Australia is so far behind. (Electric cars)

[norbs]

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-c ... 02501.html

Jaguar is going all-electric by 2025 as part of ambitious plans brought in by its new chief executive.

Owner Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will phase out building cars with internal combustion engines over the next four years and focus on the electric vehicle market.

That seems huge to me. I realise Jag probably doesnt have a huge market share, but still, this is big news.

Last time I was out with the bike group, I was saying I expected my next small car to be electric, to many guffaws and one claim that I was homosexual! FMD.

[smithcorp]

The manufacturers will decide the country's future trajectory in e-cars, since the government's providing no leadership. A couple of years ago I did a market sounding for zero emission buses in the ACT and several e-bus makers said they were reluctant to invest in Australia because of the signals from the Federal and State Governments and our dirty power generation.

I think with cars its simpler - we import and the makers will cater to the Euro, NA and Asian markets which are demanding ZE. We will have to buy what's sold to us, so internal combustion engines will rapidly cease being an option.

The big risk is power infrastructure - the demand for electricity will increase rapidly (bus depots for instance go from needing electricity like a small factory, to needing the equivalent of a suburb's power requirements) and if we haven't got the electrons and the distribution network for them, then we will be stuffed.

[Dr. Pain]

So... petrol power?

[w00dsy]

It'll make long distance trips a pain in the arse. I know Tesla's do a quick half charge in 20 mins but that's still a fair while to be stopped every couple of hours. I can't imagine more affordable cars will be able to match that. The difference in price is still massive too. The cheapest electric Hyundai Kona is 65k compared to 30k for the petrol.

[norbs]

So... petrol power?

Well, it is a technology invented in the 1790s.

What gets me is the people clinging on to ICEs. I dont get it. It is old and dirty technology. And I know there will be people saying "the electricity to charge electric cars is dirty", but that is slowly changing. Jesus, if we had some forward looking politicians, the change would be happening way faster.

[richo]

Chicken and egg time , the idea of an EV car has some appeal but the total lack of infrastructure has zero appeal as do the charge times and the crap they use to make the batteries and how do you get rid of when the batteries die etc etc . Having said all of that I think Hybrid cars have a real future using small displacement engines .

Maybe i'm a cranky old prick that didn't like the amount of times i nearly got skittled by electric food delivery bikes on the weekend

[Cursed]

Last time I was out with the bike group, I was saying I expected my next small car to be electric, to many guffaws and one claim that I was homosexual! FMD.

LOL. Yes choice of car is directly tied to your sexual identity, not the fact that one of your major passtimes is hanging around with a bunch of sweaty blokes in lycra shorts.

A hybrid or electric is high on our priority list for our next vehicle choice. The hybrid mainly for the concerns over long distance range and the fact that it doesn't rely on recharge infrastructure to get about.

I'm not expecting government here to do anything slightly innovative while the current lot are running the place.

[w00dsy]

I really like the idea of electric road cars, but only as an option. I absolutely detest the idea of electric racecars. The hybrid F1 cars are bad enough. Half of the spectacle is the noise. Endurance racing will become a thing of the past unless they can somehow swap batteries.

[Dr. Pain]

So... petrol power?

Well, it is a technology invented in the 1790s.

What gets me is the people clinging on to ICEs. I dont get it. It is old and dirty technology. And I know there will be people saying "the electricity to charge electric cars is dirty", but that is slowly changing. Jesus, if we had some forward looking politicians, the change would be happening way faster.

I am with you on this Norbs. I do love my bike but the engine is old. It's only real saving grace is it's only 500CC but that's offset by all the issues of ICE. Electric motorbikes do look pretty awesome though.

[smithcorp]

I'm currently working on zero emission bus transitions and the rapidity of battery development is amazing. Range, weight etc are changing fast, so I would expect most electric cars to have good ranges (ie 500km plus) within the next few years. Most cars in cities are driven less than 30km per day. For longer trips it requires different planning and the infrastructure isn't there yet.

I've been observing some relatives with a Nissan Leaf - they recently took a long trip and had to go to some effort to charge during the day or overnight, as charge points weren't compatible (Tesla), occupied, or broken. You can definitely spend a lot of time driving around trying to get a charge and being stressed about being stranded. However, the operating costs are very low compared with a petrol or diesel car.

I would happily swap my 2 year old petrol Tiguan with an electric one if one was available!

[DarrenM]

I thought I'd have my car for 10-15 years then go electric. Here I am 20 years later driving the same car. It's a bit frustrating but it's getting there. I agree with Robert Lewellyn that the big manufacturers seem to be artificially inflating electric vehicle prices for some reason. Possibly because they'll lose a big chunk of the revenue stream from post sale parts.

Volkswagen say they'll be all electric by 2026
Honda says all cars will have electrification by 2025 (includes hybrids I guess)
PSA group says all their vehicles will have an electric option by 2025.
I'm sure a fair few other manufacturers have committed to switching by 2025/2030 due to regulatory pressure in Europe and China.

So we have 5-10 years before there's significant need for charging infrastructure. After that we won't have much choice. Meanwhile the LNP engages in fear mongering to "save our tradies utes". As though they wouldn't be better off using electric ones instead.

[norbs]

How long before some enterprising cars salesman starts selling packages. EV, solar system and battery?

[pixelboy]

Big banks offering cheap renewable loans...

Commonwealth Bank is backing the push for Aussies to make their homes more sustainable by launching a low rate Green Loan.

The big four bank announced on Monday it will be launching a Green Loan for existing home loan customers to purchase renewable technology for their homes.

The Green Loan allows eligible CBA customers to borrow up to $20,000 on a fixed rate of 0.99%.

"As part of our commitment to the responsible global transition to net zero emissions by 2050, we're supporting our customers access renewable energy through sustainable housing solutions," said CBA's Group Executive Angus Sullivan.

"For most customers, they will see their energy bill drop by over $500 per year if they switch to solar which will offset total repayments of the loan in the long-term.

"As Australia's largest lender, we want to help as many customers as possible make their homes more sustainable."

[durbster]

Almost certainly going electric this year for Mrs Durbs next car to replace her Suzuki Swift Sport. Much as I love driving it, it is getting on a bit, lacks any modern comforts, and because most of her journeys are (in normal times) short and local it feels like an electric car would be more suitable.

Her only real criteria is that it's quick enough for overtaking things and easy to park. Currently this is top of the list- Peugeot e208:
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/peugeot/2 ... 019-review

We'll probably pull the trigger later in the year. Might as well let somebody else take depreciation happen while we're in lockdown.

[smithcorp]

You Euros are spoiled for choice

[durbster]

Yeah that's true. It's only in the last year or two that it's really opened up and become a viable option though, and - Tesla aside - our infrastructure still isn't that great so we will have an ICE car for longer trips for now.

The biggest problem we have that you probably don't is how much on-street parking we have, particularly in cities. There are a huge number of British streets like this and there's not an obvious solution:
https://goo.gl/maps/iVkv86HhdWv4DF5f6

[durbster]

I was going to say your problem is going to be range and I looked up the average driven journey distance in the UK vs Australia. Ours is about 15km, yours is about 36km so for most people it's probably not out of reach of modern EVs.

Travelling round it in an EV would be bloody hard work though!

[Big Kev]

Almost certainly going electric this year for Mrs Durbs next car to replace her Suzuki Swift Sport.

You can be my carbon offset then cos I'm thinking of going the other way with a 5.0L V8

There's a couple of good Harry's Garage vids about going electric and hybrid. Particularly these
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEyfCcAbtKU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y__PfXB4f0g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLcCPsnLlaE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVFJUxeGFAE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C-dSOf0jp4

Electric is a lot easier and makes more sense if you have a driveway to charge it on, but only 40% of UK houses have that). The problems come when you have to rely on service areas to do it. I'll wait as long as I can to go electric to be honest. I just don't think the infrastructure is there yet (I don't have a driveway to charge on anyway) and I can't be bothered to factor in an extra hours stop on the way to my relatives. I've seen too many videos and articles about people basically giving up trying to charge anywhere other than at home. The chargers are busy, slow, broken or require a huge amount of registration on various apps with pre-payments etc that people just go oh forget it.

But I think they've gone about this electric stuff all wrong. Most of the pollution they're trying to solve is in the cities so if you could encourage people to use electric there with very cheap leases then I think more would take it up rather than trying to push everyone in to it. I would not be averse to something like a Fiat500 that I could lease for £50-100/month just for commuting and then keep the petrol for weekends and longer trips. That way my local pollution is nothing because I'm commuting on electricity and if I want to go further afield or have a nice trip out somewhere any pollution I'm making is blowing away in the wind over the fields.

[durbster]

Almost certainly going electric this year for Mrs Durbs next car to replace her Suzuki Swift Sport.

You can be my carbon offset then cos I'm thinking of going the other way with a 5.0L V8

Really funny you should say that because that's exactly what I'm planning too (been seriously looking at Jag XKs...)! So I'm sorry, you may have to find another way to offset yourself.

But I think they've gone about this electric stuff all wrong. Most of the pollution they're trying to solve is in the cities so if you could encourage people to use electric there with very cheap leases then I think more would take it up rather than trying to push everyone in to it. I would not be averse to something like a Fiat500 that I could lease for £50-100/month just for commuting and then keep the petrol for weekends and longer trips. That way my local pollution is nothing because I'm commuting on electricity and if I want to go further afield or have a nice trip out somewhere any pollution I'm making is blowing away in the wind over the fields.

From an environmental point of view it makes more sense to get city-dwellers on to public transport (or bikes) rather than encouraging them into cars though doesn't it?

But that's what I have in mind - a small EV to do all the local journeys and a bigger ICE car for fun longer trips. As we do have a driveway we can charge it at home and won't have to deal with the ropey charging network too much.

I've no idea how you solve the problem in remote areas of a country as big as Australia. Some journeys can already take days so adding 40 minutes of charging every couple of hours isn't going to sit well. At least charging times are improving and you have a lot more potential for solar based power.

[nutty]

My Subaru Levorg turns 5 soon and ive been thinking of moving on, Im a perfect candidate for a electric car. Non covid times, I do about 30km a day in peak hour, and the odd weekend trip to the coast. I do own a 4wd/camper trailer so if I im heading off grid I can take that. The thing about the Subaru is uses far too much fuel and doesn't really have the performance to back up the cost, the feel of an electric car is amazing even the base model ones have such a unique and cool feel.

Range anxiety is an interesting one. For a long time that worried me, but the advances in batteries is insane. If you look at the first Tesla's they had like 300km range, now the base model 3 has an easy 400km+ of range and charge soo much faster.
It’s easy to say Australia is big and we don’t have the charging infrastructure. But It’s not like everyone gets up in the morning and randomly decides to drive 400km into the middle of Australia. Most of the time anything over a trip to the shops is planned. With 400km of range, between Tesla/Evie/Chargefox(RACQ) and others there isn’t many places along the east coast that isn't covered, taking a bit of time to plan a stop along your trip to stop for 30min every 3ish hours isn’t going to wreck a trip.

Im 100% going to get a Tesla, at 70ish grand its an expensive car no doubt, but ive now got 4ish mates who have them, all of them are super happy with them and as someone who works in Software the continual improvement model and the tech features really impresses me, the whole quality problem is the only thing thats basically stopped me hitting order.. I dont know how I would feel if I spent 70k on something that had massive paint issues and panel gaps, we are getting the China delivered ones in Australia starting this week, so im keen to see if its an improvement from the seppo made ones.

[Big Kev]

Really funny you should say that because that's exactly what I'm planning too (been seriously looking at Jag XKs...)! So I'm sorry, you may have to find another way to offset yourself.

I'm looking at the F-type P450 cos the discounts are huge (10-15% off list) so with that, a trade in and taking the PCP contribution but paying it off early it's the best part of a 30k discount. Then with the view of that taking me up to the combustion ban in 2030 and see what's around.

From an environmental point of view it makes more sense to get city-dwellers on to public transport (or bikes) rather than encouraging them into cars though doesn't it?

Probably but that'll never happen because people like the freedom of going to and from where they actually want to be with no waiting around in the rain for the next bus and getting on it with the great unwashed indiginous population to get sort of where you want to be but not quite.

[norbs]

I was going to say your problem is going to be range and I looked up the average driven journey distance in the UK vs Australia. Ours is about 15km, yours is about 36km so for most people it's probably not out of reach of modern EVs.

Travelling round it in an EV would be bloody hard work though!

This might interest you Durbs.

https://twitter.com/outbacktesla

https://www.youtube.com/c/outbacktesla/videos

[durbster]

I was going to say your problem is going to be range and I looked up the average driven journey distance in the UK vs Australia. Ours is about 15km, yours is about 36km so for most people it's probably not out of reach of modern EVs.

Travelling round it in an EV would be bloody hard work though!

This might interest you Durbs.

https://twitter.com/outbacktesla

https://www.youtube.com/c/outbacktesla/videos

Cheers, subscribed

[smithcorp]

Interesting report here on electric cars, range, bullshit and Tesla. The line that grabbed me: Every Tesla we've tested has failed to hit its EPA range estimate

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electr ... munds.html

[norbs]

Interesting report here on electric cars, range, bullshit and Tesla. The line that grabbed me: Every Tesla we've tested has failed to hit its EPA range estimate

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electr ... munds.html

I seem to remember something a while back about this. And Elon losing his mind at someone over it.