Electric cars?

[Smurf1976]

it will start with exploring network tariff reform

My thought is "get on with it".

There's no mysteries about what needs to happen in terms of the end result and nothing needs to be invented. It's not the sort of thing that needs a bureaucracy and 5 years of report writing and so on.

It just needs actually doing.

 

[sptrawler]

It looks as though the proposed Latrobe Valley electric car industry, has been a still birth. I guess the initial announcement served its purpose.

Electric vehicle factory plan collapses and with it the promise of 500 Victorian jobs

SEA Electric tells the Victorian government it won't be building an EV factory, which was announced with great fanfare by Premier Daniel Andrews in 2018.

www.abc.net.au

From the article:
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced the deal with SEA Electric ahead of the 2018 election.

The deal was meant to create jobs in the region, which is home to Victoria's coal-fired power stations, after the Hazelwood plant closed in 2017.
News of the project's demise comes amid a renewed focus on electric vehicles after the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow

Documents released to the ABC under Freedom of Information show the factory was meant to be built by December 2019.

But amid questioning before Parliament's Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) yesterday, the government revealed SEA Electric had advised it last month of its desire to end the agreement.

The government has refused to say how much money had been paid to the company or whether any had been repaid, saying the matter was commercial in confidence.
A briefing paper prepared for then Industry and Employment Minister Ben Carroll, released under FOI, shows the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Region's Investment Committee classified the project as "high risk" before the grant was approved.

The papers also show there was no guarantee the project would have created 500 jobs.

Community groups and the opposition began questioning whether the project would eventuate when no site was secured.

 

[mullokintyre]

From ABC News

Car manufacturers have found themselves in the unusual position of asking for the government to impose limits on how much their cars can pollute.

• Australia is one of the only developed nations without an emissions standard for car makers
• Overseas, car brands are punished for high emissions and rewarded for low emissions
• Brands are not sending their limited EV stocks to Australia because there is no incentive

After saying electric cars would "end the weekend", Prime Minister Scott Morrison has shifted gears.

After announcing the government's "future fuels" strategy, he is saying Australians will soon rush to buy them as they become more affordable.

The car-making world is going electric, with many manufacturers planning to sell only zero-emissions cars by 2030.

But leading car brands say the lack of regulation on their emissions in Australia is hindering their ability to bring electric vehicles (EVs) here.

Volkswagen, for example, will sell about 400,000 electric vehicles this year — none of them will be in Australia.

The Australian head of Volkswagen, Michael Bartsch, said despite Australians wanting electric VWs, the company's head office in Germany would not agree to send any here.

"We still allow manufacturers to dump and sell in Australia dirty, old technology," Mr Bartsch said.

I would take issue with some of that
Firstly, australia is one of the only developed nations that does not have en emission standards for car makers
Here is a link from Emisson Standards

Australian emission standards are based on European regulations for light-duty and heavy-duty (heavy goods) vehicles, with acceptance of selected US and Japanese standards. The long term policy is to fully harmonize Australian regulations with UN ECE standards. The development of emission standards for highway vehicles and engines is coordinated by the National Transport Commission (NTC) and the regulations—Australian Design Rules (ADR)—are administered by the Department of Infrastructure and Transport.

The emission standards apply to new vehicles including petrol (gasoline) and diesel cars, light omnibuses, heavy omnibuses, light goods vehicles, medium goods vehicles and heavy goods vehicles, as well as to forward control passenger vehicles and larger motor tricycles. They also cover off-road passenger vehicles (but not off-road engines, such as those used in construction or agricultural machinery).

Looks remarkably a set of emission standards to me.
I find it a bit rich for somebody from Volkswagen complaining a lack of emission standards when Volkswagen spent years cheating on the vehicle emissions anyway.
What they are really saying is that they want subsides for the EV vehicles.
They are happy to wait until either the Fed government subsidises their margins, or they wait until the manufacturers stop making ICE powered vehicles, then they can charge what they like.
The Chinese will beat them to it with much cheaper EV vehicles anyway.
Mick

 

[sptrawler]

From ABC News


I would take issue with some of that
Firstly, australia is one of the only developed nations that does not have en emission standards for car makers
Here is a link from Emisson Standards

Looks remarkably a set of emission standards to me.
I find it a bit rich for somebody from Volkswagen complaining a lack of emission standards when Volkswagen spent years cheating on the vehicle emissions anyway.
What they are really saying is that they want subsides for the EV vehicles.
They are happy to wait until either the Fed government subsidises their margins, or they wait until the manufacturers stop making ICE powered vehicles, then they can charge what they like.
The Chinese will beat them to it with much cheaper EV vehicles anyway.
Mick

That is so true Mick, they say that Australia will get dirty engines, no it won't, the major car manufacturing companies don't have assembly lines dedicated to dirty engines, they make an engine for a series of cars.
If they don't want to sell dirty engines here, fine don't, what they are really trying to do IMO is take the lower priced cars out of the market.
The major manufacturers want subsidies for E.V's so the cost to transition from ICE engines, doesn't hit their bottom line.

As you say, the Chinese will beat them from all angles, the new Haval series of ICE cars are already starting to eat into mainstream car sales, the BEV's wont be far behind.
The EU had better get its skates on, if they want to keep a car industry viable, as for Australia we will stop selling ICE cars when the EU stops selling them.
We don't have a car industry, so saying we are going to stop selling ICE cars is a mute point, if the major car manufacturers stop making them, we obviously will stop selling them.
It is all a bit of media ramping IMO.

 

[Smurf1976]

I would take issue with some of that
Firstly, australia is one of the only developed nations that does not have en emission standards for car makers

One thing about emission standards is they're a trade-off. In short lower NOx and particulates comes at a price, that price being higher fuel consumption and CO2 emissions than could otherwise be achieved with the same engine in the same car.

Cutting CO2 emissions from internal combustion likewise comes at a price - more smog.

Electric fixes those issues but an emissions standard is going to help only if it's tight to the point that petrol and diesel can't reasonably meet it. Simply using the latest Euro standard does not of itself achieve that.

 

[over9k]

It's called homologation guys, it's not a new concept.

Most countries pushing this stuff don't even care about the global warming/climate change angle, it's just the horrific smog in the cities they're trying to get rid of.

Even if the same amount of pollution occurred but was dissipated far more evenly across the planet then that alone would be a massive benefit and solve untold numbers of health/respiratory problems.

 

[mullokintyre]

Rivian has listed on a rather large IPO .
From Zero Hedge

Tesla-rival Rivian has opened for trading at $106.75 (a 36% premium to its $78 IPO price).
That opening price values the company at over $90 billion, that is bigger than GM and Ford. On a fully diluted basis, including options and restricted stock units, Rivian is valued at more than $112 billion.
This is the largest IPO on U.S. exchanges since Alibaba in 2014 and the largest by a company based in the U.S. since Facebook in 2012.
The listing is the biggest globally this year, and the sixth-largest ever on a U.S. exchange, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Not bad for starters.
Mick

 

[sptrawler]

Not E.V specific, but we have talked a lot about the advent of autonomous driving vehicles in the thread, recently we mentioned about active speed monitoring and data logging becoming mandatory, well another one that is becoming mandatory is autonomous emergency braking.
Where the car brakes, if you don't.
This IMO, will be another nail in older ICE vehicles coffins, because older cars will start to have much higher statistics in rear end accidents, furthering the call to have them taken off the road.
What is the old saying "slowly, slowly, catch the monkey?

Autonomous emergency braking will be compulsory in Australia from 2023

The move will save approximately 20 lives every year, according to the Federal Government.

www.drive.com.au

From the article:
Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) – a technology that uses radar to automatically apply the brakes when a driver gets too close to the car in front – will be mandated Australia-wide in all newly-introduced models from March 2023 onwards.
From March 2025, the safety feature will be required in all new vehicles outright (including existing models). It will apply to all passenger cars, SUVs and light commercial vehicles with gross vehicle mass ratings below 3.5 tonnes, and must also include pedestrian detection.
According to the Federal Government, the move will save approximately 20 lives – and prevent 600 serious injuries – every year.

 

[moXJO]

Rivian has listed on a rather large IPO .
From Zero Hedge

Not bad for starters.
Mick

The Ute they released has got a lot of features. Some are quirky but useful. I'd actually buy stock in this company.

 

[mullokintyre]

The Ute they released has got a lot of features. Some are quirky but useful. I'd actually buy stock in this company.

I just want the Ute.

 

[mullokintyre]

It looks as though the proposed Latrobe Valley electric car industry, has been a still birth. I guess the initial announcement served its purpose.

Electric vehicle factory plan collapses and with it the promise of 500 Victorian jobs

SEA Electric tells the Victorian government it won't be building an EV factory, which was announced with great fanfare by Premier Daniel Andrews in 2018.

www.abc.net.au

From the article:
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced the deal with SEA Electric ahead of the 2018 election.

The deal was meant to create jobs in the region, which is home to Victoria's coal-fired power stations, after the Hazelwood plant closed in 2017.
News of the project's demise comes amid a renewed focus on electric vehicles after the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow

Documents released to the ABC under Freedom of Information show the factory was meant to be built by December 2019.

But amid questioning before Parliament's Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) yesterday, the government revealed SEA Electric had advised it last month of its desire to end the agreement.

The government has refused to say how much money had been paid to the company or whether any had been repaid, saying the matter was commercial in confidence.
A briefing paper prepared for then Industry and Employment Minister Ben Carroll, released under FOI, shows the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Region's Investment Committee classified the project as "high risk" before the grant was approved.

The papers also show there was no guarantee the project would have created 500 jobs.

Community groups and the opposition began questioning whether the project would eventuate when no site was secured.

A little more on this issue.
From Todays OZ

President and founder Tony Fairweather has long expressed his frustration towards the government relating to the deal, writing urgent correspondence as early as the start of last year.

In a letter to secretary of the department of jobs, precincts and regions Simon Phemister in March 2020, seen by Margin Call, Fairweather escalates a number of issues, requesting an urgent meeting with Andrews and his then-regional development minister Jaclyn Symes to address the urgent need for working capital via the government’s prior commitment.

“I am incredulous that, in the current calamitous environment, your team has made it clear, in writing, that the state will not advance the funds to SEA that have been agreed with your personal imprimatur – or consent to the new facility. These funds are critical to maintaining and securing jobs in Victoria,” Fairweather wrote.

“Indeed, it is our clearest intention that manufacturing jobs will remain in Victoria and we are doing everything humanly possible to achieve this.”

The rest is history, with SEA Electric then proceeding to shift its operations to Los Angeles where it now churns out its electric drive systems for commercial trucks across several continents.

SEA Electric is now well established overseas with its headquarters in LA.
When you look at the website, all the glossy pictures are for trucks with Left Hand Drive.
Not sure if the RHD ones will get a look in.
It is highly likely it will end up as a foreign owned and domiciled co.
We specialise in sending our good tech stuff to other countries.
mick

 

[qldfrog]

Not E.V specific, but we have talked a lot about the advent of autonomous driving vehicles in the thread, recently we mentioned about active speed monitoring and data logging becoming mandatory, well another one that is becoming mandatory is autonomous emergency braking.
Where the car brakes, if you don't.
This IMO, will be another nail in older ICE vehicles coffins, because older cars will start to have much higher statistics in rear end accidents, furthering the call to have them taken off the road.
What is the old saying "slowly, slowly, catch the monkey?

Autonomous emergency braking will be compulsory in Australia from 2023

The move will save approximately 20 lives every year, according to the Federal Government.

www.drive.com.au

From the article:
Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) – a technology that uses radar to automatically apply the brakes when a driver gets too close to the car in front – will be mandated Australia-wide in all newly-introduced models from March 2023 onwards.
From March 2025, the safety feature will be required in all new vehicles outright (including existing models). It will apply to all passenger cars, SUVs and light commercial vehicles with gross vehicle mass ratings below 3.5 tonnes, and must also include pedestrian detection.
According to the Federal Government, the move will save approximately 20 lives – and prevent 600 serious injuries – every year.

Seriously? 20 lives a year..a whole policy,millions if not billions of $ unexpected consequences like new cars being too dear/ dearer forcing people to keep their older cars longer and cascading down the second hand market to more real bombs on the road.
How many death extra will it create during the transition
Sure it is great for some but let's stop pretending it is to save lives..
Ohh and only for light vehicle ??? so you will carry on being compressed by the cement truck behind you at the next pile up...
Seriously..
Step one should be to mandate it on heavy vehicle...

 

[rederob]

Seriously? 20 lives a year ..a whole policy,

AAA estimated the cost of accidents in the tens of billions 4 years ago:

• the economic cost of each road fatality was $4.34 million​

• the cost per hospitalisation caused by road injury was $239,000​

millions if not billions of $ unexpected consequences like new cars being too dear

In fact cars are getting cheaper and safer every year. Chinese BEV market starts with cars from AU$7K (the Wuling).

dearer forcing people to keep their older cars longer and cascading down the second hand market to more real bombs on the road.

The cost of the extra electronics is minimal, generally less than the extra cost of getting a coloured paint on a new car. The suite nowadays on cars can include

• cameras
• ultrasonic sensors
• radar, and most recently
• lidar

How many death extra will it create during the transition

The transition has been occurring for years now and here's the trend (and the government's target:

Sure it is great for some but let's stop pretending it is to save lives..

The evidence is clear on what the technology does, so you are out of step.

Step one should be to mandate it on heavy vehicle...

Mandate it for all vehicles!
Plus, mandate addition features for all heavy vehicles, such as proposed by NSW.

 

[sptrawler]

Mandate it for all vehicles!
Plus, mandate addition features for all heavy vehicles, such as proposed by NSW.

It will be mandated for all E.V's IMO, installing safety devices to control an electric motor is simple and has been used in industry for many years.

 

[sptrawler]

Not everyone is giving upon internal combustion engines.

MSN

www.msn.com

From the article:
The coalition will see the five companies develop carbon-neutral fuels for racing, meanwhile Toyota and Mazda will together to develop a 1.5-liter Skyactiv-D engine powered by biodiesel. Subaru will work with Toyota for 2022’s Super Taikyu Series endurance season, with both companies collaborating to make a biomass-derived synthetic fuel. Furthermore, Yamaha and Kawasaki are considering working on a hydrogen engine for motorcycles.
oyota clearly believes other solutions such as hydrogen will play their part in a sustainable future, an idea Tesla CEO Elon Musk has labelled “mind-bogglingly stupid” in the past. Despite all this, Toyota still intends to compete in the BEV space through the bz4x crossover which will arrive in mid-2022.
Toyota released the following statement after the announcement of the coalition:
"By promoting further collaboration in producing, transporting and using fuel in combination with internal combustion engines, the five companies aim to provide customers with greater choice."

 

[rederob]

Not everyone is giving upon internal combustion engines.

MSN

www.msn.com

From the article:
The coalition will see the five companies develop carbon-neutral fuels for racing, meanwhile Toyota and Mazda will together to develop a 1.5-liter Skyactiv-D engine powered by biodiesel. Subaru will work with Toyota for 2022’s Super Taikyu Series endurance season, with both companies collaborating to make a biomass-derived synthetic fuel. Furthermore, Yamaha and Kawasaki are considering working on a hydrogen engine for motorcycles.
oyota clearly believes other solutions such as hydrogen will play their part in a sustainable future, an idea Tesla CEO Elon Musk has labelled “mind-bogglingly stupid” in the past. Despite all this, Toyota still intends to compete in the BEV space through the bz4x crossover which will arrive in mid-2022.
Toyota released the following statement after the announcement of the coalition:
"By promoting further collaboration in producing, transporting and using fuel in combination with internal combustion engines, the five companies aim to provide customers with greater choice."

If you followed the trends in vehicle manufacture then you would discover that Toyota is so far behind the BEV manufacturing curve that it will be largely relegated to its Japanese ICE vehicle base by 2030.
The BEV revolution was kicked off by Tesla in the USA, but it's now firmly established in China. I won't link to the dozens of articles everyday that provide data on the trends, but will highlight that the rate of BEV adoption is ahead of every prediction I have read over the past few years.
While China is important to Tesla's profits, its major strength right now is from its vehicle product mix which ranges from 30K yuan upwards:

Here are some higher priced models also advertised on Alibaba:

While few of the above are going to be street legal in Australia, there are dozens of models which are, and only a few are more expensive than Teslas. However, don't expect Chinese EVs to head to Oz for a good while as Europe can't get enough and American EV incentives in 2022 will divert most of the rest there.

Aside from producing cheap cars, China's big players are also teaming up with technology companies to match Tesla in AI and autonomous driving. And the likes of BYD match Tesla in total vertical integration of production.

All the above points to BEVs getting cheaper, safer and smarter than their ICE competitors in coming years.

 

[sptrawler]

All very true @rederob ,I was only posting as a general information piece, to keep people abreast of what manufacturers are doing.

 

[sptrawler]

The latest E.V from China, an SUV that can take a 200klm charge in 5 minutes.
It also highlights how quickly the charging protocols are changing, a lot of the current infrastructure will be obsolete in the next couple of years, if ultra fast charging arrives. It will have to come, to reduce the time people have to sit and line up at a charging stations, which isn't a problem at the moment, but will become a problem when E.V are common place.
https://www.electrive.com/2021/11/19/xpeng-presents-the-g9-electric-suv/
From the article:
The Xpeng G9 uses the manufacturer’s recently announced 800-volt e-car platform with silicon carbide technology. Xpeng is not yet giving detailed information on the drive system or when it will be launched on the market.

The system that the company calls ‘XPower 3.0’, is designed for very high charging powers of up to 480 kW (600 amps at 800 volts). This should make it possible to recharge up to 200 kilometres in just five minutes. Xpeng had already mentioned this statement at the presentation of the 800-volt platform in October and has now repeated it in the announcement for the G9.

In order to be able to exploit the properties of the 800-volt SiC platform, Xpeng also wants to bring corresponding fast-charging columns onto the market. These will be able to deliver up to 670 amps and meet the IP67 protection class.

The Xpilot 4.0 is to be the first system “to enable intelligent driving in all scenarios from vehicle start to parking”. The hardware comes with 508 TOPS of processing power, a front camera with eight million pixels and four cameras with 2.9 million pixels. Xpeng has not yet made mention of the kind of array of lidar sensors that have been installed in the P5.

As with the previous models, the software is supposed to be one of the points that sets the G9 apart from the competition. To do this, it uses the X-EEA 3.0 electronics and electrical architecture, which deeply integrates hardware, software and communication architecture. Xpeng itself speaks of a centralised supercomputing platform and local control modules. At the software level, the vehicle software suite has been structured into layers – system software platform, basic software platform and intelligent application platform. This is to enable faster development and iteration of the software – i.e. regular software updates with improvements and new features.

 

[Value Collector]

Not everyone is giving upon internal combustion engines.

MSN

www.msn.com

From the article:
The coalition will see the five companies develop carbon-neutral fuels for racing, meanwhile Toyota and Mazda will together to develop a 1.5-liter Skyactiv-D engine powered by biodiesel. Subaru will work with Toyota for 2022’s Super Taikyu Series endurance season, with both companies collaborating to make a biomass-derived synthetic fuel. Furthermore, Yamaha and Kawasaki are considering working on a hydrogen engine for motorcycles.
oyota clearly believes other solutions such as hydrogen will play their part in a sustainable future, an idea Tesla CEO Elon Musk has labelled “mind-bogglingly stupid” in the past. Despite all this, Toyota still intends to compete in the BEV space through the bz4x crossover which will arrive in mid-2022.
Toyota released the following statement after the announcement of the coalition:
"By promoting further collaboration in producing, transporting and using fuel in combination with internal combustion engines, the five companies aim to provide customers with greater choice."

Sounds like when the iPhone came out, and some people thought the Black Berry still had a future because there would be Better Berry phones coming out, and iPhones were really just a toy, not for serious business folk.

 

[rederob]

Sounds like when the iPhone came out, and some people thought the Black Berry still had a future because there would be Better Berry phones coming out, and iPhones were really just a toy, not for serious business folk.

The analogy has some differences so here's some pluses and minuses.
Pluses are:

• some BEV models are already much cheaper than ICE equivalents
• base models can be easily upgraded and customised
• per kilometre running costs up to 80% less than ICE equivalents
• allows for V2G, V2Hand V2L integration
• most BEVs integrate a greater number and type of safety features than ICE equivalents
• not much can mechanically go wrong

Minuses are:

• heavier and need better suspension
• replacement batteries are expensive
• you cannot simply go out and buy the BEV you want
• the infrastructure for adoption is immature, lacks standards and is variable (eg battery swap out versus recharge)
• it will take up to 15 years to replace the ICE fleet

The above are just the differences that quickly come to mind.

Changing the subject, I came across this very detailed report from a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory prepared in April 2021. The main problems with their comparisons relate to very few BEV's (apart from Teslas) have a 300 mile range, and BEV prices into the future being twice as high as what is available today.

Regarding prices in the USA, here's MG's SUV:

Once you factor in current real world lower prices and advances in battery technology that will increase energy density and therefore range, the transition to EVs becomes a no brainer.