Hayseed

The NRMA article shows a few things.

Firstly how few electric cars there are to be catered for with 50 or 60 charging points over the entire state plus whatever others are out there actually having an impact..

There are thousands of petrol/diesel bowsers catering for vehicles travelling 3-10 times as far on a fill/charge taking 2 minutes instead of 20 at best..

The job in front of us to build the infrastructure is enormous. It can't be built on a few clubs, pubs and shopping centres putting in chargers in penny packets. We will require many thousands more chargers than we have petrol bowsers because of charge time and low range. Of course range will go up and charge time will come down with technology advancement.

What I am afraid of is that improvement will be slow while the uptake in electric ownership will accelerate bringing our transport system into refuel capacity gridlock. I believe the government must build that initial charging infrastructure to keep ahead of the game if only as a survival operation until such time as industry can justify building adequate facilities on a commercial basis.

The good thing about this is it holds out hope of standardised plugs/charging systems/access etc. We can not afford the Beta/VHS video debacle or the bloody shambles of every phone and electronics company making their own plugs and voltages.

Many are looking at the electric car still as a novelty and believing these "mom and Pop" facilities will do the job. I personally think the reasons for the change are largely BS but the truth is the starter's gun has gone and an electric car Tsunami is a lot closer than many hope and believe.

We can not put our heads in the sand if we are are going to have seamless transition. It might be 5 or 10 years but that is no time at all when talking about building infrastructure for millions of vehicles changing their eating habits.

Lang

Lang wrote: Hayseed

The NRMA article shows a few things.

Firstly how few electric cars there are to be catered for with 50 or 60 charging points over the entire state plus whatever others are out there actually having an impact..

There are thousands of petrol/diesel bowsers catering for vehicles travelling 3-10 times as far on a fill/charge taking 2 minutes instead of 20 at best..

The job in front of us to build the infrastructure is enormous. It can't be built on a few clubs, pubs and shopping centres putting in chargers in penny packets. We will require many thousands more chargers than we have petrol bowsers because of charge time and low range. Of course range will go up and charge time will come down with technology advancement.

What I am afraid of is that improvement will be slow while the uptake in electric ownership will accelerate bringing our transport system into refuel capacity gridlock. I believe the government must build that initial charging infrastructure to keep ahead of the game if only as a survival operation until such time as industry can justify building adequate facilities on a commercial basis.

The good thing about this is it holds out hope of standardised plugs/charging systems/access etc. We can not afford the Beta/VHS video debacle or the bloody shambles of every phone and electronics company making their own plugs and voltages.

Many are looking at the electric car still as a novelty and believing these "mom and Pop" facilities will do the job. I personally think the reasons for the change are largely BS but the truth is the starter's gun has gone and an electric car Tsunami is a lot closer than many hope and believe.

We can not put our heads in the sand if we are are going to have seamless transition. It might be 5 or 10 years but that is no time at all when talking about building infrastructure for millions of vehicles changing their eating habits.

Lang

Lang, The Bit I highlighted in RED is the very reason I believe Hybrids will out number Plug In Cars for Many years to come..

Hayseed

You may well be right but at best they are a neither your arse nor your elbow stopgap measure. It does not change the fact the infrastructure needs attention right now to get to where we must be if electricity is the answer.

One foot in each camp can not be used as an excuse to delay the inevitable. The longer we take the less efficient and more costly it will be. I think we must keep our eyes on the main game and as painful as it might seem use some tax money now to try to at least keep up.

Lang

New Zealand has a user charge for cars based on mileage (or similar), works for them.
Already, because the feds are dragging the chains on adapting to climate change Australia is regarded as village idiots by the big auto corporations. Result is electric cars are far and away dearer here which then only compounds the issues of slow uptake. Also, development of petrol engines has now ended - what you are seeing as 'new' now is what was in the pipeline from a few years back or forced measure such as Euro 6 compliance.
Remember "peak oil" when about now we were supposed to be putting our cars up on blocks. Didn't turn out that way.

I did share a pod cast link on here some time ago that explains a lot of what is been discussed here

The distance question, or range I guess you might call it doesn't even apply to over 90 % of the population as most people just dont drive the distances been spoken of

Country areas will be slower to be taken up than city area's for obvious reasons

If you all have a moment and are interested have look on the youtube show called "Fully Charged"
They show much larger charging stations in Europe than I have seen out here

I guess we can dig our heals and fight it if we choose or we can learn about and try to adapt as best we can

I have no doubt the road user question will be answered pretty quickly and with all the electronic gizmos fitted to these cars I dont doubt the car will just generate its own bill for miles driven and send a invoice to your phone

Power will be clean and green at rate of solar and wind farms been built
Pumped hydro is getting built fairly quick as well and those big batteries as well

Things are changing at a alarming rate at the moment so buckle up for the ride I guess


Paul

I've been for a ride in some Hybrid taxis and found that they are deathly quiet and perform better than most muscle cars off the line. Yep distance is a big problem out here as is the cost of electricity not going down since privatisation then what to do with the old batteries. I'm not against them but they will have to be priced a lot better than they are now before most Aussies buy them.
There is a Tesla running around Taree that must have its own set of road and parking rules. It can be found parked in loading zones and bus stops with no driver then when your driving down the highway at the 110 kph it scares the sh!t out of you as it whooshes past and disappears out of sight.

Paul

Good comments.

The distance thing is only a side argument. What we will have to do is to replace the petrol bowsers with charging stations. The current petrol bowsers cater for the whole national use whether short or long drivers. If people are to continue their current travel habits (and this is more likely to increase than reduce) they must have the fuel, be it electric or petrol to do it.

This means that every bowser must be replaced by a charging station of equivalent energy AND REFILL TIME. Can't be done so this requires the 20,000 (I have no idea, could be 100,000 for all I know) petrol pumps to be replaced by 2 or 3 times that number of charging points because of less range and more fills per 100km and long charging times creating a queue 5 kilometres long on a busy holiday weekend.

The infrastructure is mind boggling.

lang

Duz this mean we gunna need bigger wires n cables run n to each town where there is lotsa lectric cars or a main travel thru point
also if JoeBlow is able to recharge his lecky car @ home off his solar will the govement get there cut also
cya

Swishy

People are not getting with the program. Talking about "more" or "those with" electric cars is not what is planned to happen. ALL cars are planned to be electric. This is not a choice between buying a petrol or diesel car, there will be no choice. Is it Norway that has banned sales of non-electric vehicles within 5 years? Hayseed is good at finding this stuff. It has reached the stage where no government is willing to look like they are not on-board with this tidal wave of change.

Screaming about BS statistics, climate change lies, Green agendas is a losing battle. It is almost certain, rightly or wrongly we are heading electric. If we don't get the infrastructure in place in front of the increase in vehicles we are headed for disaster. This is going to cost the world more than anything in history outside major wars. Whether we believe it or not we must have faith that in the end it will be all worth it! Buy BHP shares, bugger gold, copper will be king.

Meanwhile closer to home:

I think there is absolutely no question that the electricity supply distribution system will be unable to cope in many areas. Commercial recharge stations will require huge wire capacity and I think someone put up figures demonstrating that the average suburban street will reach maximum wire load with just 5 cars home charging.

As mentioned, electricity companies will strongly resist spending billions on upgrades to the wires unless they get a reasonable immediate return.

I can see NBN MkII (Electric) being required. Oh what a can of worms has been opened.

Home charging can be taxed with in-vehicle mileage counters as suggested by a number of people.

lang

.
I dont know.................. but my gut feeling is that there will be little change
come 20 years time, because governments do not operate that quickly ..........
So , in the meantime, we can talk all we like about the situation .................
.....................Billy....................