octave

Perhaps you should change banks. This is where I bank https://www.bankaust.com.au/about-us The thing is people like to complain but seldom take control. Owned by the customers who by having an account are shareholders and get to vote on the bank's direction. No executive bonuses.

Just to reiterate I am not trying to convince anyone to adopt any particular method of payment. For me, operating cash is just too onerous. Having retired a couple of years ago we are living on our super. This super is not in the local bank but an amount goes into our bank account monthly. There has been much talk on this forum about greedy profit-driven banks. My bank is owned by its customers. I have never paid any fee with this bank. The downside (for some) is that it does not have branches everywhere. I could go down and queue up at the post office but I have better things to do with my time. This morning we got our weekly delivery of fruit, veggies, and fish. We started getting these deliveries during the early stages of COVID-19 and liked it so much that we have kept it up. We pay for this digitally. I do not imagine they would want to set the driver up to take cash and to carry enough change for every transaction. Because this is a regular arrangement delivery is free. When I do go to a supermarket I certainly do not want to have to go to a bank. When we buy petrol we usually use an app which means we don't even have to go to the service station. We started doing this during the worst of covid. We fly to Adelaide 4 times a year. We always book online after searching for the cheapest and most convenient flight. For our next trip, we thought we would do something different and go by train. This was organized and paid for online. I suppose I could have driven to the nearest station and handed over the cash. There are items that we want to examine in person but looking at most of my recent purchases we are happy to read and watch online reviews and then use the net to find the best deal. My credit card costs me $50 a year but this is offset by $200 rewards. We have not paid a cent in interest in the last 5 years. Sometimes there is a surcharge but it is miniscule and certainly cheaper than driving to the bank every week. I cant really see that my life would be better if I drew out money every week.

Whilst this can be true for some things it is not true for the majority of what I spend. I have paid cash for an aircon install but it has to be understood that they are no doubt giving you a fraction of what they are saving in creative accounting with regards to paying tax. Day to day most of us are not paying for items like this. I have just been looking through my credit card statement and I can't see anything in this category. Bunnings are not going to give me a discount, the local cafe won't or the supermarket. If I do pay the occasional surcharge from time to time it is no big deal. I pay down my credit card every Friday and review what I have spent so I pay zero interest. My credit card charges a $50 annual fee but I earn points which I use exclusively for Bunnings vouchers ($200 per year) Again I really don't care what others do, I do what I do because for me it is cheaper and more convenient and aids with accounting.

Woolworths IGA and Coles don't have a surcharge but Aldi does (0.5%) https://www.finder.com.au/how-to-avoid-bank-fees-at-the-supermarket

My son just sent me this surprise visitor he filmed Wellington NZ airport about 10 minutes ago. Untitled 179.mp4

I am in no way having a go at what others do but at my local coffee shop I use my card even just for one coffee. It does not cost anything extra, it is helpful to them in terms of not having to maintain a cash float and at the end of the week I can check how much I have spent, It works well for me.

Yes I am sure banks make plenty of money and could if they wanted to subsidize marginal branches. At some stage though we will have situations where an armored van will deliver cash for the few who still want it. The post office mentioned in the story you linked to that pays $4000 a week to have cash on hand, who should pay for that? Should the Post office pass that on to all customers? The fact is that increasingly fewer people want to use cash. I have absolutely no interest in trying to convince anyone to stop using cash. i also believe you should not compel a business to accept cash if it does not work for them. An example I have offered up before in this thread is the music studio I worked in in Canberra. My wife managed the business for the owner. We would get people to pay for the whole term on the first lesson. Back then this was $350. The hours of operation were between 3PM and 8PM. The area was industrial and after 5PM deserted except for music school students. We used to insist on digital payment over the phone or in person. It would have been monumentally stupid to have someone sitting on the desk with several thousand in the till in this area. I think the business was/is both legally and ethically entitled to only accept digital forms of payment even if only for the sake of the safety of the staff. Again I don't really care how people operate their finances.

I am happy for people to use cash if they want to however I don't think a business should be compelled to accept cash or that matter a card if they don't want to. I am happy to pay a surcharge to use digital means as long as people who use cash pay the costs associated with that. It was the post office. Any business that deals in cash must ensure that they have sufficient cash on hand and in reasonable denominations. Cash has to come from somewhere and there are costs associated with this.

Yes, I watched that earlier. Another example of right-wing media propaganda.

The problem is that drawing out cash is also dependent on a power-dependant network. When you draw out money from a supermarket or post office they don't just hand you a wad of cash and write it down in a ledger. Power being out of course does not necessarily stop the transfer of the data required to do business. If I buy a cheeky glass of wine on an airliner it does not require grid power. If I buy something at a country market it does not require power, even the tofu vegan crowd has a wireless EFTPOS device. Having read the article I have a few questions. Should a private company be compelled to act as a defacto bank by allowing people to take cash if it is economically disadvantageous? "Australia Post, for instance, recently revealed it was spending about $4,000 a week to fly cash to Coober Pedy in South Australia to make sure residents had access to cash." This appears to be incredibly inefficient. My question Red is who should pay for this? I am happy for people to use inefficient cash as long as they are willing to pay the associated costs. I am happy to pay a tiny surcharge to use digital methods. As for horror stories of people traveling 800km to get cash, who would do that? There are easier ways to handle money.

I think most non-rechargeable hearing aid batteries are zinc-air batteries and rechargeable hearing aid batteries are lithium-ion.

I don't really understand this. The employer (unless grossly negligent) does not hold your super. I have had the same super fund for over 30 years and I still have this fund. Whenever I changed jobs I elected to keep my super fund. My last employer went out of business but this had no effect on my super fund which is between me and the fund. I am not even sure how a company could withdraw your super, my wife can't even draw out my super (unless I snuff it). I could see a situation where a grossly negligent company did not deposit your funds or make their co-payments but you would have to be monumentally unaware. I, when working for employers checked my balance regularly. Indeed, sometimes people who have many short-term jobs and don't take an interest can lose track of some of their accounts. That is why you can for free track down your lost super. I have done this, not because I had actually lost any super but just in the hope that there was ann account that I had overlooked, but sadly no. Searching for lost super https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/jane-hume-2020/media-releases/there-138-billion-lost-and-unclaimed-super-could-any-it-be

This is true. We will probably continue to drill for oil for many years to come. As you point out many of the things we use are made from crude oil. Many of the chemicals, drugs, etc that we rely on come from oil. Oil is a remarkably useful substance, so why burn it if we don't have to? The fact is that oil reserves are finite and whether you believe it or not releasing all the CO2 built up over millions of years in a few hundred years is a bad thing.

BYD breaks ground on its first sodium-ion EV battery plant Less energy density but a third of the price.

When you say it has no handbrake you surely mean it does not have a lever, ratchet, and cable. It does have a handbrake, just not the kind that you are used to. My son lives in Wellington and his driveway is incredibly steep thus far the Tesla hasn't left the premises without a driver.

Yep, I can confirm that. I don't see that as a problem though. It is an incredibly easy and pleasant car to drive.

Many EV manufacturers such as Tesla are moving towards LiCo02 Lithium iron phosphate batteries. This should allay your fears. Lithium iron phosphate battery Personally, I would happily own a car with a Lithium-ion battery because the statistics suggest that fires are rare and that IC car fires (even spontaneous fires happen at a greater rate. US probes Hyundai, Kia recall into 6.4 million vehicles over fire risks

To me, the humor in this is the lack of knowledge of the author of the meme. It is only funny because it is so dumb. I only have direct experience with the heater and aircon in a Tesla Model 3. It is a heat pump and is very efficient.

A lot of things that people complain about as if they are unique to EVs but in fact what they are really complaining about is modern technology that is in both IC AND EV. https://www.drive.com.au/news/handbrake-turn-e-parking-brake/ https://www.carthrottle.com/news/less-third-new-cars-have-manual-handbrake

Why wouldn't it be legal? A handbrake needs to be able to hold the vehicle on a hill. The handbrake on a Tesla and indeed many other modern cars operates this way.

You can buy biofuel in Australia biodiesel and bioethanol. Generally blended with conventional fuel. https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/petrol-and-fuel/ethanol-and-other-biofuels

If by physical you mean a cable that operates the brake pads then yes. It does have a handbrake though. It is electrically operated.

The argument that as a country we contribute a small percentage of the overall is not persuasive to me. If you add up all of the countries that let's say produce less than 5% of the problem, together they make a substantial amount. If all of the countries that contribute larger portions such as China, the USA, and European countries move to cleaner technology are we really going to be like Grandpa who refuses to get rid of his EH Holden? Purely from the point of view of self-sufficiency we are capable of producing the "fuel" to drive our cars without importing it from the Middle East with all the problems that this brings. Are you asking me to answer that? I am not knowledgeable enough to calculate a figure. I can (and so can you) look at the research. The answer seems to be estimated at 150 million tonnes per year. If you are suggesting that the amount produced is less than the trees absorb we could say it doesn't matter however those trees can't be counted twice. We can't offset the carbon produced by cars and also claim that it offsets carbon from energy production. Yes, there are incentives. It seems to be around 3 to 3.5 k but they are also introducing road user charges to take account of the fuel taxes avoided. EVs are more efficient and even if you don't accept the science around climate change you surely understand that car exhaust is not healthy and is thought to cause health problems. Yes, this is true. My question to you is do you have the same environmental concerns over fracking? I am sure there are evangelical EV advocates out there but there are also many many evangelicals out there scouring the net looking for anything negative that they can find to bolster their argument. People who by and large are not worried about the environment suddenly become "evangelical" when it comes to cobalt mining (but only when used for EVs.) Those who post a link to a car fire and when it turns out not to have been an EV suddenly lose interest. There are some valid concerns about progressing to the next way of powering our transport but so often people go around the same issue and when their concerns are debunked they move on to the next issue and eventually end up back to the first issue to begin the cycle again. I don't particularly see myself as an evangelist in fact I hardly ever post EV-related content except in answer to postings of the same tired old myths. I don't even particularly have any interest in swaying someone's opinion. I do dislike posting of old myths and someone's gut feeling. If anyone wants to sway my opinion the way to do it is with verifiable facts. If in fact EVs turn out to be no better environmentally than IC there are still in my opinion compelling reasons to move to EV when the time for me is right. As I have said before on this forum my experience of driving several EVs is on my yearly holiday to stay with my son in NZ. I get the use of his EV. The time we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic because of an accident was a much better experience. Whilst all the other cars around us were idling going nowhere and some deciding to switch off we just sat using almost no energy. When we went to the zoo it was a hot day so we turned on the aircon 30 minutes before we got back to the car. Not, getting into a boiling car and impatiently waiting for the aircon to cool us down. On a cold morning, the car's heater will warm up the car before you get in. The almost silent smooth driving is fantastic. Whenever we get home and drive home from the airport I feel like I can feel/hear each cylinder detonation. All of this may not be of interest to you and I will often say to people who present lists of objections "Well clearly you should not buy one then." The present roadmap is for the end of new IC sales by I think 2035. It is simply not an issue for you or me. This makes me think that those who knock every aspect EVs are possibly motivated by either concern for income if they work in that industry or perhaps just conservatism and anxiety over change. Personally, I am excited by new technology. The idea of nothing changing seems boring and depressing. If in fact the doubters are correct with their many criticisms of EVs then the adoption will stall. I often argue that Norway is way way ahead of us with EV adoption. Norway has over 500 000 EVs on the road. The knockers should be looking to real-world evidence. Are cars bursting into flames all over the place? Are landfill sites full of EV batteries? Is their grid melting?

That is a good point. In 1950 average atmospheric CO2 was 310ppm. In 2023 it was 425ppm. Whilst trees and plants etc utilize CO2 it seems clear by the rapid increase that either there is too much CO2 being added to the atmosphere or we don't have enough plants and trees to ustilize it. The sea is of course absorbing a lot but this has limits and also bad effects in terms of acidificationj.