Australia is so far behind. (Electric cars)

[norbs]

Will it go that far?

Oh Pix, you're better than that.

Very Clarkson of you.

[pixelboy]

Yeah it was a bit Clarkson.. sorry, couldn't help myself.

Whilst i'm a huge fan of ICE and am a bit sad to see its demise (especially whats to come for Motorsport) I am a secretly a bit jealous and would love to play with an EV.. maybe in a few years.

[smithcorp]

Sounds like a winner smith.

It's like the switch to EV has allowed the industry to revisit all aspects of the cars. Bit disappointing that those innovations (double laminated, solar control glass) didn't make it to the ICE generation.. but progress is progress I guess.

Yes this car is one of the first to be designed as an electric car from the ground up and this is what appealed to me - flat floor (compared with lots of other EVs that leave the transmission tunnel in place and try to pretend its because it makes the body stiffer) and even little things like the glovebox is a big drawer, because it can intrude into the engine bay (which is still cluttered with stuff but has a lot more room.

Cool thing is I can charge this thing using outputs from my solar panels; and plenty of EV charging stations (not that there's many yet) are free!

[smithcorp]

would love to play with an EV.. maybe in a few years.

I'd advise not to wait too long. Australia is well behind other countries in ZEV adoption and availability, and many carmakers are discontinuing ICE car production. It may happen quite quickly that Australia may be one of the few remaining markets for RHD ICE cars, and makers may dump their ICE stock here. Good news if you want to pick up a luxury ICE car cheap, but bad news for the secondhand ICE car market.

I think supply of ZEVs in the Oz market will be constrained by demand from bigger markets closer to the makers and suppliers for some time to come - they won't be easy to get for a long time I think. And the suppressed demand is high - the Ioniqs sold out so quickly each time they were offered; and I saw the Kia had 25,000 EOIs, and 1,500 orders for what might be 500 cars this year.

In buses, mandates by most states that they will be buying no more ICE buses; and bus companies will be unable to win contracts with ICE fleet replacement plans (NZ), have meant that almost overnight the value of even very new ICE buses has gone to zero (there's effectively no-one to sell the to). ZEV mandates at the State level may create some big disruptions in the car market. Plus there's still some financial incentives for ZEVs (we qualify for the stamp duty refund - $2770, but our car was a bit too expensive to get the $3000 rebate too).

Cheaper ZEVs are coming soon (though in short supply - if we didn't move quickly on ours it was likely we would be waiting until at least 2023 to get one) and its estimated by 2025 ZEVs will be cheaper than ICE cars. So I say don't wait too long!

[durbster]

... and plenty of EV charging stations (not that there's many yet) are free!

Say what?

[nutty]

... and plenty of EV charging stations (not that there's many yet) are free!

Say what?

Yeah a few of government/council funded ones are free still, as are the NRMA (the local breakdown service company) ones around regional NSW

You also have free destination chargers at places like hotels/pubs ect.. but most of them are fairly slow

[smithcorp]

Yep, lots of free ones. I think a mix of NRMA (currently free for everyone) and retailers/Councils keen to encourage EV owners to visit and stay a while. Ikea at Tempe in Sydney for instance has 4 free 22kw chargers (thinking of heading there in a week or so for first public charging experience). There's other free ones at Kirrawee and Bankstown. Also, many of the fast chargers out on the highway network are free.

Good times at least for a while.

[norbs]

Yep, lots of free ones. I think a mix of NRMA (currently free for everyone) and retailers/Councils keen to encourage EV owners to visit and stay a while. Ikea at Tempe in Sydney for instance has 4 free 22kw chargers (thinking of heading there in a week or so for first public charging experience). There's other free ones at Kirrawee and Bankstown. Also, many of the fast chargers out on the highway network are free.

Good times at least for a while.

NRMA one at Batemans Bay.

[smithcorp]

Yep, Bateman's Bay's got two free 50kW charging locations - noice.

[DarrenM]

I don't get why they're so expensive, but would V2H charging be a useful option? I guess you could use one of those free chargers then use your car to power your house

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/202 ... /100811130

[smithcorp]

Tricky ZEV problems to consider: (mind you, I'm sure this wasn't the first car to break down in this car park - not a smart design to make it with such low headroom)

[pixelboy]

Id say that a lot of car parks would have similar headroom problems. Our local Westfield at Hornsby looks similar to that.

You should be able to get a car into neutral and rolling without any power or petrol. That's a failure of the Tesla.

[smithcorp]

Id say that a lot of car parks would have similar headroom problems. Our local Westfield at Hornsby looks similar to that.

You should be able to get a car into neutral and rolling without any power or petrol. That's a failure of the Tesla.

My car was stuck for 5 days - still love my Tesla though! Thanks Elon!

[Santaria]

Dolly's should've been the first thought. Why 3 days?

Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk

[durbster]

It says they were worried they wouldn't be able to keep control of it on dollies down the ramps which seems a reasonable concern (doesn't explain why they couldn't move it out of the way to start with though).

[durbster]

I did once run into a similar issue with an ICE car.

The 12v had completely gone so we went to jump start it from another vehicle. However, because she'd parked nose in and it was surrounded by other parked cars, the cables weren't long enough. The electronic handbrake was on so we couldn't push the car out of the space, and it turned out there was no way to disengage it without electrics.

We solved it by finding another set of cables and daisy-chaining them but it did seem a bit of a flaw to have no mechanical way of disengaging the brake.

[nutty]

lol man this shit is crazy.. Telsa sold a million cars last year, Im sure companies that sold a million cars had the same/similar problems like this, the fact the person didnt just put it on dollies and roll it out is silly..

[smithcorp]

Tesla does have a poor reputation for reliability (though improving over time) so stories like this get a bit of focus when a Tesla's involved. The whole malarkey of no towing company willing to work in that car park is a different matter, though in general EVs's reliance on technology to operate lots of things is a bit of a risk. My Ioniq 5 has a lot of stuff electrified that I thought could be lighter and more efficient if manual (seat adjustment for instance). There's a physical key to get in the door if the power goes out, but I have no idea whether I could move the car if the electric parking brake isn't powered. Could I get it into neutral without a physical gear shift?

[smithcorp]

Haven't been able to get my 7kW home charger installed yet because of all this rain, so had to resort to the 10A portable granny charger that came with the car. Ran it at 8A, recommended for a 10A powerpoint, and it took 33 hours from 15% to 80%.

[pixelboy]

not awesome, but probably sufficient to do the school run and the shopping id imagine..

In other news, I paid $110 to fill the family car yesterday

[smithcorp]

Can you tell when I charged my EV at home?
About 44kWh over 3 days (using the trickle charger), for a total of about $11.40 worth of juice. Equivalent to $80 worth of V-Power.

Getting the Zappi home charger installed tomorrow - will charge exclusively from the solar panels.

[pixelboy]

[Big Kev]

That guy (Ped) is also on a TV show called Vintage Voltage where he pretends to work for a company that does classic car electrification. Not too bad a show but a lot of it seems very botched and once you put the batteries in the boot you basically have zero luggage space which sort of makes them a little pointless. Also some of the 'man maths' is crazy. I saw one with a guy who had an old very limited run British car called a Gordon Keeble. He said it was too expensive to run because it had a Chevy V8 in it...... and then promptly spent something mad like £25,000 on electrifying it. That's a heck of a lot of tanks of petrol to 'save money'.

[pixelboy]

Yeah, they didn't say how much the Mini conversion was.. Seems to be a bit overpowered IMHO

[Big Kev]

Most of the jobs on that show are £25-45k (45-80k AUD). You'd have to do a LOT of driving to break even on the cost. Even putting 100 quid of fuel in a car every fortnight for 10 years is only just about 25k.