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Electric cars?

Would you buy an electric car?

  • Already own one

    Votes: 10 5.1%

  • Yes - would definitely buy

    Votes: 43 21.7%

  • Yes - preferred over petrol car if price/power/convenience similar

    Votes: 78 39.4%

  • Maybe - preference for neither, only concerned with costs etc

    Votes: 38 19.2%

  • No - prefer petrol car even if electric car has same price, power and convenience

    Votes: 25 12.6%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.1%
  • Total voters
    198
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2024 is just 3 years away.. The speed at which Tesla is moving could outdate this forecast in even quicker time.

Electric cars 'as cheap to manufacture' as regular models by 2024
Analysis by UBS suggests shift away from fossil fuel vehicles may be imminent

Electric cars will cost the same to make as conventional cars, with internal combustion engines, by 2024 and an acceleration in the shift away from fossil fuel vehicles may be imminent, according to new research.

The extra cost of manufacturing battery electric cars versus their fossil fuel equivalents will diminish to just $1,900 (£1,470) per car by 2022, and disappear completely by 2024, according to research by the investment bank UBS. The research is based on detailed analysis of batteries from the seven largest manufacturers.

Electric cars 'as cheap to manufacture' as regular models by 2024

Analysis by UBS suggests shift away from fossil fuel vehicles may be imminent
www.theguardian.com
 
Interesting option for cheaper electric cars NOW in France.

Transition One Will Convert Your Old Gasmobile To Electric Power In About 4 Hours
October 24th, 2020 by Steve Hanley

If you own a perfectly fine conventional automobile but want to join the EV revolution, you have two choices. Engineer an electric drivetrain swap yourself, which involves hours and hours of lying on you back on a creeper in your garage, or buying a new electric car. Now, if you live in France, there’s a third way. Transition One will take your current car, remove the existing internal combustion engine, replace it with batteries and an electric motor, and give it back to you in about 4 hours.

The first question anyone will ask is, “OK, that sounds interesting. How much does it cost to do this?” The answer is about $8,500 in round numbers. But wait. The process now has the official stamp of approval from the French government, which makes it eligible for EV incentives that can bring the total cost down to around $5,500. Once the process is complete, you will immediately derive the benefits of owning an electric car, including greatly reduced maintenance and fuel costs. Remember that gasoline costs a lot more in Europe than it does in the US. Transition One estimates the conversion will pay for itself in about 4 years time. Range after the conversion should be in excess of 100 miles — more than enough for most daily driving chores.

Transition One Will Convert Your Old Gasmobile To Electric Power In About 4 Hours - CleanTechnica

Transition One will convert your conventional car to electric power in about 4 hours. Does that make sense financially?
cleantechnica.com

Transition-One | Convert your car to electric

Transition-One converts small internal-combustion vehicles into modern cars: electric, connected and affordable.
transition-one.eu
 
basilio said:
Interesting option for cheaper electric cars NOW in France.

Transition One Will Convert Your Old Gasmobile To Electric Power In About 4 Hours
Click to expand...
As long as they're not claiming to be the first ones to do it........



Fully electric car show here parked outside the old Hydro workshops in Moonah (Hobart) circa mid-1990's.

It was a standard car converted to fully electric power as a demonstration project. It was registered and fully road legal etc.
 

And in Sydney thirty years before that.

 
Yep Smurf/VC there have been a number of conversions of petrol cars to electric cars. But to be fair these were almost always one off exercises which took much , Much effort and were not intended to be mass commercial projects.

There was a company called Blade in Australia which used a Hyundai Getz as the base for an electric car conversion. That cost $48k in 2011 .. I believe that was far more complicated than this venture which, it seems, can do a conversion in 4 hours at a cost of $8000.

Obviously there have been improvements , refinements and the development of far more competively priced components especially batteries since then.

And we can still DIY in Oz..

Electric car conversion - Car News

doesn't faze Australia's first manufacturer of EVs.... Ross Blade of Blade Electric Vehicles in Victoria says they will take on the big companies with a cheaper and faster-charging home-made product.
www.carsguide.com.au

Electric Conversions | Oz Diy Electric Vehicles

Oz-DIY is a “do it yourself” electric vehicle specialist, supplying you the parts to make your own electric vehicle.
www.ozdiyelectricvehicles.com
 
A company down victoria was converting daihatsu charade etc.batteries were lead ones and range poor but cost not that horrendous.i had a micro car in the 2000 and was toying with the idea
 
qldfrog said:
A company down victoria was converting daihatsu charade etc.batteries were lead ones and range poor but cost not that horrendous.i had a micro car in the 2000 and was toying with the idea
Click to expand...
That will still be the issue, with these conversions, great if you don't need range, they have to put the batteries somewhere.
Purpose built, they use the floor pan and fuel tank area and fit batteries from 30kw/hr to 90kw/hr, this conversion 15kw/hr.
But in Europe or a city dweller in Sydney/Melbourne, it may be o.k.
 
Good analysis of the huge challenges facing Tesla in producing sufficient batteries to move the world to electric cars.
 
Junior said:
Why don't we make batteries in Australia? Don't we mine all the raw materials here already?
Click to expand...
We do Junior!! Lead Acid... sort of says it all doesn't it..
But the new stuff???... why would we want to ?? we've got oodles of coal and gas and a Government that shovels money into developing the 19th century burnables..
Anybody with skills in the Battery area will be welcomed with open arms and cheques by Musk...Who, as we speak is in negoation with Jakarta on a Battery factory in Sulawasi. Why? because Indo have legislated that Nickel mined there must be value added there.
The people setting National policy in Austriala are 'captured' and willfully duchessed by vested intrests. And are screwing the countries future.

Tesla, one company, now employs people(50,000+) the fossil fuel industries Coal, Oil and Gas in Australia (58,000). And which way are those stats trending?? In less than 12 months Tesla will employ more people than fossil fuel does in Australia; if it doesn't already....(excuse no spell check)
 
So why doesnt Tesla build its giga factory here?
Well if you want to keep the politics out, it is simple, there is more profit making it elsewhere.
But who wants to be honest.lol
It is cheaper to pay for a few miners here, than pay for the construction cost, wages cost, tax cost at Australian prices, simple really.lol
If there was more profit, in making batteries here, they would.
Just my opinion.
 
sptrawler said:
If there was more profit, in making batteries here, they would.
Click to expand...
As has been noted many times in the context of manufacturing, the big problem is that Australia is simply uncompetitive.

It's not just about wages. That's one factor but business can live with having one individual cost that's higher than elsewhere so long as the rest stacks up. Trouble is, the rest doesn't stack up and we're high cost in pretty much every way.
 

You'd think there would be bang for our buck, if the Government made it easier and subsidised or provided cheap finance for aspects of getting into battery production....right? What other choice do we have? Surely you'd have a crack at: Solar panel production, battery production, solar energy export (i.e. Cannon-Brookes proposal to export to Singapore), EV Vehicle/Hydrogen vehicle manufacture. You have a crack at whole range of these industries of the future, and if just one of them sticks it would be worthwhile.

As you say wages is only one factor, as you aren't necessarily talking about unskilled labour, many of the factories will be largely automated so you're primarily looking at skilled workers.

Stubbornly sticking with fossil fuels, and crossing our fingers that it will continue to be profitable forever doesn't seem like the most intelligent strategy.
 
We used to make solar panels, sent it to China 2008
 
sptrawler said:
So why doesnt Tesla build its giga factory here?

If there was more profit, in making batteries here, they would.
J
Click to expand...

Trawler are you aware of Tesla founding mission statement?
'Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.' ... seems they're making a bit of headway on that globally.

You'll note it is antithetical to our Federal Governments(Murdochs) intentions...

I can see a point an Australian State government will enable the positioning of either a Tesla battery line(LiFePO) the grid or their solar tiles for sales into Australasia. The writings on the wall...
The possibilities until then are many and varied see Ross Garnaut's "Super Power" Latrobe University Press....
It's the worm like guttless pillocks that infest The national cabinet that are cruelling the opportunities for the country.
And as to politicising; What moron and Tech imbecile said 'Electric cars will ruin the Aussie weekend'? ...& 'Have the worlds biggest battery have the worlds biggest pinapple' The same one that's crapping all over a golden opportunity..
i look forward to your answers....
 
I don't think it would matter what anyone wrote orr, your festering hatred makes any form of discussion end up in political acid vitriol, so debate seems pointless.
just my opinion.
As for Tesla's mission statement, doesn't mean much to me if he ends up buying most of his raw materials from us, but makes the end product overseas. Still leaves our manufacturing wanting.
 
In my opinion it’s best to import the products and services we can buy for lower than our cost of production, and divert all labour and capital towards creating products and services where we do have competitive advantages.

we have a pretty small population and a small local capital base, we need to use these resources as efficiently as possible.
 
The problem with that VC is you end up with the majority of work being low paid menial task based, higher wages are directed at higher skill levels where the business is trying to attract a more skilled workforce that can value add at all levels of the process. This usually involves making something, not just digging stuff out of the ground.

When the work demographic becomes mostly low paid, that then affects the tax revenue stream, which in turn affects the governments ability to supply welfare and public services.
So then the tax burden has to be changed to where the money is being made and their taxes have to be increased, which then makes their product more expensive and less competitive e.g our resources.

Vicious circle starts and ends up with a small section of the community very wealthy and the rest in poverty, which I suppose is o.k if you are in the wealthy camp, not so good if you are in the other camp.

As others have mentioned and something that built Australia to what it is today, companies should be made to value add here, or pay more for the resources they take. We mine and export all the materials required to make batteries, we should have a battery industry, we mine rare earths and process them in SE Asia, there should be a penalty for that.

A perfect example of how easy it and sensible it would be, is unfolding as we speak in W.A.
The BP refinery at Kwinana is closing down in 6 months, on the Southern boundary of the complex is BHP brand new battery grade nickel processing plant, on the Northern boundary is the brand new nearly completed lithium hydroxide plant.
BP wants to move forward with technology and future fuels, they have the ideal place to build the worlds leading battery giga factory, will they?

World's biggest lithium plant switched on south of Perth

The plant will have a permanent workforce of more than 200, the majority of whom were expected to come from the local Kwinana or Rockingham area and surrounding suburbs.
www.smh.com.au

404 - Page not found - CSIRO

www.csiro.au

I know there is more money in digging and offloading dirt and better share purchases, but it isn't much of a future for our grandkids. Meanwhile everyone, especially the media, has more to say about the U.S elections than this issue. ?
 
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This is the second problem with relying on one major trading partner, who supplies most of your essential items and is also the biggest importer of your resources, they have you over a barrel.
So in reality you are relying on their continued good will, to survive, that isn't a very secure way of running a small business let alone an economy.

Australian exporters to China face $6 billion 'D-Day'

China is banning Australian wine, copper, barley, coal, sugar, timber and lobster exports from Friday, an unconfirmed customs official notice says.
www.smh.com.au
From the article:

Australian exporters to China are facing a $6 billion cliff after unconfirmed instructions from Chinese customs authorities threatened to ban Australian wine, copper, barley, coal, sugar, timber and lobster from Friday.

The notice, distributed by a customs clearance agent on Tuesday, has not been confirmed by the Chinese government, but its publication was enough to send shares in ASX-listed copper miner Sandfire Resources falling by 8 per cent.


Some Australian wine exporters have been notified by Chinese importers that Australian wine will not be cleared through Chinese customs from this Friday onwards. Australia exports $1.2 billion of wine to China each year.

Tony Battaglene, chief executive of wine industry group Australian Grape and Wine, said the message was going right across the industry to exporters of all sizes.


The trade dispute followed Australia's push for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus in April but has continued to intensify after Beijing imposed new national security laws on Hong Kong and advanced its territorial claims on the South China Sea.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has denied it is ratcheting up economic pressure to win diplomatic concessions.


"China conducts friendly cooperation with other countries based on mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit," Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday night.

"We hope Australia can do more things conducive to mutual trust, bilateral cooperation and the spirit of China-Australia comprehensive strategic partnership."
 
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