kgwilson

I have 8.5 kW of solar panels connected to the grid. I use as much of the solar energy as I can & the rest (up to a maximum of 5kW) is exported to the grid. This is how most household solar systems work. The problem is that should the grid fail & there is a power outage I can't use the power still being produced by the panels. This was a fundamental decision by the energy suppliers and retailers to maintain control. Now of course with batteries that control is slowly being eroded. I don't have a home battery so I have to hook the car up when the power goes out. At present i don't have any V2H or V2G capability so just use a 15 amp extension cable to run the fridge, freezer, lights, TV etc till the power comes back on. V2H & V2G is now legal but at present the cost to install the hardware and software connected to your system at home is prohibitive. The maximum current that can be drawn from the car battery is 32 amps or 7.4kW & is single phase. Vehicles & houses with 3 phase supply have a maximum of 11kW. My car is always charged from the solar panels so at least I have free fuel for motoring and when there is a power failure it only takes 5 minutes to hook up the essentials. This is not as ideal as a V2H system that automates this or V2G where it would also automate export (& import) to/from the grid.

My average power use is 7 kWh per day. This is for a 2 person household with only electricity. Solar panels provide around 50kWh a day at present & most of that is exported. In July the figure is 28-30 kWh/day. Of course it is less on cloudy days. Since February I have produced 9.3 megawatts. I have done just on 20,000km in my EV and other than the 6 long trips I have done of about 2600km all the power has come from solar and my 2 hours of free power per day & most of that is my own solar anyway. My last power bill was a $30.00 credit. The car battery stores 64 kWh so in theory I could run the house for 9 days off the car battery. Duttons devotees ignore this but most people with solar on their rooftops know these are real benefits. The Rondo system and numerous other storage systems like molten salt superheated by the sun & stored for later release are way cheaper and simpler with no radio active issues and don't take years to build.

Australia is the sunniest county on earth so solar makes so much sense. Even though the subsidies have all but gone, the rooftop solar installation industry is still going gangbusters now with more than 4 million installations. The one thing we are not short of is land. The problem is that the vast open spaces where huge solar farms could easily be installed are a long way from where most of the population lives. This though has not deterred the plan to export solar generated electricity to Singapore vi an undersea cable. Plans for solar & wind has met with considerable resistance from locals in outback areas, mostly due to fear of the unknown. Even though solar & wind generation has been around for decades and there a proven cases where cropping and grazing co-exists perfectly with both there is still a lot of resistance. Of course a lot of the negativity is promoted by the fossil fuel industry especially coal & gas. California now has almost 14 gigawatts of battery storage. It took 5 years to get to 10 GW & just 6 months to add another 3GW. here in Australia our total is just 3GW. This is forecast to increase to 36GW by 2035 unless of course stupidity over rules logic and common sense.

Politicians especially the conservative lot are always talking of base load power. Energy experts say this is an invalid term and relates to coal fired power that is unable to change with demand and operates in the very small window from full on to flat out. Nuclear generation falls in to this same category. The term that is relevant is peak demand and the ability to address this as it happens at any time. This is where batteries come in to play as does Gas and (if we ever get any) pumped hydro. Batteries react almost instantly with Gas and pumped hydro a little behind. Renewables especially solar provide huge amounts of electricity on sunny days and when it is hot everyone uses air conditioning. The biggest cause for alarm is on hot sunny days when brown outs are likely due to demand. Dutton & Co are always on about what about when the sun don't shine & the wind don't blow. Simply it is the ability to store energy. Coal & nuclear won't do this and have never done this. It is just that there has been more being produced than we can use. We need a lot more storage capacity. At times there is more energy being produced from rooftop solar than required on the Eastern Seaboard. South Australia regularly exports excess wind and solar energy to Victoria & NSW. There are lots of battery projects on the way & these will have the capability of reacting to peak demand. 7 nuclear plants won't & they are supposed to use the existing supply infrastructure but Duttons mob have forgotten that this infrastructure has mostly already been repurposed. The rollout of renewable projects should be full on but it is thwarted by red tape, NIMBYs and basic ignorance.

Anything that describes how it is without political or financial bias should be promoted and celebrated.

The US considers itself the bastion of democracy and freedom but the reality is far from that. While Joe has been President the US stayed pretty steady, the economic indexes improved, inflation went down as did unemployment, climate change was an issue with green energy and renewables high on the agenda but perceptions of what was happening and where they were headed spiraled downward. Reality verses perception, all in a post truth world where now perception IS reality. The US national debt is now over $36 trillion. take a look at the debt clock, the interest payments alone are now more than $US 20,400 per adult. Only a few years ago they stopped paying government workers as they did not want the debt to get higher that $US13 trillion. I wonder where the tipping point is. We may find out in the next 4 years.

I hope the driver was put away for that.

My MG4 is the first car I have had without a conventional handbrake. It took a bit of getting used to. The rotary gear selector is D N & R & pressing it in the middle selects the parking brake. It is all automatic for hills etc & has an auto hold process when at traffic lights. Just tap the foot brake a bit harder when you stop & it puts the parking brake on & the brake light stays on then just use the accelerator to move off. Hill starts are exactly the same. In one pedal drive mode you don't need to touch the brake pedal at all. The car just comes to a complete stop & the park brake is automatically applied. It also has an emergency stop 1 or 2 finger operated brake lever right next to the rotary selector which is also electronic but uses an independent system & can be held on manually if required. I have only used this once to see how it worked. All very weird till you get used to it but I wouldn't go back to the old manual handbrake now.

Chicago is one of the coldest places i have been as well. I was changing planes there and there was a blizzard outside. Temperature was minus twenty something fahrenheit & windchill well below -30 or about -35 deg celcius. There were 3 doors to get to the outside (2 airlocks). When I breathed in my nasal hairs froze & I felt like I couldn't breathe at all. You could throw a boiling hot cup of coffee in to the air and it would freeze instantly and fall to the ground as ice crystals. This was back in the late 80s.

Chinas power is in its economy. The last thing they want is to be drawn in to any conflict that will stop or severely reduce their European and American customers. Xi has been flat out garnering friends from the latest APEC meeting in Peru to oppose Trump & his proposed tarrifs. A major war is not good for business. Putin is a megalomaniac and any attempt to use Nukes will result in him falling out a window at the vey least. His Oligarc mates will see to it.

Electric motorbikes have been around almost as long as electric cars. The bigger ones have stunning performance with low mounted batteries providing a low CoG & superb handling.

Putin is a dictator who would really like to be a Tsar of a revised Russian Empire that would include all the republics lost in 1990. No Russian dictator has ever given a toss about how many Russians die so long as it fulfills his aims. Putin is also like Trump, a complete and utter malignant narcissist. That's why they seem to get along though Putin is all over Trump like a cheap suit.

He always looks pissed. I have never seen him look anything near sober.

Digital displays have got a lot better since the days of Falcons. Now with so many electronic things in a car to control so many things, the hard part is remembering where everything is and what it actually does. It took me weeks to work out all of the different functions till I finally gave up & left it all as standard. One of the best features though is Adaptive Cruise control. Set it to the speed limit & it adjusts for traffic flow and corners etc. Traffic Jam assist is a low speed type of Cruise control which will automatically stop & start in heavy traffic situations & also keep the car within the lane. Basically the car will drive itself in these situations. You could read the paper while the car negotiates the traffic. Mind you the posh English woman who lives in my car tells me to put my hands back on the wheel if I ever let it go.

My car has a tactile button to turn the HVAC on or off & one for instant demist, but for adjustments it is a large 10 inch screen with huge well labelled screen buttons to tap for things like air direction (face, feet, screen) and a large ribbon display for fan speed about 200mm long so tapping it anywhere will adjust the fan speed or just hit the auto big button etc. Motoring journalists need to move into the 21st century. Far better than physical buttons IMHO.

I noted when the press interviewed MAGA nutters or even more conservative less bombasic republican voters they all seem to claim Trumps policies were better especially the economy inflation and cost of living. The thing is all of these things are better now under Biden that at any time under Trump. Inflation is under 3%, growth was at 2.7% in the 3rd quarter of this year. This is better that most countries. Cost of living rose dramatically after Covid but that happened world wide. Prices will stabilise but they won't come down. This would cause deflation, something that will have a very negative effect. If Trump goes ahead with tariffs on ALL imports & deports all the immigrants who currently do all the shit low paid jobs then I can see a major disaster ensuing. The minimum wage is still $7.50 an hour. The gap between rich & poor continues to widen.

If Trump carries on the way he did in 2017 making threats to leave NATO, etc the best thing the Europeans could do is ignore him. Europe is as big an economic block as USA and they have already begun to shore up NATO with additional funding and are providing a lot more aid to Ukraine. There are a lot of large and pretty sophisticated Arms manufacturers in the UK, Sweden, France & Germany. BAE Systens is the 3rd largest in the world and arguably produce the best nuclear submarines. Trump was told by the EU Secretary General last time that he needed to be more conciliatory & pleasant to friends stating "after all you haven't got many". A concern amongst a lot of democrat voters was that Trump would take the US away from alliances and back in to an isolationist state as it was after the great depression till they entered the war. Trumps rhetoric certainly displays this. The world for a huge number of Americans starts and finishes at the US border. They have one of the lowest passport holder %ages in the world. Most only have passports to go to Canada. In 1989 it was only 3%. By 2017 it was nearly 40%, now its 47%. Those thinking of leaving will already have a passport. 50% don't think there is anything else in the world except the USA & everyone else wants to move there especially rapists, murderers & child molesters. They know it's true, Trump told them. The Republican Party is now the Trump Party. Not one of the earlier Republican Presidents endorsed him.

As far as i know these hydrogen powered vehicles use fuel cells to convert the hydrogen to electricty & then power the car that way so in a sense they are EVs using a clean fuel to produce the electricity. They are not ICE cars burning hydrogen. The technology has been around for a long time. The big issue is the ability to store the fuel as in its liquid form the pressure is immense. That is being overcome with new technology.

There are always budding entrepreneurs whenever emerging technologies look like being successful. Many of them fail or don't get sufficient backing to go ahead. Some get enough money to proof of concept and even prototypes and then are abandoned. Ideas and reality are two different things and investors want good returns. This is happening also with all the startups in the race to produce electric aircraft, automated air taxis etc.

Heavily shopped? It is probably done by a 75 year old with alzheimer's. A 6 year old wouldn't have made any of those mistakes.

Most of the people who write reviews on productreview are those who have had a bad experience so the results often look bad. Most of those who have had a good experience don't go near these review sites. BYD didn't do anyone any favours when the cars for our market arrived with Ling Long tyres which are absolute crap designed only for driving around town on smooth asphalt. Plenty of owners have now changed them for better quality tyres designed for Australian road conditions and EVs. My car came with Bridgestone Turanzas specially designed for EVs with very low rolling resistance

True but it does indicate they have confidence in their product. In China & Thailand, MG are now providing a lifetime warranty on the traction battery capped at 20,000 km/year. This is backed by the battery manufacturer, CATL who have introduced 1.5 & 2 million km warranties for some of their new truck & bus batteries.

There is a price war on at present so a good time to buy an EV. New models are due out in the new year so it is a good time to buy if you have the money. I could buy my car now new with a 10 year warranty for 10k less than I paid for it in September last year with a 7 year warranty.

They are called Faraday cages and can be bought on Ebay, like 2 of them for $10.00. Pretty cheap insurance. Most new cars sold these days have keyless entry fobs. I bought a new wallet recently and it has shielding for all my cards.

This is a new innovation for destination charging installed in the carpark of the university of Surrey in just 3 hours. It was delivered on the back of a truck. 12 EV chargers with a solar panel covered roof. It is slow charging (7.7 kW single phase of 11/22kW 3 phase) but perfect for all day parking places or even Supermarkets. It is bring your own cable, plug in and scan your card. The one in the video is also grid connected but it could be off grid with battery storage.