel from chemists shops in gallon tins, so running out was a very real problem then too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vern
In the 21st century though, you can charge your EV nearly everywhere, simply by plugging it into a power point. Sure it's slow, then again so are many old people. Online directories already exist to find EV friendly businesses who'll let you plug into a handy 3 phase outlet. And of course as EV's sell in greater numbers there will be more public fast chargers installed to get customers into a rest stop to harvest their pennies.
And PhilipA quoting Clarkson on EV's is hilarious, that guy has been caught out lying through his teeth before about EV range. The infamous sketch where he pushed a Tesla off his test track with a seemingly empty battery was complete bunkum, the company reps hopped in at the end of the session and drove it away.
Awesome reply, sounds very troglodyte[emoji6]Quote:
Originally Posted by goingbush
Hey i am all for it, but what i was saying, right now, not in the future, there is not enough infrastructure out there for them. I can't just plug my ev in at work, would be good if i could.Quote:
Originally Posted by bee utey
I think my next commute will be an EV, but that comes after our off grid house, which is also something i have to add into the equation
fair call, I deserved that !Quote:
Originally Posted by Vern
You blokes have to remember that Clarkson is talking about the UK also where EVs are more popular.
Also I recall Clarkson and the little bloke having a race in an EV and conventional car and finding the charging station did not work.
I wonder how common that is? And how long will charging stations last in Blacktown or Dandenong? It is a different world than in the early 20th century. It appears to me that vandalism was much less then, although graffiti goes back to Roman times if the tombs in Egypt are any indication.
On the plus side the new Maccas in Kellyville has 3 AFAIR. So make your trips in Sydney via Kellyville .LOL.
Regards Philip A