Electric vehicles and alternate fuel sources

This is really interesting. Stick with it. It shows how early we are into the technology and how out of touch people are who claim 'the science is in".

You can charge your car from a home power point but as he says, the wiring limit will take 40 hours to fully charge a low battery. Another site says home 240v outlet will give your car around 10km driving for every hour of charge. Obviously this is untenable so the Level 2 system at $5,000 as in the video is the only realistic way to go if you want to charge from home.

I looked a little further and see that in this particular townhouse situation only half the units can have car charging before the primary supply to the area is at capacity. In a normal suburban situation as few as 20 houses in a street will reach supply wiring capacity if all charging cars.

The system is so underprepared that the only possible way for electric cars to become even a little more mainstream than right now is to have people spend tens of thousands of dollars on solar, house batteries and Level 2 chargers. The public utility electrical system can not even remotely cope with a million electric cars  being used for the real motoring average 12-15,000km per year not the current "town car with rare longer trips" electric car use at present (there are 15 million cars total in Australia that Bowen claims will be almost fully replaced within a decade). 

All this can be addressed with time and money but we are so far from having electric cars integrated into our society and nowhere near the pipedreams of politicians and enthusiasts.

 

Here is everything you wanted to know about electric cars in Australia. The quarterly report from the Australian Automobile Association.

Bullshit baffles brains and every manufacturer reports their statistics differently making a direct comparison almost impossible. The charging time table is ridiculous. They all get a head start on the lying by measuring a charge time to 80% (but mileage figures from 100% batteries). How many times have you been to the service station and filled up with 80%?

Every manufacturer chooses to give you charge rates from 11kw to 450kw. Every one chooses any fill status 0-80%, 40-80%, 35 -75% and so-on to meet whatever eye pleasing charge time his gullible customers would be happy with.

www.aaa.asn.au/research-data/electric-vehicle/

I guess you need to compare apples with apples Lang
I doubt very much if the grid could cope if every house hold tried to boil the kettle and toast some bread at the same time

This is why electricians use a calculation to work out maximum demand
The grid also does this for each transformer
Each substation and so on back to were generation starts

So all this waffle about grid capacity is just that, waffle

Let's just take electric cars, not every single car will pull up with zero % charge and try to all charge at the same time

Lets face it, zero cars are gunna arrive home with zero charge

So the 100% charge waffle is just that

So maybe the 80% charge time is realistic
We don't drive to the petrol station with the last drop of fuel in the carby bowl
Just Electric cars are not going to pull up at home at the charge point with zero charge

The grid already has the capacity to charge the electric cars and maintain what we already use, this been calculated already in Australia, many many times
Not ever car will charge at the same time and at the same rate

I would think in the future we will choose if we want a super fast charge or a slow all day charge, and be be accordingly to what we want
Fast charge, pay more
Slow charge, pay less
Time of day charge, pay less again

Paul

Lang wrote:

This is really interesting. Stick with it. It shows how early we are into the technology and how out of touch people are who claim 'the science is in".



 

Absolutely Lang, 120 years since the first car appeared on the road and there is still the odd horse about, and it took a while for the wheel to catch on, every nob on the media babbling shit won't speed it up. Major innovations have always been measured by decades, and it is already 3 decades since the solar panel was invented.

Paul

In the AAA report none of the manufacturers gave their charge times from zero, they all started from something left in the tank 10-20% - about what you would have in a petrol car depending on how far down your personal habits run. If you fill a petrol car you fill it. If you fill an electric car you seem to only need 80%. They also seem to have forgotten to adjust their range claims from 100% full battery back to the "standard" 80% capability.

Nobody mentions the extra cost of a Level 2 home charger being required to operate with some form of normality. Apologists scoff at complaints about long public charge times with rubbish like "What is wrong with relaxing with a cup of coffee while waiting for the 30-60 minutes to pass to charge your car" Public servants in Canberra, the electric car capital of Australia, may have time to do this but the community at large can not afford to lose hundreds of thousands of hours a day.

If there are 15 million electric cars, as enthusiastic politicians predict, within a decade there will be over a million cars a day filling up at the once a fortnight Australian average. I am not as sanguine as you are about the ability of the system to cope with that and a rising population and general consumption marching on at the same time. The average Australian home uses 20kw per day, the average electric car uses 50kw to fill. Converting the full fleet to electric with a once a fortnight fill means the system will have to cope with the equivalent of over 2 million new homes suddenly appearing, the number of homes in the entire greater Sydney area.

There could well be a time when we are all electric but it should come naturally meeting the normal supply and demand rules. The cars do not cut the mustard in almost every area in convenience or economically, every aspect requires work-arounds, extra cost in time and money. You have to give up stuff and allow the car to change your lifestyle. We still have not hit the straight on what happens to the cars and batteries when they get old. A Toyota is still going OK at 20 years and 300,000km with a real possibility it has had SFA spent on it when looking at retirement. Bookies would be falling over themselves to give you any odds if you wanted to bet your Tesla coming anywhere near that with its original battery

I believe electric cars will come. Let us not overcook the sales pitch and let the economics and technology evolve to truly replace and hopefully improve the existing system without having to change our lifestyle or make sacrifices.

Just to expand on how electric cars are matching current vehicles.

 Tesla Basic Vehicle Limited Warranty:
This warranty covers defects in materials and workmanship for the vehicle itself for 4 years or 80,000 km, whichever comes first. A big worry when you are driving a vehicle that has an entire zoo of transformers, deformers and non-conformers pushing electrons around every function of the car.
Battery and Drive Unit Limited Warranty:
The duration of this warranty varies by model, but it typically covers the battery and drive unit for 8 years or 160,000 km (or 192,000 km in some cases). This warranty also includes a minimum battery capacity retention of 70% over the warranty period.

Compare Tesla 80,000km warranty on the car itself (Some makes were offering more than that 30 years ago) and after 160,000km they will guarantee your fuel tank - and range - is only 2/3 the original

Most other cars now have 5-7 years unlimited mileage total warranty - with a full fuel tank! Capped price servicing and most have free roadside service for at least 12 months but often longer.

It is what it is but yet another huge downside when comparing the value of your purchase.