Ian K said..
$70,000 for a vehicle with 350 kg of battery for a 350km range when the average daily travel is 35km? And the excess weight of superfluous battery compounds. Heavier brakes, wheels suspension etc. Before long people will realise what they really need and car manufacturers will churn out cheaper evs that do 100km at a pinch.

Rent a car to go on that dream road trip that never eventuates.

I average about 60km per day.

But rarely do I do 60km in a day.

For the last 12 months it has been almost entirely 400km each way trip to Brisbane about once every two weeks. Day trip usually, sometimes overnight.

I can get there and back on one tank of diesel, and almost there back and there again. I get about 1100km from 70 litres if I stay below 100kmphr.

It is 196km from my house to the first fuel station going north. At the moment I can make sure I can always make at least another servo if the next one is shut / broke / flooded / overtaken by hippies going to Bluesfest or whatever. Yes, I could go a different route to a pass a closer filling station but that adds overall time and distance.

On a 350km range vehicle that would make the journey management quite interesting, especially on the way back. The idea that I'd have to stop to recharge both up and back seems unrealistic compared to what I can get at the moment. Would be a totally different prospect and make the up and back in a day probably unmanageable and way too risky.



No idea how I would rent a car once a fortnight instead. 20 mins drive in the opposite direction to the nearest rental yard, so what - have an EV for the trip to the rental yard, then hire a petrol car. EV just to do two 20mins trips every two weeks (to a place I don't need to go) and then drive petrol anyway doesn't seem the sustainable solution.

Taxi costs over $70 each way to town last time I did it. So that makes the whole journey cost to hire a car more than driving a diesel car.

Solution could well be to have both an EV and ICE and share with the neighbor. But pretty sure that when people do this they just end up locked into the same vehicle 99% of the time no matter what. Maybe a hybrid, but not sure that isn't the worst of both worlds, not the best.

Like others say, nothing against EVs. They are the future, but for me (and I suspect so many others) swapping to an EV isn't just a case of swapping. It would require a whole different way of working / journeying / living. And at the moment I fail to see the benefit in that for either me or the planet.

In a twist on the status quo, a Nissan-Mitsubishi collaboration has just released (in Japan) "kei" class micro cars in the style of their 660cc cars in EV. Only capable of 140km, and not sure of speed, but perfect for your daily city use. And only 1,000,000 yen. About 12000 Aussie pesos. I'd buy one it a flash.

Buster fin said..
In a twist on the status quo, a Nissan-Mitsubishi collaboration has just released (in Japan) "kei" class micro cars in the style of their 660cc cars in EV. Only capable of 140km, and not sure of speed, but perfect for your daily city use. And only 1,000,000 yen. About 12000 Aussie pesos. I'd buy one it a flash.

Why not just have a motorbike or moped or scooter. Or even an ebike ? Or even an e-motorbike.

Where's the advantage in a car so small it is no longer a car but isn't yet small enough to be a bike ?

Paradox said..

. Volvo especially has been critical of the claimed benefits EV's can actually provide.

Where did you get that from? Volvo said it intends to be all electric from 2030 last year and I can't find a statement reversing that

Carantoc said..

Buster fin said..
In a twist on the status quo, a Nissan-Mitsubishi collaboration has just released (in Japan) "kei" class micro cars in the style of their 660cc cars in EV. Only capable of 140km, and not sure of speed, but perfect for your daily city use. And only 1,000,000 yen. About 12000 Aussie pesos. I'd buy one it a flash.

Why not just have a motorbike or moped or scooter. Or even an ebike ? Or even an e-motorbike.

Where's the advantage in a car so small it is no longer a car but isn't yet small enough to be a bike ?

Cos you can get two people, two surfboards and all the gear into a comfortable, dry, warm/cool K-car. With the tunes pumping.
And your **** aint being pinched while you're in the water.
Think before you type.

Carantoc said..
Where's the advantage in a car so small it is no longer a car but isn't yet small enough to be a bike ?

Advantage?? does awesome coolness rate as an advantage?

The LJ50 'Zook was [is] a Kei class car - and back in the day they were everywhere!

How about something like an electric Mini, or Moke?

Both are rolling off the production line right now

An interesting read, without adequate infrastructure full electric vehicles aren't going to work for the greater population.

From A Sparky In Melbourne.

It Really Ain't Gonna Work!!
(ie: Welcome to the Real World!)

Some Wise Words From An Electrical Contractor In Melbourne.

I recently did some work for the body corporate at the Dock 5 Apartment Building in Docklands in Melbourne to see if we could install a small number of electric charging points for owners to charge their electric vehicles.

We had our first three applications and we discovered:

1. The building has no non- allocated parking spaces ie public ones. This is typical of most apartment buildings so we cannot provide shared outlets.

2. The power supply in the building was designed for the loads in the building with virtually no spare capacity. Only 5 or 6 chargers could be installed in total in a building with 188 apartments!!

3. How do you allocate them as they would add value to any apartment owning one. The ****-fight started on day one with about 20 applications received 1st day and with many more following.

4. The car park sub-boards cannot carry the extra loads of even one charger and would have to be upgraded on any floors with a charger as would the supply mains to each sub- board.

5. The main switch board would then have to be upgraded to add the heavier circuit breakers for the sub mains upgrade and furthermore:

6. When Docklands was designed a limit was put on the number of apartments in each precinct and the mains and transformers in the streets designed accordingly.

This means there is no capacity in the Docklands street grid for any significant quantity of car chargers in any building in the area.

7. It gets better. The whole CBD (Hoddle Grid, Docklands) and Southbank is fed by two sub stations. One in Port Melbourne and one in West Melbourne.

This was done to have two alternate feeds in case one failed or was down for maintenance. Because of the growth in the city /Docklands and Southbank now neither one is capable of supplying the full requirement of Melbourne zone at peak usage in mid- summer if the other is out of action. The Port Melbourne 66,000 volt feeder runs on 50 or 60 year old wooden power poles above ground along Dorcas Street South Melbourne. One is pole is located 40 cm from the corner Kerb at the incredibly busy Ferrars /St Dorcas St Intersection and is very vulnerable to being wiped out by a wayward vehicle.

The infrastructure expenditure required would dwarf the NBN cost & that's not including the new power stations required!

These advocates of electric vehicles by 2040 are completely bonkers! It takes 5-8 years to design and build a large coal fired power station like Loy Yang and even longer for a Nuclear one (That's after you get the political will, permits and legislative changes needed). Wind and solar just can't produce enough. Tidal power might but that's further away than nuclear.

MOST AUSTRALIANS DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS YET.......!

It's just a Greenie's dream for the foreseeable future, other than in small wealthy countries.

The grid simply cannot support it in most places in Australia!

An agenda driven by stupid Greenies and supported by stupider Politicians.

I doubt if apartment owns would be happy to only be able to trickle charge their cars. Good if you doing a very standard 9-5 job, no more than 20kms away but don't divert to the beach on the way home for a session, you might end up walking home

Full electric is good for some, but not all

You'll be right, there's never more than one windsurfer per apartment block.
The average per capita electricity consumption is 9.1 MWh. An ev can do the average 10,000 km pa on 1.0 MWh. It's feasible to save that 1.0MWh and more by concurrently introducing energy-efficient housing add ons. Double glazing, awnings, 3 minute showers etc... and once we get past this range anxiety thing cars will be much lighter and go further than 10km on a kWh.

airsail said..
Good if you doing a very standard 9-5 job, no more than 20kms away but don't divert to the beach on the way home for a session, you might end up walking home

Full electric is good for some, but not all

It's really not that bad. I hired a tesla for my 7yo, tesla obsessed, daughters birthday and did about 300kms and charging wasn't too big an issue.

Charged it at home overnight, admittedly wasn't that fast, but the destination chargers are much better and i also took it to Karrinyup to the tesla super fast charger and that was great. If you were doing long trips, you'd just need to plan your stops and charging time.

It was a great car, pretty quick at 0-100 in 3seconds, lots of fun, comfy, well set up to drive and heaps of tech.

I'd have one, especially a Plaid, in a heartbeat but i just cant afford one.

One thing not really mentioned in this "electric car.. convince me" thread is .. the cars. There's been some really amazing electric cars released in 2022, other than Teslas. Sadly due to gov't policy "labor's coming for your weekend" fear campaign the election before last, very slow roll out of infrastructure, lack of subsidies to match fossil subsidies due to state capture by the big oil co's etc, car manufacturers aren't bringing their best to Australia. So far. But we'll catch up eventually. These are just the tip of the iceberg, watch as the major's current R&D comes to fruition. Particularly the interiors, they make current cars look prehistoric.

Currently Hyundai and Kia's are pretty stunning. I love the Ioniq 5 looks, cross between retro future looks and lancia throwback stying.


The honda E is really quirky, city car with very low range but ultra tight turning etc, throwback to early hondas 323 etc. Big seller on style alone.


Rivian, a 4x4 that's great offroad (every wheel individually braked & driven) and pulls 11second quarters.


Genesis GV60 comes with drift mode, drive round town every day, hang the back out round the track on the weekend.
Probably not the greatest track car but it's just an idea of where things are heading...

I can only imagine coming home from work at 7pm, exhausted and having to plug in at a servo for 45 minutes after a crap day, because my unit doesn't have parking.

I'm now home closer to 8pm.

Electric buses banned in Germany, too many catching fire. Imagine an apartment building with a heap of EV's sitting underneath in the car park all on charge.
I'm sure the bigger brands will not be an issue, but how about the cheaper options, it will only take one cell to overheat while being charged and the whole building could go up in flames. You will probably see EV's banned from apartment buildings.

www.cleanenergywire.org/news/several-german-cities-halt-use-e-buses-following-series-unresolved-cases-fire

^^^^
Slot cars, they were the days. I drove past a Tesla today. New Y model.it had run out of charge, poor sod. I never be convinced into buying one.