Thread: EV general discussion

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

We agree. I think you'll see electrification seep in around the edges. It won't do everything but it will be widespread.

I know I'm not an early adopter, but 12 months of owning an ev. It's just a car with a battery. You get in it. you drive it. It's comfortable and space efficient. For us every few days we plug it in and give the battery a tickle up. It's very cheap to run and maintain (so far). In years to come they will be cheap to buy.

I really do think that eventually people will calm TF down and look at this and realise that they can save a motza by just having one of the family cars as an EV. Likewise, whenever I roll into a rural town I'm often amazed by the prevalence of older sedans and wagons. Indeed there are probably less 4x4's then there are in my street in the big city perversely. Once people get accustomed to EV's and realise the MSM hysteria is just that.. it will just happen. Not nearly as many people need giant SUV's that can tow a 22 foot van around the country as are buying them presently.

Likewise, when there are batteries to recycle I'm confident we'll work it out. Unlike small electronics where lithium batteries mostly end up in general rubbish.. the size of an EV battery will make it worthwhile.

I think its extraordinarily unlikely the average family car will be an EV. The 2nd/wifes cars. Now that is a possibility. Guess why twin cab utes are so prevalent. You can carry stuff, you can tow stuff ... you can tow 300+km and refill in 5 minutes ... an electric car cannot do any of this. if I had an electric car here, it would probably get parked with all the wrecks over under the pine trees. What the hell would I want with it? It can't tow my car trailer, can't tow the caravan, can't be used on anything other than perfect sealed roads, can't carry a decent load, can't teach my kids to drive in it.... It would be a pointless fire risk to have around the house. I sure as hell would never park it near the house or shed, so how could I even charge the useless thing?

Look at this from this point of view, I go out and buy a stupidly expnesive battery ride on mower from bunnings. Year 1 -> 3 it might cut all the grass ... by year 5 it takes me 3 days to cut the grass if its long. By year six I'm looking at thousands of dollars worth of batteries to "save the environment and me money"....... Or I could just keep using my perfect running probably 30 year old AMC ride on mower that was made in bendigo .... and my ****ty old worn out tractor (made in geelong) that has a million hours on it .... but still always starts and always cuts the yard no problems. It costs me maybe $100 a year in diesel and maybe $150 every 5 years for a start battery.

the battery crap is just lunacy. It would make sense if I lived on a postage stamp in town and had 15 blades of grass to cut. Especially if I owned battery tools that shared the battery.

I find even the electric lawn mower idea interesting. Its another thing I'd just throw under the pine trees in the scrap pile and never look at again. However, I could give it to my father and it would be magic for the tiny bit of grass they have

All those arguments, albeit with a slightly different slant, would have been bandied around, about a century and a quarter ago.
"You can only get fuel when the drugstore is open."
"You can't go to church without arriving stinky and filthy."
"You can't get home without at least one breakdown."
I don't see an electric car in my future, but I do see electric as the future. There were only so many dinosaurs, ergo dinosaur juice is a finite commodity.
Nominate your ​alternative.

Originally Posted by V8Ian

All those arguments, albeit with a slightly different slant, would have been bandied around, about a century and a quarter ago.
"You can only get fuel when the drugstore is open."
"You can't go to church without arriving stinky and filthy."
"You can't get home without at least one breakdown."
I don't see an electric car in my future, but I do see electric as the future. There were only so many dinosaurs, ergo dinosaur juice is a finite commodity.
Nominate your ​alternative.

I don't see it as the future. I see it as a stumbling block to the future in its current guise. Its unlikely we will ever run out of dino juice IMO. I'm pretty sure lack of population ... and severe lack of younger people will be the issue in 30 years, not the climate.

It sure it going to be interesting to see

by the way, that really annoying prat on youtube posted a really good video on C02 and combustion engines today. the auto expert or whatever he calls himself. I certainly never understood that 1kg of fuel will create 3kgs of C02 when burnt. Just as well we don't have to pay for the air (as well as the petrol) we burn. No ... whatever you do, don't suggest that to the nutty green movement

Originally Posted by DoubleChevron

I don't see it as the future. I see it as a stumbling block to the future in its current guise. Its unlikely we will ever run out of dino juice IMO. I'm pretty sure lack of population ... and severe lack of younger people will be the issue in 30 years, not the climate.

It sure it going to be interesting to see

by the way, that really annoying prat on youtube posted a really good video on C02 and combustion engines today. the auto expert or whatever he calls himself. I certainly never understood that 1kg of fuel will create 3kgs of C02 when burnt. Just as well we don't have to pay for the air (as well as the petrol) we burn. No ... whatever you do, don't suggest that to the nutty green movement

Not hard to believe at all, considering exploration, extraction, transportation, refining, transport of the final product and power and energy to provide all infrastructure from exploration to retail outlets.

Originally Posted by prelude

All for balance mate and thanks for the vid

Yeah. I'm still chuckling about that. Cherry picking can demonstrate many things. Balance is not one of them.

Originally Posted by V8Ian

Not hard to believe at all, considering exploration, extraction, transportation, refining, transport of the final product and power and energy to provide all infrastructure from exploration to retail outlets.

That isn't why, when you burn the petrol, the oxygen atoms get combined with the fuel atoms ... creating 3kg of C02 from 1 kg of fuel (remember all the air the motor has sucked in as well, that weighs quite a bit). if you can tolerate him for an entire video, he is quite good at explaining stuff.

I too want to believe we will still be using petrol 50 years from now and although I do believe we will in certain applications, in my puny little country they are rolling EV's out like it's nothing and we really don't have much need for petrol since remote here is a contradiction in terms. So the chances of me getting petrol in 50 years is I think much slimmer? Not really doom thinking but just an observation. And perhaps yes, we will be left with cheap petrol because of the refinement process but I guess we will still do what we did in the past, everything we don't need gets dumped into the heavy oil for sea going ships. That's one of those "funny" things: diesel with less sulfur, the whole world had its panties up in a bunch about getting rid of that but it's not like we stored the sulfur somewhere or found a different use for it all of a sudden. We just dumped it in third world diesels and in heavy ship oil and it got burned anyway.

Perhaps we can fix the lithium recycling challenge, perhaps it won't be economically feasible and maybe we need to dig even deeper in the pocket again at some point.

My biggest problem is that I would think that we have learned from the ICE years regarding the environment, recycling and what not and indeed the car part of the EV we got under control I guess but not as much in the EV space. We "excuse" them since they don't do the CO2's. What surprises me is that we simply keep on putting out new tech and figure that we will find a way to deal with it later. A good development, be it too late, has been that some of our provinces have started to demand from whomever wants to build a windmill for power has to commit to removing it, completely, after it's done. Pretty sure that they'll find away around that, but that at least is something.

Finally, I may have said it before but an EV is not just a car with batteries. I don't find them appealing and they do not drive to my liking but then again I am a car(ICE) enthousiast. Let James May explain it for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQY-VeA87cM (around 3 minutes though the entire thing is interesting)
Then again, most people are not really car enthousiasts and will like em just fine.

-P

Originally Posted by prelude

We "excuse" them since they don't do the CO2's. What surprises me is that we simply keep on putting out new tech and figure that we will find a way to deal with it later.

"EVs don't do CO2" is one of the greatest lies ever told.