EV general discussion

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Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

The grid can't handle it ... they the power companies will have to spend money to make this work. Imagine how much money a supermarket could make if they didn't have to build shops and employ people so they could sell stuff? If they have to put in more capacity it's because they will be selling more power! Which is what they do to earn money. FFS.

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Spoken like someone that has zero idea about what's involved - which sadly is the majority. Do you think Engineers looks for ways NOT to do things? "Just make more power and get it to where it's needed" - One of the dumbest things I've heard in a long time. If it would lead to making more money, they might actually look at it, but the return on investment is woeful. Money makes the world go around - there isn't any in EV Charging - if there was do you think Tritium would have gone bust or would Tesla have sacked it's entire Charging division?

Supply Authorities aren't going near this without someone paying up front as if they don't get their money then, they never will and none of them would even have the money to do what's being asked - you're talking 100's of BILLIONS of dollars and decades of work. The EV charging network won't expand to be able to cover everyone going to EV's or even a fraction of the Population. If you can home charge, EV's make perfect sense, but again, this just won't work for the majority.

One example I posted earlier - cost to run 1MW upgrade 3KM to a shopping center for a 12 spot charging station was quoted at $14,500,000. If you had 50% utilsation (it's probably more like 10% but I'm being generous) of those 12 spots selling the power at retail prices your payback is just over 11 years - not something I'd put my money into.

Not sure how many times people have to point some of these things but the EV zealots just stick their heads in the sand and ignore the truth - as you say FFS...

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Originally Posted by simonmelb

And over 4600 EVs from China (mostly MGs) have just been unloaded from the ship into the port of Bristol. - being sold for under. GPB 10k ea 😳 so the UK and Eu car manufacturers are a tad worried about things!

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Yes, well, there are already thousands of the things sitting on wharves in Germany, Belgium, Italy and Turkey, with no buyers and no proper infrastructure. It won't be long before they start turning the ships away, and China is building more car carriers! Car carriers aren not easily converted to carry other freight. Maybe California could buy some to accommodate their homeless. If they cared, that is.

Those who don't like batteries in except in their cars, phones, watches ........ may love this hospital ban on EV parking[biggrin] Electric car driver turned away from hospital car park (bbc.com)

The valid power transmission line comment by a man who knows what he is talking about makes me smile [biggrin] Not as much as my share portfolio and superfund[thumbsupbig]

EVs do need thought and planning. Our power grids require a lot more than the bravado often seen by some [bigwhistle][bigwhistle][bigwhistle][bigwhistle]

I often wondered about the power reductions vs increases we as a society have managed over the last say decade. Since environmentalists have shoved LED lights down our throat I guess we have reduced power consumption by anything from 50% to 90% for lighting. Not sure how much of the power consumption is actually light though. But lets take an average household and assume they had 10 bulbs, 60 watts each on at night and replaced those with 6 watt LED for simplicities sake. In stead of 600 watts you now consume 60. That means you have 540 watts to spend "elsewhere". Again assuming 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness you would have at most 5.4kw to spare and extra capacity on the grid since we used to consume that but no longer do the grid was up to that. That means that with the average consumption of an EV of 200 watts and up per kilometer, you would be able to charge 30km of range with that excess of power (charging is not 100% efficient so I deducted a bit for that).

I am pretty sure that won't be enough for most people to commute to work (and back). If I add to that, that up here in europe AC's were a luxury item or limited to offices up till fairly recently and you get a good picture of the insane amount of power we are needing... extra. We need to get off gas it seems, we have abundance in natural gas here but the gubberment has shut that down as per next month afaik. That means that people are not only cooling their houses in summer, which we did not used to do, but warming them in winter with electricity which needs to be generated but more importantly distributed and we still have not charged a single EV ;)

No, EV charging is not an easy problem and it will certainly not be fixed in the short term nor will it be cheap. If we ignore artificial pricing of fuel, most countries tax it heavily like down here for instance the total amount going to the state is like 70-80%, EV charging has already become more expensive than petrol or diesel and with the price hikes in electricity due to grid upgrade costs and the added unreliability of "green" options (relatively speaking! not saying that they are totally unreliable!) I believe that the EV "revolution" is more like an evolution and one that has quite some warts and all. No, new battery tech will not solve this problem in the least and at most cause more problems since they would charge EVEN FASTER (but we cant).

Not trying to be a censored here :) But I agree with Homestar that the challenges are highly downplayed and misunderstood.

Cheers,
-P

Well those that think the charging network is going to get much bigger may want to rethink this. For the time being I think it will stay as it is. With Tritium going tits up (apparently the Global leader) I'm not sure who will step in to take on this (Obviously unprofitable) void.

And I've just heard from a major supplier here in Australia that their pipeline of new charger installations from Tesla has been cancelled effective immediately so they will get to finish the projects that were underway but for the time being, no new Tesla charging stations in Australia - I'm assuming this will be mirrored around the globe given Tesla no longer have a charging division. The effect of this will be felt by many and the experience in this industry will be watered down as people go off and find other work to do, so if/when these things get back on track the industry will have to start from a point much further back that it currently is.

So, looks like those requiring charging away from home will have to take pot luck with the current unreliable network and hope not too many more buy EV's or we'll see a replication of the massive hours long queue's you see in 'Murica.

Not sure how anyone could put a positive spin on all of this but I'm betting someone will try. I'm not happy about any of this by the way, or trying to gloat as contrary to what some think here I'm not an EV hater and these issues directly effect myself and the company I work for as we were involved in a small part of this supply chain. Not a big part but I know plenty that were entrenched in the industry who are now facing having to find other work.

So I had a look at Tesla Superchargers in the Central Coast. There is one general one at Tuggerah Supercentre on the top floor of the carpark with 5 chargers. I would imagine that if all were in use it would throttle the charge rate.
There are a few "destination Chargers "at Bells of Kilcare ( very expensive B&B and restaurant) and a couple of others at The Entrance.
So the coverage on the Central Coast is terrible. This according to Google.

I was looking as Model 3s are getting pretty cheap, with one "performance" for sale in Sydney for 32K and several around for 36K upwards , nearly all private sales as it seems dealers do not want to touch them. So the real sales prices may be much less.
I cannot put a level 2 charger in as I live in a retirement village with single phase.
I have an acquaintance who is a Musk 'Fan boy" with a Model 3 Long Range who is retired in a retirement village and has solar, so charges at home for free. Looks like a pretty slim target market up here. He paid upwards of 80K for his. Constantly tells us of his derring doo including stealing power when on trips.
Regards Philip A

I live in a town of 35,000 people 1/2 hour North West of the Melbourne CBD - we have 1 public charger in the entire town - and it's been broken for over a year. In fact I just checked on line and it's not even listed any more. So if you own an EV and want to come and visit me, make sure you can get back to a charger before doing so. [biggrin]

Slim pickings when you move out of the City. There are chargers spaced close enough together to get between them but each site seems to mainly have just 1 x 50KW or 1 x 25KW charger so if you roll in and someone has just started a charge already, you're in for an even longer wait.

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Originally Posted by Homestar

Slim pickings when you move out of the City. There are chargers spaced close enough together to get between them but each site seems to mainly have just 1 x 50KW or 1 x 25KW charger so if you roll in and someone has just started a charge already, you're in for an even longer wait.

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There's a local supermarket affiliated fuel site near me ( no charger ) that is small. For some reason they get bulk fuel deliveries via B-Double. When this happens the site is closed. The wait time is less than there is at most charging sites I've seen.
A popular local bakery/caff had a Tesla charger in their carpark.. until they relocated. Virtue signalling wasn't worth the cost of relocating the charger, apparently.

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Originally Posted by NavyDiver

Those who don't like batteries in except in their cars, phones, watches ........ may love this hospital ban on EV parking[biggrin] Electric car driver turned away from hospital car park (bbc.com)

The valid power transmission line comment by a man who knows what he is talking about makes me smile [biggrin] Not as much as my share portfolio and superfund[thumbsupbig]

EVs do need thought and planning. Our power grids require a lot more than the bravado often seen by some [bigwhistle][bigwhistle][bigwhistle][bigwhistle]

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This cracked me up in the linked article. - Fair Charge, a campaign group for electric vehicles, described it as “misinformation erroneously shaping public policy”.

The zealot EV campaigners have spread misinformation of their own to the highest levels of Government and to the Public - Hypocrisy at its finest. It's obviously fine for them to do it but heaven help us that someone turns their tactics back on them.

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Originally Posted by Homestar

The zealot EV campaigners have spread misinformation of their own to the highest levels of Government and to the Public - Hypocrisy at its finest. It's obviously fine for them to do it but heaven help us that someone turns their tactics back on them.

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Always the way. They have nothing to argue with so they just shout down any contrary views, and then add slurs.