kgwilson

BYD have produced their Blade LFP battery which is similar to what are called pouch batteries as in mobile phones. These are single cell batteries and are more expensive to produce with at least 5 layers plus the case.

Cylinder cells are heaps easier to manufacture as all layers are spun on. If one cell fails it is easier and cheaper to replace than a whole pouch or blade.

That said the manufacturing quality of EV batteries is so high now that cell failure is very rare. This is why EV batteries are given 5 to 10 year warranties. Many of the newer EVs like mine have an easily replaceable battery. It is disconnected, unbolted and drops down & another one put in.

13 minutes ago, old man emu said:

Let's face it. The whole concept of replacing all ICEs with EVs is being pushed by people with limited experience of the multitude of functions of motor vehicles. I would suggest that the one's throwing the greatest weight at that concept are upper middle class types in managerial positions. This sort of person's workspace is usually a fixed location office, located within a less than 50 km radius of the person's home. For them, travelling distance is not a big factor in their lives. What is resisting their push is the tyranny of distance and, especially very poor supporting infrastructure outside the major urban areas.

 

Having said that, don't think that I am totally against EVs. These are some of the positives I see:

1. Reduced urban air pollution. I doubt if that point can be denied.
2. Reduced use of petroleum products as an energy source. The petroleum products saved could be redirected into objects, from which the petroleum product could be recovered at end-of-life.
3. Equality with existing vehicles as a means of transporting people and goods within an urban area. Can you distinguish an EV from an ICE from a distance? Do EVs carry fewer passengers than ICEs? Does a light EV truck (under 4 tonnes GVM) carry any less goods than a similar ICE? I'd say the answers to these questions is "No".
4. Elimination of 40,000 litre containers of flammable liquid from urban roads. Not so many petrol tankers required.
5. Ability to recharge an EV at times when it is not needed for transport. That means charging overnight, or during operator's rest periods. (Whenever does an urban delivery truck driver get a decent rest break during working hours?)

These are some of the negatives I see:

1. Difficulties for long distance travel due to inadequate recharging facilities and the distances between centres that could provide them.
2. Fuel companies have invested billions in establishing petroleum refuelling sites across the country. If the petroleum companies have no market for motor fuel, who will buy into the "service" of supplying power?
3. Inability to provide power to "remote" users. Think of the farmer whose house and sheds are a couple of hundred metres from the power lines, but who is trying to put in a crop in a 200 hectare paddock whose furthest boundary is a kilometer from the house. How can that be done without using a petroleum-fuelled vehicle that uses its fuel capacity several times per day? It might take 10 minutes to fill the tanks with liquid fuel, but hours to recharge a battery of sufficient capacity. And during harvest, there's not just one power unit working in the paddock at the same time. The smallest unit is a header and tractor pulling a field bin. Not to mention to need to power grain storage equipment.
4. Inability of public recharging facilities to simultaneously charge several vehicles at the same time, as compared to refuelling liquid-fuelled vehicles.

Regarding point 4, see the explanation of that point from time 0:50 in this video:

 

 

My conclusion:

1. Eventually EVs will become an integral part of the transport system within urban areas. ICEs will continue to be a dominant part of the use of vehicles in non-urban areas.
2. The uptake of EVs in urban areas is dependent on reducing the recharging time at public recharging locations. That would require dedicated electricity supply to charging stations that is independent of the supply system for domestic and commercial use.
3. The acceptance of small, low powered EVs for personal transport is being damaged by the continued phallus-worship of unnecessarily large and/or overpowered vehicles designed more for ego enhancement than practicality. 

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.