Thread: EV general discussion

Originally Posted by NavyDiver

Try Night Diving John In the Dark down deep you never ever know

A Dutch bloke, who I became friendly with in the 80s, (He was a Jag/Landie mechanic ) said part of his night dive training was done under ice.
A hole was cut in the ice, for access and he had to navigate to a pre-defined spot and then make his way back to the hole!

Originally Posted by Saitch

A Dutch bloke, who I became friendly with in the 80s, (He was a Jag/Landie mechanic ) said part of his night dive training was done under ice.
A hole was cut in the ice, for access and he had to navigate to a pre-defined spot and then make his way back to the hole!

I dragged a drowning diver out of the water when he missed the fact we were under a ship when he panicked and tried the quick exit once The shortest route via steel hull was not the way to go at all! Ice Diving - Brrrrrrrrrrrr

Back to EVs- Eletric jesus issue? Insurance and repairs question
"DeLorean enthusiasts, body shop technicians, and insurance agents all weigh in on Tesla's stainless steel truck.

Elon Musk has delivered on his promise to get the Tesla Cybertruck into production. The wedge-shaped, Syd Mead meets Giorgetto Giugiaro design is out in the world, albeit with some design concessions from the concept version to make the whole package work. It might not go as far as originally promised, it’s more expensive than he originally said it would be, but the Cybertruck still looks very close to the concept Musk surprised us with back in 2019—stainless steel body panels and all. Those stainless steel body panels might be one of the truck’s biggest draws, but could they be its Achilles heel?"

This should interest the caravanners.

More bad news for Eletric Jesus "The German rental car giant says the reduced residual value, and high repair costs as the reasons why it's dropping Teslas.

The Tesla Model 3 and Model Y’s price cuts sure have been a boon to regular consumers. In many places, all across the world, the Model 3 and Model Y top the EV sales charts because it’s such a good deal. It offers aspirational luxury at a price that’s only a little bit more than mainstream brands. But, not everyone’s happy with Tesla’s price cuts. According to a report from Bloomberg, German-based rental car company Sixt has announced that it’s phasing out Tesla electric rental cars from its fleets because of reduced resale costs."

Just had a quick look at Sixt Australia. Seem to have BYD and Tesla. None available in Melbourne for a while. In Sydney the BYD was 100ish per day and a Model 3 150ish per day. Moving dates to Jan and back to Melbourne had both the BYD and Model 3 the same 150ish per day? Odd.

On the resale cost I am still thinking the 32 k or my prior drive from a 42k purchase price was fairly good with 55000km on the clock.

Originally Posted by scarry

No hater and no rant,it is reality.

Many don’t seem to understand how much power they consume when charging.

I don't use nearly as much charging my EV as I do running my ducted AC.

At the moment my car looks like it will use about as much as a non heated pool a year.

AFAIK.. no one in here is panicking over people with pools or ducted AC.

Originally Posted by Homestar

Might be in a handful of locations but forget it out of the city - that's more power for 1 charger than most towns consume. I just did a job where there was 16,750KVA of generation installed (16 x 20' contanerised generators which were consuming around 3,000 litres of diesel an hour between them) - so less than 10 chargers worth at say 1,500KW for these super duper solid state batteries if they were all being used together.

We were running the towns of Charlton, Wycheproof, Boort, Wedderburn, St Arnaud, Donald and surrounds with them during a 66KV maintenance outage with these gens - Donald and St Arnaud were drawing around 1,600KW most of the day - 2 decent towns - same as 1 charger going full boar... There isn't capacity anywhere on this system to install even one charger above around 350KW. I just can't see what difference solid state batteries will make as their charging speed will be limited by the chargers - which is limited by the network. I can also assure you there are no plans to upgrade any of these lines to cope with EV's either as there is no return on investment and the networks are privately owned.

It goes back to what I've been saying for ages - where is the power coming from for this 'EV Revolution' - and even if it can be made, how is it going to get where it's needed? We're not talking about millions of dollars to make this work but 100's of Billions. Project Energy connect - which would be a drop in the ocean compared to what would be required to bring EV's to everyone is going to nudge 3 billion and that's just one backbone upgrade for the renewables that's coming, nothing to get any extra power to towns, just so we can start switching off the coal and getting the power from new locations back to the terminal stations.

Sorry, rant over - I'm sure someone will call me an EV hater again for pointing out inconvenient pesky facts...

So.. if what you say is true then what do we do? Like how do we handle this?

As you say our governments chose to sell a lot of this infra off. And now private business only have interests in maximum profits.

Do we just call the whole thing off and ban EV's? In which case the power providers just say "oh well" and keep on doing what they are doing.

I'm of the opinion that there are only two real options. The governments have to force companies to do the provision (not popular). Or present the companies with a problem and force them to fix it by customer demand. Electricity providers have an opportunity to sell more power. This seems to be the way it's going.

So what would you have us do?

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

I don't use nearly as much charging my EV as I do running my ducted AC.

At the moment my car looks like it will use about as much as a non heated pool a year.

AFAIK.. no one in here is panicking over people with pools or ducted AC.

Many won't be in that situation,how many K's a week do you do,and is it being charged from the grid?

Originally Posted by scarry

Many won't be in that situation,how many K's a week do you do,and is it being charged from the grid?

In 6 months we have done about 7500. I guess on track for 15k a year. I'm really trying to avoid short trips in the Defender as I know it's not good for it so putting them on the Tesla or the push bikes. Defender got driven on Friday and it had been on charge stationary for 32days. So the Tesla is getting basically all the family miles. I have only visited petrol stations when we did our Simpson trip in September since we got the other car.

When you say "is it being charged off the grid?". I try to charge it when the solar is going. We only get paid 5c a kwh for it so I try and use the car to mop up all the excess. Of course - the car has to be home at the right time and we have to have sunny days. In winter it was harder because of lower output, but now we're into summer we seem to be keeping it going no problems on the solar. Occasionally we have charged not on solar. I'd be only guessing on proportions. Probably 2/3 solar.

Personally I think it's important to remember that even when "charged off the grid" there are a lot of renewables in our grid already. If you charge during the day you can see the voltage really rises when it's sunny. So if you charge during the day you're charging off solar - even if it's other peoples solar that they aren't being paid much for. As I type this we are sitting on 246 V.