kgwilson

Charging infrastructure in Australia is crap at present but this is the legacy left by Morrison & his "Lump of Coal" cronies & your EV won't tow your boat rubbish. It is beginning to improve but the content of that video fails to look at existing situations already developed and installed in other countries. The underground tank gets replaced with large battery storage so that the 1 MW is continually topping the battery up so when there are lots of vehicles charging they are able to get a full charge. Also there are only 6 EVs in Australia that can charge at 350kW. One is the Ioniq 5/6 that can charge from 20- 80% in 18 minutes & a 5 minute charge will give 100km of extra range. A Darwin company is underway in producing off grid modular EV charging stations for use in the outback. They will be transported to anywhere on the back of a truck and a small solar farm to charge the battery set up on the unlimited land around them. There will be 4 chargers at each location. No need for any service station infrastructure or expensive delivery of fuel by tankers. Horizon Energy already has some small ones with 2 x 50kw chargers fed from the battery charged from the solar panels mounted on the roof of the charging station. These have a diesel backup which kind of defeats the purpose somewhat but it is a good start. Point 1. ICE will continue to dominate non urban areas in the short term only. Eventually ICE vehicles will no longer be produced, rural properties will have their own small solar farms with battery storage. Electrically powered tractors and other farm equipment is already being produced and will get better as time goes by. Mines are already converting their massive dump trucks from diesel to electric. Fossil fuels will run out, at current known reserves this is in 45 years. After 28 COPs the only decision is to now transition away from fossil fuels. The goal was to reduce the average temperature increase to 1.5 deg by 2030. That is a huge fail so far. This year the average increase is 1.49 deg & there are another 7 years to go with only 0.01% to play with.. Point 2. Nearly 90% of EV owners charge at home overnight when demand is low so while the public charger infrastructure needs upgrading and quickly, this is not a restriction for urban EV uptake at all. Most new EVs have 300 to 600km of range so only need a charge at night once or twice a week when average daily commute is around 40km. Most electricity retailers have EV plans. One in Victoria has an 8.5c/kWH night time rate. Also in traffic jams in cities EVs outshine ICE by miles. The only power consumed when in a traffic jam is the A/C & other peripherals which use very little. ICE cars are using fuel all the time & polluting the atmosphere & those with stop start systems are not much better. Those I know of with these systems turn them off as they need the engine to keep the A/C compressor going. Point 3. Absolutely correct. These giant American style Utes & wagons are obscene. They use enormous amounts of fuel and don't fit in car parks & have no larger carrying capacity than most others. They do have greater towing capacity but therein lies another problem. They should be taxed out of existence. All of this assumes that we don't reach the tipping point first and catastrophic failures and conflict don't destroy everything.

Teslas have a completely different model from purchasing and maintenance than other companies. There are no Tesla dealers. You purchase direct from Tesla and select all your options etc. Tesla then get your car manufactured at the factory nearest where you live. For Australia that means it is built in China. Teslas do not have a maintenance regime. You only take it to a Tesla approved maintenance facility if you have a problem. If that is within the warranty period they fix it for free. All software updates are done over the air so owners may never have to go to a Tesla approved maintenance facility. For my MG4 there is a national network of MG dealers and service centres. My car went back for a free check 1 month after delivery & the next service is in 2 years or 40,000 km whichever comes first with a capped price of about $250.00. Software updates are done by the MG service centre. As mentioned the main reason a Tesla will be written off in a side impact or possibly any major impact is a complete lack of service knowledge and battery repair competence in Australia and either the repair quote will have to include the "I have no idea what to do" cost factor or "I can't do this as I have no knowledge so refuse to quote" factor built in.

A few comments as I've been away for a bit. Weight is a non issue. My EV weight 1670kgs with a 64kWH battery. Most now weigh less than 2 tonnes other than the very large vehicles with correspondingly large batteries. All of the large ICE 4WD Utes and SUVs weigh over 2 tonnes & up to & beyond 3 tonnes. My EV is built on a MSP (modular standard platform) and its battery is easily swappable if it has a problem. The thing is it is likely to outlast the rest of the car. The battery management software looks after the batteries health & CATL say around 1 million km before reaching degradation to 80% of new. There are battery repair companies popping up everywhere (except in Australia) as we are so behind in EV use with supporting infrastructure. They can fix crash damaged batteries with replacing cells and connections etc. A totally smashed NMC or LFP lithium battery can easily be fully recycled as black mass. That is it is ground up and then all the minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese etc completely recoverable. Not only that the value of a stuffed EV battery is several thousand dollars. EV batteries are not a fire risk compared to ICE vehicles but hybrids are 3000% more likely to have a fire. I posted the published stats a month or so ago with per 100,000 sales EV fires were about 25, ICE fires about 1500 & Hybrid fires about 3500. The problem really is that there is so much anti EV crap on social media and also in the mainstream media, all supported and often aided and abetted by the Oil conglomerates. Most of the big stories about EV fires destroying a ship, burning down car parks full of other cars etc have been totally debunked but the stories have a life of their own and a lot of Trump style believers. The Fully Charged Shows offshoot "Stop Burning Stuff" debunks most of the myths and corrects many poorly researched so called scientific conclusions with verifiable facts. And finally would I go back to a Petrol Car. This is a resounding NO. Range is a non issue. At 110kmh I get 400km. I can't drive that far without a comfort stop and bite & that takes an absolute minimum of 20 minutes, enough to get me another 200km of charge on a rapid charger & keep going. 95% of my driving is around town or to another place for lunch in the weekend, and I charge at off peak overnight. Parking the car in the garage & connecting the charger is a 1 minute exercise I do 1-3 times a week. Disconnect the next morning & hanging the charger up similarly less than a minute. A lot quicker than going in to a stinky petrol station & having to pay. I only pay once a quarter when I get the power bill. I don't have a big enough solar system as it is 12 years old now but many EV owners charge from their solar so their fuel cost is virtually zero. Whats not to like about that.

I reckon the biggest problem affecting the worlds population with opposing views that turn to hatred, violence and a spiralling out of control total intolerance is belief systems, in other words religions. Over 17,000 Palestinians have been killed so far and they still rabbit on about how their god will provide or protect or whatever. There are over 3000 religions worldwide not counting those that become fundamentalist nutters like the Yank who inspired the 3 nutters in Queensland to believe the world was full of devils and they had to all be killed. So which of the 3000 is right. None have ever been able to produce the slightest shred of evidence that their god exists unless it is an inanimate object that they have built. Mind you there are some weird ones like the tribe Martin Clunes came across in the Pacific who worshipped Prince Philip. They were pretty harmless but I wonder who they worship now that he's dead.

I have a cheap deal with Amaysim. $10.00 a month for unlimited calls & texts & 4 GB of data that rolls over. I have over 100 GB credit at present. Amaysim use the Optus network. Not quite as extensive as Telsta but there are areas where it works an Telstra doesn't. Also I've been with iiNet for 13 years for internet & landline & since the TPG takeover they have decided to get rid of Email. Service which has always been exemplary has taken a dive as well. In September next year my email address I have had all that time is gone & I"ll have to get one through the messaging company and pay for it, or use one of the free services like Gmail. Good organisations build up a reputation and then get swallowed by corporate giants whose only interest is to get as much out of its customers that it can possibly squeeze while whittling services down to a point just above where there would be a mass exodus.

Australia is pathetic when it comes to recycling. We have collected millions of tonnes of stuff that can be recycled and just store it because nobody has any recycling processes set up to do it and of course it is not cheap to recycle. For years we exported it to China & when that stopped we had nothing here to deal with it. Plastics are slowly being replaced with biodegradable things like paper bags and wood utensils but the amount of plastics that just goes in to landfill is astonishing.

There are reportedly more than 2 million pre orders for the Cybertuck. Usually a pre order means a refundable $1000.00 deposit with a $1-200.00 non refundable portion called a fee. If this is the case and everyone pulls out, Tesla will pocket between $200 & $400 million and not have to actually sell any.

The development of internal combustion engines over the last 120 years has been phenomenal. Metallurgy & precision engineering now have superb heat dispersion and 21st century lubricants are so good that there is hardly any wear for over 200,000km. And now humans don't make them, robots do, so there is no such thing as a Monday or Friday car these days. That is of course so long as an appropriate maintenance regime is maintained and pieces that do wear are replaced before they fail. Electronics of course is the other major factor in how refined and smooth an ICE engine that is always trying to destroy itself, is now. My first car with electric windows was a mid 80s Mitsubishi Galant. By the time it was replaced at 2 years old the window motors were grumbling & would have needed replacement soon after. Now there about 30 or more micro processors that monitor and manage everything & they are very reliable. The only problem is that they still need fossil fuels, a finite resource and atmospheric pollutant, to run.

There are about 100 EV manufacturers in China & there are some very futuristic designs. Most we will never see. It has always amused me that critics always reckon EVs weigh too much but most are lighter than the current crop of 70 to 100k SUVs and also most cost less as well. Mine weighs 1670kg about 300kgs more than my old ICE car with an empty fuel tank. The EV weight doesn't change from full to empty & as the battery is at the bottom of the car the C of G is also low providing the basis for good handling. Add aerodynamics & RWD & instant torque from 150kW motor & acceleration from a foot plant is awesome. 18 inch wheels also provide decent ground clearance.

My EV was designed by the Royal Academy of Arts in London and has had many accolades for its modern look, stance and semi aggressive front.

Trump would get a negative result, claim it to be a democrat conspiracy to destroy his democracy & call it a fake.

Politicians talk of baseload power & think that it means supply at peak demand. Baseload power doesn't mean anything other than that's what a coal fired power station runs at. Coal fired (& Nuclear) power stations have to run at maximum output to get peak efficiency. They can't just be turned up when peak demand is there or down when demand is low. Baseload is a myth. It is peak demand that needs to be catered for. Battery storage can do this.

Most of the current EV models available have V2L (vehicle to load). Mine does so I can take an electric jug, cooker or toaster with me & use it anywhere. It will also be useful during power cuts at home. There are some standards which allow a vehicle to be part of the household electricity system. These are V2H (vehicle to home & V2G (vehicle to grid). Basically this allows a car to be used as a household battery charged by your solar panels. The standard requires specific wiring with load sharing technology etc. In coming years I think this will become common as there is already fairly high uptake of solar systems with batteries due to the very low rates for sending your solar generation to the grid, typically 5-7 cents/kWH when they are charging 50-60 cents/kWH at peak times. My EV has a 64 kWH battery which is enough to power my whole house for 9 days at my current usage figures. Governments and power companies are doing all they can to avoid these things as they can't make money out of it.

Resistance to change no matter what that change is is normal so no-one should feel bad about it. From my perspective I have been involved in change management for 50 years so new technologies excite and challenge me. Electric vehicles have been around since the early 1900s. They died because of the inability to get any range from the battery technology of the day. This has all changed now & it has been the vision of Elon Musk that has championed that change. In the 1970s interest was again sparked by the early oil crisis but disappeared quietly till the late 90s. This was largely due to the realisation that cars were reducing air quality in large cities. Toyota produced the first Prius hybrid in 2000 but then in 2006 Tesla was born & the EV revolution has been on an exponential path ever since. From only a few thousand sold world wide in 2012, 10 years later in 2022 more than 22 million were sold world wide and there are now hundreds of brands and models to chose from and this does not include hybrids. There is plenty of resistance to this change and this is understandable. When cars first took over from horses the resistance was just the same. Most people will have heard of the requirement to have a man walking ahead of the motor car waving a red flag. Sounds nuts but it happened. The transition will take time but it is inevitable. We will run out of fossil fuel. Latest estimates are in 45 years. I'll be well dead but will die happy that I was part of the process to try to keep us going in to the future.

Just so you know, I own a 2023 MG4 Essence 64. I made the EV switch in September after looking for more than a year. It suits my lifestyle. It won't suit everyone. I've done 5000 km so far and one 1100km round trip. I cannot imagine returning to internal combustion but that's me, no-one else.

These are the statistics from the US in 2021. From US insurer AutoinsuranceEZ Per 100,000 sales Petrol car fires 1529.9 Hybrid car fires 3475.4 Pure EV fires 25.1 The right wing press in the UK, much of it owned by Murdoch has been spreading a huge amount of false information about Electric Vehicles for several years now. This has finally led to the "Fully Charged Show" setting up an offshoot to get the actual facts out in the public eye. They have set up an on line site for debunking myths and there are many, even some as off the wall as "EVs are too heavy & they will destroy all the roads" and "tyres won't last" etc. It is called "Stop Burning Stuff" Stop BS for short. They don't advocate getting rid of ICE vehicles although that is inevitable when known oil reserves run out but stick to myth busting with verifiable facts. OME the issues you raise are all covered here. Look it up if you are interested.

Good quality CBs incorporate RCDs these days. I just installed one for my EVSE device that draws 32 amps. They are called RCCBs (residual current circuit breaker) and it protects you from electrocution and the device you are using from meltdown or burnout etc.

Well, I finally made the decision and bought my first Electric Car. I have been looking at the particular car since it was released in the UK a year ago so I put my name down for a test drive when they arrived in Australia in August. So far the car has won 15 major awards including Car of the Year 2023 in the UK where it beat every other entrant including ICE & hybrids. I was a bit dubious about the brand but after looking at the multitude of Youtube reviews and the test drive I was convinced. It is a MG 4 Essence 64. One motoring reviewer found the dramatic change from all of the revived MG brand cars difficult to work out. His experience found that while they were generally cheap the dynamic driving experience ranged from below average to positively woeful. The MG4 was so dramatically different it was as if it was a totally different brand. Designed by the Royal Academy of Arts in London and engineered by SAIC (ex MG) Engineering at Longbridge UK it is a ground up EV design with rear wheel drive and 50-50 weight distribution with what they have called a "modular scalable platform" meaning the battery is scalable for different size vehicles and can be changed quickly. I planned to buy the sub 40k bottom of the range version but ended up with the top of the range mid size battery version. Build quality and features better than many luxury brands including Mercedes Benz according to some motoring journalists. My experience so far is I can't get over how good it is. So many features that I am still learning about, fantastic handling and great range. I installed a 7.4 kW charger in my garage and it charges from near empty to full at the off peak rate overnight easily. Running cost is the equivalent of paying about 14 cents a litre for petrol. It also has power to load so I have an adaptor and it will deliver up to 32 Amps of power for any 230 volt appliance or mutitude of appliances. I'll use this during power cuts and also camping or picnics etc. I'll never go back to ICE.

Many legal documents can now be signed on line. Once you have an appropriate digital ID verified you get an email with a link to a secure site that you log in to with a 2 step process. I do all my financial stuff, certifications, Suerannuation & taxation returns etc this way.

No such publication as "Doing Time". I like it though.

We had a thermette like that when I was a kid in the 50s. We never went on picnics without it.

A short film entitled Slaughterbots" was released 4 years ago and it shows what existing technology is capable of producing. It is scary but would be really useful if there were several thousands targetting all of the Russian Kremlin occupiers with political and military leaders. It was featured on the BBC and describes the near future. The web page is autonomousweapons.org and is a plea from a large group of AI experts to try to get such things banned. I don't think they will succeed.

I take it you have never cooked with induction heat. I have had a Bosch Induction cooktop for 15 years now. Energy is transferred instantly to the cooking utensil so the base of the pan actually becomes the element. It uses about 10% less power than standard resistive elements, and is 3 times more efficient than gas. Induction produces no harmful by products as gas does which include methane, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide depending on the type of gas used. It heats faster than gas and is even more controllable. The only downside is that you cannot use non ferrous pots and pans. I have demonstrated this to many people by bringing 500ml of water to the boil in 20 seconds from cold using a "Power" setting where the energy from 2 of the induction elements is concentrated in to one.

Buy cheap no name or even named batteries and you will never get the performance of quality name brand batteries. There are good batteries though for a reasonable price. I tried the Aldi brand Activ Energy and they are well priced and actually topped the Canstar Blue best rated batteries review ahead of Duracell, Varta and Energiser though they don't have a full range including button batteries. The AA, AAA, D & 15 volt alkaline batteries from Activ Energy all perform as well as the other top batteries.

The latest round of new EVs from China are now down in the Corolla price range and even the smallest batteries are now getting around 350km. Both the new MG4 & BYD Dolphin small battery options are under 40k before incentives. New battery technologies are developing so quickly it is almost impossible to keep up. A lot though have massive energy density but very low longevity & this is the biggest hurdle. Sodium batteries though are now entering the EV market.