Thread: EV general discussion

Friend picked up his new volvo xc30 yesterday. Delightful little car. It's made by the volvo parent company Geely.

I did have a drive. Drives well. Lovely interior if a little light on equipment for the class. The biggest negative I've got for it is that it's quite small (think Golf size) but it costs the same (or more) than several much larger SUV's. It's also not super efficient on energy.. probably about the same as all the other cars. So if it costs the same as a big car, uses the same or more energy.. I'd get a bigger car.

I've spoken at length in here about how I think we're really going down the wrong road (groan) with the embiggerisation (#madeupword) of modern cars. While not specifically about EV's if not everyone wantd to drive a dual cab.. It also highlights the issues in our cities big cars are causing.

Well it appears I'm not alone in this opinion. Harry Metcalfe from "Harry's Garage" agrees with me!.

Imagine a world where all cars were Lotus Elan size, how much more room we would have on our roads. Motorways could be 5 lanes and driving around London’s residential roads would be a doddle compared to today. Never going to happen, though. Shame..

Jeremy clarkson liked his post - which is also a controversy

https://www.reddit.com/r/thegrandtou...rry_metcalfes/

Here is my Elan with a DC ute. I took the photo and moved it becasue I was worried the owner would reverse over me.

I estimate that I could do 80% of my trips in the elan. If I could fix the gearbox.

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

Here is my Elan with a DC ute. I took the photo and moved it becasue I was worried the owner would reverse over me.

I estimate that I could do 80% of my trips in the elan. If I could fix the gearbox.

I thought you did 80% of your trips by bike

Our whole rego and insurance system works against having a small car for most trips, and others for more specific trips, also the the cost of money is the main cost of owning a vehicle, again works against owning multiple vehicles.

Not that I disagree with what your saying.

Do you think the ute driver could have at least TRIED to park in the parking bay!

Tony

Originally Posted by TonyC

I thought you did 80% of your trips by bike

Our whole rego and insurance system works against having a small car for most trips, and others for more specific trips, also the the cost of money is the main cost of owning a vehicle, again works against owning multiple vehicles.

Not that I disagree with what your saying.

Do you think the ute driver could have at least TRIED to park in the parking bay!

Tony

Sorry. 80% of my car trips! I also think this is probably pretty unfair because the Elan was never intended as a ultility car. The boot is quite small and most of my trips are picking something up. If I was driving to work empty 5 days a week like most people I could the elan would suffice.

Anyway I found this site. Some really excellent information there.

Passenger cars per driving age person.


And this is the graph I've been looking for.



From:

Charting Transport | Looking at Australasian transport and cities through graphs and maps

I looked at the two Skoda EV's on sale yesterday for a mate. They are built on the VW ID4 platform. Spacious, reasonably priced. Nicely finished.

It was quite a flashback though. Unlike the disruptors they are quite willing to discount. I think at their retail prices they probably aren't competitive - but at the prices they are willing to discount to they probably are closer to the mark than you might expct.

One thing that surprised - the number of cars available to buy were very limited. IE they had like three in the dealership, and another handful coming in a couple of months but that was it. Apparently a UK reviewer gave them the thumbs up and now globally they are in short supply. Show's how fickle things are.

[QUOTE=Captain_Rightfoot;3263291]Here is my Elan with a DC ute. I took the photo and moved it becasue I was worried the owner would reverse over me.

I estimate that I could do 80% of my trips in the elan. If I could fix the gearbox.

[QUOTE]


A year ago I was doing data collection down the coast for a week and this was causing big problems every day where I was staying.

DL

IMG_4682.jpg

Oh lord help you all.

I think from this graph you can pretty clearly see electricity production greening.

Fugutive emissions are .... Hard to reduce with out stopping using fossil fuels. And mining them for export.

Fugitive emissions occur during the exploration, production, processing, transport, storage,transmission and distribution of fossil fuels. These arise in the coal, oil and natural gas industries.
Emissions from decommissioned underground coal mines and abandoned oil and gas production
wells are also included in this sector.

It illustrates to me that Saul Griffits is right. Greening the grid and encouraging people to electrify everything is the only way we're going to get large scale reductions in co2.

When you hear people saying "it's my right to have the whole familiy driving dual cab utes/suv around the city - nobody can tell me what to drive." .. I mean look that's a true statement. But the point we're at now we're kind of in a situation where most people know we need to lower emissions but no one is prepared to give up anything.

The strong increase in diesel consumption since 2009 (Figure 12) is largely driven by trends in theroad transport sector: growth in the vehicle fleet due to population growth; increasing popularity of
diesel-powered Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs)

The transport sector is probably one of the easier of the sectors to address. Unfortunately it's very slow moving (assuming most cars live 10-15 years) so what happens now matters. It's also a sector that is largely privately controlled and significantly discretionary. The transport sector is less easy to address.

So government policy that encourages people to make the choices we need them to make. I think it's a great use of public funds. Things like EV incentives are a good idea as part of an overall stragegy. (by my calculation about .15% of the budget). Every new diesel car we put on the road means we're going to have to work harder somewhere else.

Further I'm convinced that in years to come if we keep going the way we're going that government is going to have to make harder decisions to hurry us out of ice. Our electrification is not even off setting our new love of DC's! It wouldn't surprise me at all if the new dualcabs hitting the road end up getting incentivised off the road before their economic life span. Cash for clunkers. Ouch.

I think policy like the NVES is absolutely essential. EV incentives too (although I think they will be removed). I fully expect we are going to need more forceful policy in years to come.


Source Charting transport and.

https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/defa...une%202025.pdf