Electric car thread

[octave]

By the way, I just learned that emergency charging from RACV is from a battery pack, not a petrol generator. 

[onetrack]

I can honestly say I've never seen an EV stopped by the side of the road after running out of charge. After all, you get plenty of audible and visual warnings in them, as regards low charge.

But I've seen plenty of broken down and run-out-fuel IC cars and utes, parked by the side of the road!

[kgwilson]

NRMA also have a battery on their vehicle to transfer energy to an EV. Battery to battery can be very high speed so it does not take long to get enough charge into the empty EV battery to enable it to get to the nearest charger. using a generator would take hours to get very little energy in the EV unless it was a massive generator capable of 150 kW plus. I don't know of anyone who has run out though.

 

EV owners are good planners, partly because the public charging network has not kept up with EV sales. Also because the cars software knows the range and can list all the chargers within range. State & federal governments are now putting a fair bit of effort into improving the number of chargers particularly in regional areas. There are plenty in large centres and along major highways. 

 

Installing chargers is a lot easier than  building a petrol station & once built at huge cost it has to be supplied with fuel. Portable units are being installed in the outback. They have a large battery and solar panels & get delivered on the back of a truck. Several companies are supplying these to Outback farms etc. Larger ones have a small solar farm & big batteries to supply several vehicles at once. NRMA have one in the NT somewhere with 4 chargers.

 

Public EV charging is only in its infancy & some of the early ones were very unreliable. Not so now & there are plenty that are capable of 350 kW way more than almost all EVs can receive.

 

I am off on a 350km round trip tomorrow. The battery is fully charged (free from my solar system) & I won't need to top up anywhere. If I did though there are heaps of charging options. I just hit the go to button & the Satnav guides me to the neared public charger & lists all within range. Simples.

[facthunter]

When you run a diesel out it of fuel it will get air in the system will have to be Bled properly. Sometimes even changing a fuel filter has to be done by a competent person with the right equipment. Contaminated Fuel  with water can cost thousands of dollars. None of this with EV's No turbos , No EGR Valves. No air cleaners No Mufflers to rot out. No

need to warm the engine or watch it on a hot day. No starter Motor, gearbox or clutch to wear. Reduced Brake wear. Servicing reduced to tyres and windscreen wiper Blades. No fumes No tuning. . Dramatic revolutionary change.  Nev

[Siso]

16 hours ago, kgwilson said:

Installing chargers is a lot easier than  building a petrol station & once built at huge cost it has to be supplied with fuel. Portable units are being installed in the outback. They have a large battery and solar panels & get delivered on the back of a truck. Several companies are supplying these to Outback farms etc. Larger ones have a small solar farm & big batteries to supply several vehicles at once. NRMA have one in the NT somewhere with 4 chargers.

Again people are looking at just the cost of one part of it like the whole intermittent thing. eg intermittent energy is the cheapest form of electricity which it is until you start adding the storage, extra transmission etc. etc.. As we get more electric vehicles the charging stations are going to get bigger. If you have say 10 350kW chargers at a station that's a maximum demand of 3.5 MWs. The wind farm I worked at had 3MW turbines, we had 3 phases coming down an 80m tower of 70mm2 copper at 33kV (Vestas have their transformers in the nacelle.). 9 wtgs(27MW) in a string had 500mm2 aluminium going back to the Sub. At lower voltages you need bigger cables. The current distribution  network will have trouble coping with the extra load. You could put battery's at the charging station to buffer this a bit or reduce the output of the charger , but there goes your cheaper than a petrol station and fast charging. Still like electric cars by the way. It is the way of the future but like net 0 it is not going to be as easy or cheap as it first appears.  

[Siso]

Bled 100s of diesels, not that hard, bit messy though. Electric cars will have problems as well, the manufacturers will see to that. They make a lot of their money on spare parts. They still have motors, bearings, gearboxes, power electronic components

Edited 4 hours ago by Siso

[octave]

32 minutes ago, Siso said:

Again people are looking at just the cost of one part of it like the whole intermittent thing. eg intermittent energy is the cheapest form of electricity which it is until you start adding the storage, extra transmission etc. etc.. As we get more electric vehicles the charging stations are going to get bigger. If you have say 10 350kW chargers at a station that's a maximum demand of 3.5 MWs. The wind farm I worked at had 3MW turbines, we had 3 phases coming down an 80m tower of 70mm2 copper at 33kV (Vestas have their transformers in the nacelle.). 9 wtgs(27MW) in a string had 500mm2 aluminium going back to the Sub. At lower voltages you need bigger cables. The current distribution  network will have trouble coping with the extra load. You could put battery's at the charging station to buffer this a bit or reduce the output of the charger , but there goes your cheaper than a petrol station and fast charging. Still like electric cars by the way. It is the way of the future but like net 0 it is not going to be as easy or cheap as it first appears.  

 

 

You’re right that once you add storage, transmission and upgrades, the system gets more complex and costs go up. But that’s exactly what the modelling already includes. The CSIRO GenCost report looks at the whole system—firming, transmission, everything—and still finds wind and solar backed by storage are cheaper than building new coal.

 

On EV charging specifically, high-power sites do create local demand spikes, but that’s not unique to renewables—it’s a grid planning issue. In practice, most charging is spread out (home, work, off-peak), and fast chargers often include batteries or smart load management to avoid huge grid upgrades. So yes, there are costs—but they’re manageable and already being factored in, not a dealbreaker for renewables

[Siso]

I know you wont like the source but here is another view.https://www.cis.org.au/commentary/video/the-csiro-report-that-proves-coal-is-cheaper-than-renewables-zoe-hilton/   Why has every country that has gone the intermittent generation got the most expensive power? Germany, Denmark, UK. Which countrys successfully are transition to net 0 with intermittent energy have cheaper power. Real world situations arent supporting the modelling. The modelling can be made to look like anything the government want it to be. The ISP has nothing to do with cheapest energy, just cheapest way of doing government policy. CSIRO give 30 years of life for a nuclear plant which is just plain wrong!. 

[octave]

12 minutes ago, Siso said:

I know you wont like the source

 

Correct, it is a well-known right-wing think tank. I would also be sceptical of a left-wing think tank.

 

The video poses the question, "if renewables are cheaper, why do they require subsidies?"  The assumption here is that building new coal or nuclear plants would not rely on any subsidies. It very much would.

If low renewables meant cheaper power, countries like Italy or Poland should have low prices—but they don’t. The biggest driver in Europe has been gas dependence, not renewables.

 

• Italy (lower renewables than Germany, high gas reliance)
  → consistently very high electricity prices
• Ireland (significant gas dependence)
  → also high prices
• Poland (coal-heavy, relatively less wind/solar historically)
  → not cheap, often still high due to coal + carbon costs

In terms of being directly attributable to renewable, yes, there is truth there.  In 2020, I had rooftop solar installed.  I had an upfront cost of $3500 plus a 4-year low-interest loan with payments of around $40 a month for 4 years. If they added to my reduced bills, then it looks like solar would have vastly increased the cost of my electricity.  My philosophy here was that in order to save money, I had to spend money up front. My system has definitely paid for itself, and I am now unbothered by the price of electricity. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are in a phase of great change (just like when I got rooftop solar).    

 

I regularly go for a bike ride past Geelong docks and also the oil refinery. On one side of the road, there are enormous stacks of wind turbine parts, blades and tower components as well as the nacelle structures that are awaiting delivery to the site. On the other side of the road, it is the refinery that is noisy and stinks (and recently caught fire). This is quite a contrast.  

It is quite exciting to live in this time of change. Sure, there will be hiccups and missteps along the way. I suppose going from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age had its challenges.

As solar and battery technology improve in efficiency and cost, it is undoubtedly doing fewer people will need to be connected to the grid, giving people economic benefits as well as autonomy.    

 

 

[octave]

Just getting back to the Centre for Independent Studies, I do wonder exactly how independent it is. I will leave it to others to decide whether this information is relevent or not.

 

"The CIS also keeps almost all of its corporate funders secret. While it receives at least $800,000 from corporations, its policy is only to identify sponsors where they agree. [7] Companies which have been publicly disclosed and confirmed by the CIS as its funders include:"

• BHP Billiton
• Shell
• ICI - now a subsidiary of Orica
• Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation [8]

Some of the individuals who fund the CIS include [9]:

• Dame Elisabeth Murdoch - Mother of media mogul Rupert Murdoch
• Neville Kennard
• Robert Champion de Crespigny

In June 2006, the Australian Financial Review reported that a 30th anniversary dinner attended by 600 supporters with the keynote address by Prime Minister John Howard raised $2.5 million. The CIS is aiming to raise $10 million as a capital fund to underpin the centre's operations.

Former Funders

• McDonald's Australia
• Philip Morris
• Pratt Foundation
• WMC (once known as Western Mining Corporation, WMC was taken over by BHP Billiton).

 

[nomadpete]

I like this girl.

This youtube discusses the issue of EV battery degredation, which is surrounded by urban myth and misinformation. I especially note in the comments - there are a lot of anti-EV trolls simply bagging out EV's.