EV general discussion

It's exceedingly rare for me to do a drive to the coast (or drive anywhere not on a trip). Yesterday I was volunteered to pick up a bike for a mate. Anyway out and back on the bitumen.. took the EV. I must say it really travells well. It's fast, smooth and quiet. The driver aids really work quite well. All of this adds up to very little fatigue on trips like this. I know this would be fairly standard on modern cars, but it should be noted that EV's are also very good highway cars.

I did 265k including some suburban running to pick up a battery (12v for a toyota). I use 34 kwh. Average consumption was 129.3 wh/100. Not the best I've seen but I was running right on the speed limit and flooring it where possible. [bigwhistle] Got home with 40% remaining in the smallest battery Tesla on sale. Cost for the trip $2.72 in electricity on my plan.

Oh and the answer you all wanted, that was 5 speed cameras, 2 average speed enforcement zones and one mobile phone camera that I saw.

FWIW,i saw an interesting Tesla in a carpark earlier in the week.

Fully wrapped in Khaki wrap.wheels with at least a 40mm poke outside the guards,and fitted with BFG Rugged terrains.[biggrin]

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Originally Posted by scarry

FWIW,i saw an interesting Tesla in a carpark earlier in the week.

Fully wrapped in Khaki wrap.wheels with at least a 40mm poke outside the guards,and fitted with BFG Rugged terrains.[biggrin]

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I believe in the US you can get lift kits for people wanting to drive them off road. I think it's mostly intended for snowy areas.

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Originally Posted by RANDLOVER

Austastar, you should love EV's as due to them, governments are considering rego on a per kilometre driven basis.

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One of the (many) side effects of the EV "revolution", it's not about green, it's about money. They subsidized EV's up here as well, as well as in the UK etc. What we are now seeing is that the UK already wants to make EV owners pay per km but that would also be the case if they are outside the UK, ie. on a trip into europe for instance. That does not make any sense to me?

In my country the writing has been on the wall, well, since the model s was introduced. Those bloody things way more than my range rover but they got to use the roads "for free". For context, every country does it road tax system differently; we have a weight based system (curb weight). The heavier the vehicle, the more impact you have on the wear and tear of the infrastructure. Seems a logical way to do it, but EV's are heavier by design and never will match an ICE's weight even with magic batteries. So now, we have a problem. How do you fix this whilst maintaining the illusion of this being a fair, democratic and socialist country?

The solution the gubberment here is pondering (and has been for some time) is to also switch to paying per km. Fortunately privacy concerns and technical feasibility has been a concern as well as that we are a country where "everything is taken care of" (nany state almost) so nobody gets left by the wayside. You can't all of a sudden charge one person more than the other just because of their job being a bit further away. So in the end, I suspect that a "solution" will be found where the EV owner will pay their fair share, without scaring them away. My bet is that the road tax for us ICE plebs will simply be increased. We need to pay for all that socialist EV sponsoring somehow don't we?

And THAT (as an example amongst many) my friend rightfoot, is what bugs people and why people (not everyone I admit!) have a negative connotation with the concept of EV's.

But allow me to end this post on a positive for EV ownership; starting next year every kw you pump into the grid from your previously subsidized PV installation will be charged. After all PV is bad for the grid (well let's just call it expensive) so literally hundreds of thousands of households now stand to receive a bill for their green efforts. Only a happy few have inverters that can be told not to feed back into the grid and just deliver what they actually use. Nearly everyone I know with PV has already adapted their inverters or are simply going to turn them off because they have already paid for themselves (the panels and inverters) and are not willing to bear that bill / do not have the resources to replace the inverters for a smarter model. Only two of my mates have a solution, 1 has an inverter that he can control so he will and the other is going to disconnect his (rather large) PV installation from the grid and will buy a large second hand EV (well one with a large battery) that can hook up to use as a house battery. Mind you, he will not be driving it but local rules state that anything over 5kwh of lithium batteries has to be outside the house, 5m from any building which is a very expensive and sometimes difficult thing to do in the particularly built up area known as my country. So, the EV's will have a use, just not for driving :)

Cheers,
-P

@prelude, I'm surprised to hear your government is concerned about charging people who drive further to work than others, as most governments seem to think people all get in their cars of a weekday morning and drive to the city just to be annoying, based on their low emission zones, congestion taxes, parking fees, roads closed to traffic, and here in Brisbane a cross river bridge is closed to all traffic except council buses!

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Originally Posted by RANDLOVER

@prelude, I'm surprised to hear your government is concerned about charging people who drive further to work than others, as most governments seem to think people all get in their cars of a weekday morning and drive to the city just to be annoying, based on their low emission zones, congestion taxes, parking fees, roads closed to traffic, and here in Brisbane a cross river bridge is closed to all traffic except council buses!

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As I keep saying EV are just slightly less bad cars. All the problems with normal cars still apply.