onetrack

Sounds to me like a biased article spreading FUD over EV's. Possibly, the reason behind any motion sickness in EV's is the very rapid acceleration and deceleration of them, which is much higher than IC-engined cars.

Yes, the old Champs had everything sealed to the nth degree, they were quite amazing in that respect.

4WD's have a "safe" fording depth, set by the manufacturers, that is a very sensible figure. It's usually between 500mm and 800mm maximum. Over that depth, high mounted diff and transmission breathers go under water, and the cold water effect on hot transmissions and axles creates a vacuum that makes them ingest water via the breathers. Corrosion in those compartments then follows.

Wheel bearings will only withstand a small level of water pressure before the seals admit water to the bearings, and bearing failure follows as corrosion pits the races and rollers when the vehicle is left parked up for a period. 

But the worst part is, the body of a vehicle is essentially a largely sealed bathtub on wheels. It has to be largely sealed to keep dust out and keep warm or cool air in. Once you go into deep water (deeper than 800mm), you risk the vehicle starting to float, and it loses traction, and the ability to direct it where you want it to go, via steering input.

Add in a serious tonnage of water pressure from fast-flowing water and this becomes an irresistable force. The result is the vehicle simply gets washed downstream.

Add in the serious level of water pressure from the tonnes of water force, being applied to the side of the car in fast-flowing floodwater, and this becomes an irresistible force.

He's obviously decided that daily, full-time application to his projects, is more important than any forum. I'd blame it on his new hip, it gave him a new lease on an active outdoor life.

Just wait until Elon's vindictiveness comes to the fore and he starts unloading on his "best mate". It will be pretty revealing. I could never understand how Trump could promote Tesla's, when he's dead set on eliminating EV's from the landscape, and promoting oil companies and more gas guzzlers. Just goes to show his sincerity is non-existent.

My stepdaughter left her cat with us when she went to live the Pilbara in the late 1990's. This cat was a half-wild tabby moggie that had regular panic attacks and need to run away and hide, as the feral cat in her came to the surface. But she had character and was quite intelligent. When she killed a little bird in the backyard, I went her crook, and she never killed a bird again. 

We looked after her for 12 years as the SD roamed the world, an animal we didn't really want in the first place, but which became part of our home. Then, when she was about 14 in 2010, she got stomach cancer, so I had to put her down. I buried her in the backyard, and I actually sat down and bawled when I did so, I couldn't believe the loss of a pet that I never even picked, would affect me so badly.

Ahhh, that's sad news, rgm. Nothing more hurtful than having to put a faithful companion down - and even more so, seeing as it was your late wifes. Here's wishing things pick up for you soon.

The houses they build today are only good for twenty years, anyway. After twenty years, they're going to flatten it, and build two in its place.  😞

The new Chinese Tesla copy, the Xiaomi YU7, manufactured by China's Xiaomi phone manufacturer, sold 300,000 cars of this new model, in just one hour after its release.

The Xiaomi YU7 undercuts the Tesla model Y by around 4% in retail price. Elon is going to have to really apply himself now, on how to beat the Chinese EV onslaught.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-30/china-electric-vehicle-xiaomi-sells-289-000-suvs-tesla-model-y/105476084

It's only Grandpa's that go for Grandma's. 😄

Nev, everything in Broome is at a premium during the Dry. We were lucky, we normally stay at the Habitat Resort, it's on 7 acres out near the Port and the accommodation units are self contained and nicely spread out, which is what we like. Because we've stayed there regularly for years, we got a discount calling them direct. But it's still $290 a night.

The main problem was we could only get 8 days straight at the Habitat, then it was fully booked from 20th July on. But we found a nice AirBnB on the Northern outskirts of town, so we scored the last 4 days at the AirBnB, so it's all good. Even got a good deal on car hire at Thrifty through our RAC WA card, 20% off the hire rate. I'm looking forward to the warmth and relaxation.

One of the interesting things that continues to amaze me, is that the oil companies are still building new service stations on a wholesale basis.

I reckon the number of service stations in W.A. has doubled in the last 6 or 7 years. Someone obviously still believes there's a great future in fossil fuels - or maybe it's just that servos are a licence to print money, with their huge markup on fuels?

Here on the Left Coast, we have had some Winter rain, but overall it's been much warmer for Winter than the average for this time of year. We are well down on annual rainfall, and the residual ground moisture levels are very low all through the State.

Winter crops such as Wheat and Canola are out of the ground and away, and got a boost with good rains last week, but they had a long dry spell in early June. Many crops seeded in May had spotty germination due to low moisture levels, and some farmers did spot re-seeding.

The crop areas that didn't germinate earlier are behind the rest of the crops. If we get reasonable rains in July, it may turn out to be an average cropping season, but I suspect it's going to turn out to be a spotty, below-average year for grain crops.

The high pressure systems are still dominating over Australia and the cold fronts and low pressure systems are still well South of the continent when they come through from the Indian and Southern Oceans to the West. Some of the rain we've had, originated from the Northern part of the Indian Ocean, and came in from the North West in troughs, rather than from cold fronts from the South West, as we'd normally expect in Winter.

Despite the warmer Winter, we're still going to head off to Broome for 12 days next month. Looking forward to a decent break, we haven't had one since before COVID started. We had two failed attempts at holidays in 2022 and 2023, both were cut short by COVID outbreaks, and we ended up locked up for a fortnight, both times.

Trump and Carlton. Both two hopeless cases that need to be put down.

Not Range Topping

The only problem with that idea is the huge weight penalty of even a small genset. A 10Kw genset, even a petrol one, would weigh at least 75kgs, probably more like 100kgs if you took into account the weight of the towbar mount. I've got a 6Kva diesel twin Kubota portable genset (GL6000), and it weighs 250kgs.

Mazda have been experimenting with a "range extender" 1.0L Rotary engine mounted in the boot, to provide a major range boost, but I'm not sure if it's just been an experiment, or if it is actually planned for production.

Lack of water in drought periods kills thousands of animals and has probably contributed to species extinctions. I can recall, in July 1969, a mate and I took a "halfway around Australia" trip, driving my HK Holden ute.

We drove N from Perth, through the Wheatbelt, Murchison, Pilbara and Kimberley. From Kununurra we went to Katherine, then Darwin, then back down the Centre to Port Augusta, where we turned right and headed back to Perth.

There was a big drought in 1969 that affected W.A., S.A. and even the N.T., and water sources were drying up big-time. As we drove across the Nullarbor, we encountered mobs of multiple hundreds of 'roos, all heading South.

They were heading South trying to find feed and water, and many were in poor shape after obviously travelling a long way. 

A lot were disorientated and as we slowly motored up to a large mob crossing the highway in front of us, one turned towards us and jumped onto the bonnet of the ute, trying to jump over us in total confusion!

He landed on the bonnet and fell off onto the side and picked himself up and slowly hopped away. I'll wager a lot of them died, in W.A. the drought lasted from late 1968 right through to early 1972.

Because it's identical. A. shows the watch missing, B. shows different colours on the bands of the left arm, C. shows an added arm, so it must be D.

D.

It puzzles me that we want swappable batteries for our power tools, household and garden equipment, scooters, e-bikes and other equipment - but we aren't clamouring for swappable batteries (or even just simpler battery replacement) in the EV's currently being offered to us.

The EV full transition has yet to play out, and recycling is the area where EV's are carrying a major burden that goes directly against their "green" credentials. We have yet to develop adequate and satisfactory methods of EV vehicle and EV battery recycling.

There is only ONE fully operational EV/Lithium battery recycling facility in Australia, and its capacity is quite low, it's incapable of handling any more than a small percentage of Lithium battery recycling.

The majority of Lithium battery processing here is simply shredding, burying, or sending the batteries overseas for reprocessing - a procedure that generates more waste and unnecessary consumption of resources, and even at that, there's reluctance of other countries to take our waste.

Yet, the EV's and Lithium batteries are being put into production and scaled up at massively increased rates. Virtually all EV's produced in the period from 2010 to 2020 are essentially now scrap - but difficult-to-recycle scrap. We regularly try to improve our rubbish footprint, but it's not improving, it's getting worse.

EV tyres are difficult to recycle, they are different to normal tyres, and we already have a massive tyre rubbish problem that is not being addressed.

At least Lead-Acid batteries are recycled to the tune of around 98%-99%, and IC-engine car recycling is quite good. IC-engined cars are fully recyclable, even the lubricants and coolant are drained and recycled.

But EV batteries are full of toxic chemicals and plastics and minerals, and they are very costly to try and recycle, and the Lithium battery recycling effort doesn't produce any major value at this point.

No-one is properly addressing the waste factor associated with EV's, they're just continually kicking the can down the road.

At some stage, very soon, EV battery manufacturers MUST concentrate on the recyclability and ease of recycling EV batteries, or we stand to leave a legacy of mounds of EV and Lithium battery waste to our future generations.

As it is now, vast numbers of Lithium batteries are going to landfill and councils are being unfairly left to carry the can of dealing with this waste, the level of which they are woefully unprepared for, and unfunded to deal with it.

It's very telling that despite regular and repeated episodes of unconscionable and essentially criminal behaviour by Australian Banks, which behaviour has led to a Royal Commission and multiple number of Banking Enquiries - all of which have determined major wrongdoing by banks in their treatment of loyal customers - not a single Bank executive has ever been charged with criminal behaviour, nor gone to jail, despite their behaviour essentially being White Collar Crime.

But the Banks have been obliged, even forced at times, to pay multiple billions of dollars in penalties, as a result of their misbehaviour, disobeyance of banking rules and regulations, mistreatment of customers, and other forms of outright criminality.

They are a protected species, with the Govt and politicians lacking the intestinal fortitude to carry out decisive actions against bank executives who indulge in illegal, ruthless, unconscionable and criminal behaviour.

I was told years later, when retelling my bank mistreatment tale to one person, that I'd made the mistake of being too conservative in dealing with my bank. This bloke said, "There's an old saying that holds true. When you owe your bank a million dollars, and its fully secured, you have a problem. When you owe the bank a hundred million dollars, and the security is dodgy, they have a problem. Your mistake was not making them concerned about what a possible upset could cost them".

In hindsight (a wonderful thing), we would have been far better off to call in Administrators to the business, which is an excellent method for fending off aggressive and unconscionable conduct by banks. Administration would have enabled us to develop a different approach to protecting our assets, and one that would have meant we could have avoided a totally unnecessary fire sale of business assets.

To this day, I still wonder what went on, well above our heads in banking and corporate circles. Our business was the biggest family-owned mining contracting business in Western Australia in 1994, and we regularly competed for mining contract work with the "biggies" - Leightons, Roche Bros, Eltin, Brambles, etc, etc. - and I often muse about whether, above our heads, one of these companies threatened to withdraw their business from this bank, unless they took steps to wipe us out, and thus relieve them of annoying and costly competition.

Clinton, I trust you've taken plenty of steps towards protection and preservation of your container if you're going to bury it - because they were never designed to be buried, and the corrosion is relentless and horrendous when unprotected items are buried in the ground. Acids and chemicals in the soil, combined with water travelling through the soil, are highly destructive and corrosive on buried metals.

You need to coat the container with a highly protective coating, preferably an epoxy or other high quality, moisture-sealing compound. Then you need to protect it further with heavy duty plastic sheeting that covers the entire container and which sheeting is thoroughly sealed. Otherwise, you'll find your container being destroyed and unusable within a few short years, if you don't take those protective steps.

Add insult to injury.

Quote

The idea that every EV could take the same battery regardless of whether it is a 2-seat convertible a family sedan or an enormous 4-wheel drive a little problematic. The battery for a Rivian is not going to fit in an EV Mini

All that is required is a standard battery design and shape. Manufacturers have done this before, with a myriad of everyday items we use - the same standard fitment applies across a range of manufacturers. Imagine if every electrical manufacturer made their own plugs and sockets and loudly proclaimed their design was best? This is what is happening today.

We used to have phones with swappable batteries. Then the manufacturers decided that wasn't a money-spinner for them, so they now make sealed phones with single-use batteries.

The problem now is, the amount of phones with good life left in them being discarded by the hundreds of millions, creating a huge waste problem. EV's are heading the same way.

The phone problem has gotten so bad in Europe, the EU has now declared that all new phones must be repairable, be more easily disassembled, and have longer life batteries. I'd like to see replaceable batteries return in phones, I'd buy one in an instant.

EV's need to last 30 or 40 years, the same as IC-engined cars, otherwise the level of discarded EV vehicles will become a massive waste problem.

Taxis in China are primarily, battery-swap models. The design allows for virtually non-stop use of the vehicle. China is working on battery standardisation.

An EV with a swappable battery has huge benefits to buyers. The vehicle life can be extended substantially. The buyer can buy an EV much cheaper, because it comes without a battery.

You can then rent or buy the battery you need, for your style of use. You only want a battery for city driving? -  you rent or buy a small battery. You want to take a long trip? - you rent or buy a big battery.

Battery renting makes more sense, just as BBQ gas bottles have gone that way.

As battery technology improves, you could fit improved models of battery. No longer will you have to scrap your perfectly good car (as in the Fiats case), simply because the battery is toast, and it's built into the car, making accessibility and repair simply uneconomic.

https://mobilityportal.eu/china-battery-swapping-electric-vehicles/

Jerry is spot on with his determination that banks are not your friend. In fact they're the most ruthless and uncaring of any corporate organisation. And if you take them to court, you're up against a coterie who group together like a pack of ruthless commandos, to annihilate you.

I've been on the receiving end of banks ruthlessness, and it cost me everything I'd ever accumulated in my 30 years of working life to that point (1995). This bank destroyed our family business, our assets and our family by demanding repayment of ALL outstanding loans and other monies owing - a total of $1M - within 48 hrs. And we had no payment arrears, no major financial problems, and the $1M was fully secured with $1.6M of excellent properties -  a farm, city property and industrial property in Kalgoorlie/Boulder.

The reason given for the unprecedented demand? "Some computer-generated future scenarios were carried out, that showed, in perhaps 12 mths time, the bank will be owed money by your family business, that we will be unable to recover. Accordingly, we have lost confidence in you as our customer, and no longer want your business, and you will repay the entire sum owing within 48 hrs".

Of course, you say - do what any right-thinking person would do - go to another bank! We did. We went to NINETEEN other banks to get them to take us on as their customer, and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM gave us the same response.

"Who are you with now?"

"XXX Bank, one of the Big Four".

"Oh. If they don't want you as a customer, you must be hiding something from us that means a great hidden risk to us. Thanks, but no thanks."

I went to see a lawyer about invoking a lawsuit via the Unconscionable Conduct laws relating to Banks. His answer was succinct. "How many years have you got, and how much money have you got?"

He went on - "Because no matter if you have $10M or $20M to spend on financing a lawsuit against this bank, I can tell you this much. They have tens of billions to spend on countering lawsuits, and will continue to run the lawsuit for as long as it takes, with delaying tactics, disputed evidence, and various other legal scheming, that will guarantee YOU will run out of money, and time - long before they do!".

He was entirely correct, as the banking lawsuits associated with the 20 Foreign and Australian Banks loans to Bell Group in 1990 proved.

The 20 Banks had lent multiple hundreds of millions to the Bell Group, owned by Alan Bond, when it was in its death throes and essentially insolvent. The W.A. Govt had also lent over $150M from the State Govt Insurance company (SGIO), to the Bell Group, in a number of badly-managed investments.

When Bell Group went into liquidation, the 20 banks ensured they received the lions share of any remaining Bell Group assets, and the remaining creditors could go whistle.

The W.A. Govt, funding the Bell Group liquidator, took the banks on, to recover their lost monies, claiming the banks exercised their power as secured creditors in unreasonable arrangements that denied funds to other creditors.

It took until 2013 - TWENTY THREE years of bank arguments, delaying tactics, subterfuge, and disputed evidence, to come to a judgement whereby the Banks were instructed to pay out $1.7 BILLION to the creditors denied their rightful monies via devious bank behaviour. 

EVEN THEN, the banks refused to pay, declaring they wanted it all reheard again. The W.A. Govt took the unbelievable step of passing the BELL ACT, which was designed to MAKE the Banks pay their judgement monies.

Of course, the banks went to court again, and spent ANOTHER NINE YEARS claiming the BELL ACT was invalid - and it was, according to the learned judges.

Eventually, the banks agreed to a mediation whereby they would offer a reduced amount ($1.3B) to settle the Bell Group argument, without DECLARING ANY GUILT for unconscionable behaviour. Therefore, it took THIRTY TWO YEARS to settle the aggrieved creditors claims over the Bell Group losses.

These banking people are the most disgusting people on the face of the Earth, and I trust there's a special seat in Hell for them.

In our familys case, we had no option but to sell everything we owned, and worked our guts out for, for over 30 years, at fire sale prices, resulting in the total destruction of our equity, and the total dispersal of all our assets.

I can assure you, I went through a dark place, and spent many years plotting how to kill bank executives by the dozen in a co-ordinated attack - until I finally realised the futility of my thoughts, and the fact that meeting evil with more evil only backfires on you.

I'm not alone, I have read multiple stories of business people and farmers who were treated the same as our family, with utter ruthlessness and destructive bank decisions, that sent others into a spiral of depression and revenge.

I read of one bloke who actually planned to fly a bomb laden aircraft into a bank headquarters (this was long before 9-11) - and he said he only gave up on the plan when he realised he could not be sure of killing the exact people he desired revenge on, who had destroyed his lifes work with their intransigent and ruthless behaviour.

In many cases, farmers lost their farms simply because of bank revaluations that substantially lowered the value of their farm at that particular point, which meant the farmer was technically bankrupt.

It was egregious behaviour that was completely unwarranted, a short term position, and one that valued the long-standing customer as worthless.

But this is the history of banks - and no-one knew that better than King O'Malley, who had seen the ruthlessness and money-grubbing behaviour of banks in America in the 1800's.

I definitely did not get enough financial training in my younger years on how to counter banks ruthlessness, but I doubt any extra training I might have received, would have enabled me to deal with bank avariciousness, especially when they hold all the cards.

One thing I have learnt, is to NEVER allow any one bank to control all your assets and financing, and never let them take more security than they actually need. It is standard technique of banks to ensure that they grab all your assets for loan security, when you take out a loan with them, whereby they can end up with double or triple the asset value that is required for that particular loan security.

Once they have your major assets listed under their control, that then increases their assets base, and allows them to hand out more high-return unsecured loans such as credit cards. So they're effectively lending unsecured money to other people, secured by your assets.

And be assured, that ANY Bank, reserves the power to call in ANY loan - including your house loan - within 48 hrs, if they make a decision that you're no longer able to pay off the loan. In fact, it doesn't even need to be a decision based on ability to pay off the loan - it can be a reason as trifling and as irrelevant as undergoing a separation, changing a partnership agreement, or any one of a hundred spurious reasons that enables them to do this, and to claim their loan or loans are at risk of being unrecoverable.

One of the documents I received during the foreclosure on our business, was a 48-page document - in fine print - outlining EVERY single reason for a foreclosure. It was breathtaking in its comprehensiveness, and ensured the banks actions were protected and justified, in every single act it carried out. They play for big stakes, and hold all the cards, and you have none - and they play by their rules.