Thread: EV general discussion

Originally Posted by Homestar

In case you didn’t know I live 1/2 hour North of Melbourne so getting to an EV charger in Qld is a little far and not relevant to me. Service stations are a whole different ball game as you don’t need to find mega watts of power in the area to run one - typically around 30KVA for a large servo compared to 1000KVA for a large super charger setup. Tesla don’t make any money on their chargers at the moment at least. They charge around $0.70 per KWh so at the Supercharger install I’m involved with at the moment they would need to sell 4,000,000KWh to recoup the install cost alone if they get the power for free so around 20 cars to 75% charge a day for 20 years to pay that back. Given the last one I had anything to do with has a current patronage of around 8 cars a week that’s a loooong payback. Not a business model I’d be chucking money at as we run on a payback of equipment an order of magnitude better than that to make money. It’s a cost Tesla have to bear in order to sell cars. Doesn’t add up IMO, but I’m happy you can drive yours around and think your saving the planet when only 7% of our emissions come from vehicles in the first place.

It’s all misplaced focus and the big polluters are very happy to keep it that way. I’ll keep driving a diesel vehicle knowing that it really does have **** all to do with the total emissions we produce in reality. Until other much bigger changes are made we’re ****ing in the wind with EV’s if you are only looking at one thing.

I know this might shock you.. but what if I said they are **really** nice things to drive around in? Quiet and comfortable. Ample performance. I can't think of any car I could have got for the money with the same attributes.

I'm all up if you want to query my maths above too. I reckon they are spot on. About 1/3 the CO2 for the same trip as the defender. And 58kwh @ my home rate of .22 = $12. Or 53 litres of diesel at say 1.90 is about a Hundy.

Personally, I think warming up my defender for little trips to the shops and general errands is utter insanity. Most times it doesn't even get up to temperature. I know it causes oil dilution. The EV on the other hand is just perfect for that. So I just use my 4x4 for trips where we need that capability which keeps the K's off it as a bonus.

As to the economics of superchargers.. I don't really have strong feelings about them. If the other car companies want to build a charging network for their vehicles then that would be just grand. If the economics are really that dire then I hope Tesla keep the prime ones for Teslas only which seems to be their plan. It makes sense that they are opening up the low usage ones then. Sell more power. Get more utilisation. If a portion of each car price goes to the network then bravo to Tesla because no one else seems to even be able to make EV's and sell money let alone subsidise a charging network.

Toyota were talking about setting up a network but they weren't planning to share it either.

https://www.drive.com.au/news/toyota...ealer-network/

PS I only think I'm actually really meaningfully reducing emissions when I ride my bike places which I do a lot. Been riding to work every day since 2010. 25k a day round trip not done in a car. If you really want to save the planet don't drive. EV owners who think they are somehow saving the world by driving their EV everywhere don't rate highly for critical thinking in my books.
PPS Look an article on the economics of the Tesla network. Well a little bit anyway

Charging: How Tesla will stay profitable, even without top-selling EVs

Volkswagen scales back EV production | Autocar

No surprise

My only comment is that you are comparing apples with oranges.
What about a small car the same size as an EV , say a Corolla or in my case a Honda Jazz.(at say 5.5L per100Km on the highway)
I believe the numbers will be much closer.
Regards PhilipA

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

I know this might shock you.. but what if I said they are **really** nice things to drive around in? Quiet and comfortable. Ample performance. I can't think of any car I could have got for the money with the same attributes.

Having driven a Model S and Model Y I can confirm the performance is ‘ample’ and then some.

Quiet, yes. Comfortable - no, not even close and we’ve discussed this - sounds like this may have been sorted.

Similar car for the money - I could think of dozens but each to their own.

Given I do 100’s of KM towing up to 3 tonne on a regular basis there isn’t an EV that works for me and even if there was, back to my earlier points - I have no where to charge one. Street parking so would need to run a lead across a footpath - Council have already send letters to everyone saying this is strictly prohibited so I’m guessing it’s already happening in places. Can’t charge it at work so where? One busted charger in town. How are these issues solved?

Originally Posted by Homestar

Having driven a Model S and Model Y I can confirm the performance is ‘ample’ and then some.

Quiet, yes. Comfortable - no, not even close and we’ve discussed this - sounds like this may have been sorted.

Similar car for the money - I could think of dozens but each to their own.

Given I do 100’s of KM towing up to 3 tonne on a regular basis there isn’t an EV that works for me and even if there was, back to my earlier points - I have no where to charge one. Street parking so would need to run a lead across a footpath - Council have already send letters to everyone saying this is strictly prohibited so I’m guessing it’s already happening in places. Can’t charge it at work so where? One busted charger in town. How are these issues solved?

You see.. this is the problem. You're an outlier. We need to say "That's OK". There are no viable EV alternatives for what you're doing and what you use your vehicle for. So just don't worry about it!

We need to electrify things as it's the only way out (electrify everything and shift the grid to renewables). But how about we just focus on the easy wins first. I have no idea on the percentage, but I'd be guessing that north of 50% of Australias vehicle fleet could be electrified with what we have now or what's arriving in the next few years. I'm going to ride to work in a few minutes, and I'll be riding past a sea of vehicles stuck in a giant traffic jam. They are office workers just like me who just left home and are driving to their work in the city, or dropping the kids off at school on the way (it's school holidays but you know what I mean). Let's just keep the focus on this group for the minute.

There are 15 million vehicles in Australia and we sell one million new cars a year. Even if 100% were electric it's going to be a long long while till we've even gotten through the "easy wins". So for the moment let's just focus on city dwellers using passenger cars for their urban runabouts. That will probably take the rest of this decade at least!

Despite appearances I don't think most Australians need two raptors in the driveway to drop the kids to school.

Rewiring Australia founder Saul Griffith is a man on a mission to electrify the nation, one suburb at a time - ABC News

Originally Posted by PhilipA

My only comment is that you are comparing apples with oranges.
What about a small car the same size as an EV , say a Corolla or in my case a Honda Jazz.(at say 5.5L per100Km on the highway)
I believe the numbers will be much closer.
Regards PhilipA

For the record - the Tesla MY is more the size of a traditional Aussie family car. We had a VW Golf previously and it was too small for our family now. I'm 186, and my son is 188 and still going. But yes changing the comparison car to a passenger car would change the calculations somewhat. And that shows that while EV's are better for the environment - each and every car trip has an environmental cost even in an EV.

None the less - it's why two car families like ours should consider having one of the vehicles as an EV.


Gravel_Bike_Boot.jpg

None the less - it's why two car families like ours should consider having one of the vehicles as an EV.

I don't agree.
My wife plays golf and part of the duty of the second car is to visit golf courses that may be up to 200Km away, leaving early morning and returning at night or overnighting for a couple of nights.
The overnight stays usually involve a function with only a short break to change dress. In her case it is unrealistic to suggest that she should go looking for a charger somewhere to enable her to get home.
Again my son lives at Kellyville and we live at Kincumber about 100Km away . so we would have to make very sure that we charged overnight to be certain we could get there and back on a hot day, and forget it if the inevitable semi rollover happens on the M1.
I believe that many families would have similar patterns .
Or of course we could have a hybrid or ICE car and take 5 minutes to refuel.
I looked at cheap EVs such as the Nissan Leaf second hand but their range of about 80-100Km is just a joke. How much range will an MG have left after say 5-8 years? .
An ICE car keeps much the same range for it's life.
Regards PhilipA

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

You see.. this is the problem. You're an outlier. We need to say "That's OK". There are no viable EV alternatives for what you're doing and what you use your vehicle for. So just don't worry about it!

We need to electrify things as it's the only way out (electrify everything and shift the grid to renewables). But how about we just focus on the easy wins first. I have no idea on the percentage, but I'd be guessing that north of 50% of Australias vehicle fleet could be electrified with what we have now or what's arriving in the next few years. I'm going to ride to work in a few minutes, and I'll be riding past a sea of vehicles stuck in a giant traffic jam. They are office workers just like me who just left home and are driving to their work in the city, or dropping the kids off at school on the way (it's school holidays but you know what I mean). Let's just keep the focus on this group for the minute.

There are 15 million vehicles in Australia and we sell one million new cars a year. Even if 100% were electric it's going to be a long long while till we've even gotten through the "easy wins". So for the moment let's just focus on city dwellers using passenger cars for their urban runabouts. That will probably take the rest of this decade at least!

Despite appearances I don't think most Australians need two raptors in the driveway to drop the kids to school.

Rewiring Australia founder Saul Griffith is a man on a mission to electrify the nation, one suburb at a time - ABC News

I doubt the number would be close to 50% could go ev on fleet vehicles. If I look at the last company I worked for a a decent sample size - around 400 company vehicle around the country - only a handful could be EV’s and they did a lot of research just before I left to see what they could do in this space.

Killers were - Nowhere to charge at work - the car parks at the branches were mostly on street or a long way from a power source. Most drivers parked their company cars on the street at night, and initial cost - they but pauper pack mid size SUV’s for 30 odd K each.

That’s a large National business. Where I am now is a family business - 8 company cars and 6 trucks. Again, nowhere to charge them at work and the cost would be eye watering to do this. Again, most are parked on street at night and third - again, way too expensive for the business to consider buying.

So that’s a large and small company where it wouldn’t work - where’s the 50% coming from?