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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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SirRumpole said:
What are the comprehensive insurance rates like ?
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Similar to any other car of similar value, but as modern vehicles continue to prove to be safer, insurance rates should drop.

Tesla is actually getting into the insurance business themselves because they believe their cars are safer than average so deserve cheaper pricing.

Warren Buffett has also listed the continued improvement in the safety profile of EV’s as a risk to his auto insurance business over time.
 
SirRumpole said:
What are the comprehensive insurance rates like ?
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The RAC in W.A gives a discount for an E.V, but you have to take into consideration that the insured sum, will be much higher as they cost a lot more for the same vehicle e.g an ICE MG same spec will be a lot cheaper than the EV model.
So it is difficult to compare apples with apples, a $60k EV insured with the RAC, will be cheaper to insure than a $60k ICE car, but they wont be the same car if that makes sense.
I think the fact it is multiple times simpler, to improve the safety systems in an EV, than in an ICE vehicle due to the characteristics, it wont be long before ICE cars carry an insurance premium above E.V's
I'm not saying that because I'm pro E.V anti ICE, I'm saying that as someone with and instrumentation and control plus electrical background.
It is simple to write code, to use DC braking on an electrical motor that can react faster than humans, more acurately than humans and modulate the amount of braking in response to varying inputs.
In an ICE car, to slow the car relies on the braking system, be that discs or drums, they can't be controlled to the degree an electric motor can, brakes fade, brake fluid boils when heavy braking is used, abs control has to use modulation, it is just light years behind the control that can be obtained using feedback loops on electrical motors.
The other problem that will cause is, as the ICE vehicles cause more accidents, because they can't react at the speed E.V's can, how long will it be before punitive penalties are applied to ICE vehicles, what form the penalties come in who knows? Maybe higher insurance, or maybe higher registration and third party insurance.
The other important thing to remember EV's have just started the journey, but the electronic control systems that operate them and can control them are right up their with your best computers, the EV is really starting off where the ICE is at the limit of its development.
The EV will develop in 20 years as far as the ICE developed in 100, so in 20 years time EV's will be nothing like what is being pumped out now IMO.
 
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Costs don’t scale up perfectly to though.

Eg

it might cost $500 to insure a $5,000 car.

But only $1,000 to insure $50,000 car.

The reason for this is that the replacement cost of your car only makes up part of the risk the insurer faces, because you are also insuring the cost of the other cars in the road you might damage and all the other buildings and bodies you might hit.

So a $500 car that causes a 5 car pile up will cause almost the same amount of damage as a $50,000 car that causes a 5 car pile up.
 
I think that will come more into play as the number of EV's increases, at the moment they are more of a novelty so statistics will be limited, however with the price of petrol the way it is ATM I think the number of people thinking and dwelling on an EV purchase will be exponential.
 
What I describe there is the same for all cars, simply pointing out the a car that cost 10 times more to buy doesn’t cost 10 times more to insure.
 
Yes I misinterpreted, I thought we were talking about insuring EV's Vs ICE vehicles, so was thinking mainly in relation to your last line and $5k Ice vehicles causing multicar pile ups.
I wasn't think along the lines of general insurance for all vehicles.
 
Farley is completely wrong.
Chinese are already - without gigafactories - knocking out roadworthy EVs from US $5K upwards and bringing motor transport to millions who only ever dreamed of owning a car.
Do you have any idea about the global car market or do you just make up what you want to believe?

Also, as @Value Collector points out, lifetime ownership costs are already cheaper than comparable ICEVs. These data have previously been posted on this thread so would you like to see them again?
 
SirRumpole said:
Have you ever hauled a caravan ?

Besides as you pointed out before, once the Ukraine war is over, petrol will be cheap as chips again .
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I have no interest in a caravan, and neither does 75% of road travellers
 
SirRumpole said:
Have you ever hauled a caravan ?

Besides as you pointed out before, once the Ukraine war is over, petrol will be cheap as chips again .
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Nope, I don’t own a caravan, but as pointed out before you can haul a caravan with an EV if you want.

I wouldn’t say petrol will be cheap as chips, even before the war it cost alot to fill the tank, but either way the higher it stays the quicker EV’s pay for them selves in comparison
 
sptrawler said:
The EV will develop in 20 years as far as the ICE developed in 100, so in 20 years time EV's will be nothing like what is being pumped out now IMO.
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Absolutely.

EV's are coming from a point where cars as such are already extremely highly developed such that further development needs only focus on very specific aspects of it.

Only aspect I'm really not convinced about is self-driving.

As a technology OK but I wouldn't be surprised if human driven vehicles end up as one of those things that still exists in practice a very long time after logic says they shouldn't. Time will tell but I won't be surprised if that's the case, it becomes one of those entrenched things that logic says shouldn't exist but still does in practice.
 
Very much like planes, where most crashes are caused by pilots, but there is no way people will like the idea of flying overseas, or even interstate without a pilot. ?
It is a comfort zone thing, self driving trains are o.k, because we put in the tracks and it can only go where the tracks go, so we have some control.
With self driving cars or planes, they can go where the hell they like, we don't like that, it isn't comfortable. ?
 
SirRumpole said:
Have you ever hauled a caravan ?
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No, I've seen enough episodes of Top Gear / The Grand Tour to know that caravans are extraordinarily dangerous and usually fall apart at highway speeds, catch fire, flood, roll off a cliff or get dropped from a crane so I'm keeping well clear of them. Dangerous.
 
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sptrawler said:
With self driving cars or planes, they can go where the hell they like, we don't like that, it isn't comfortable. ?
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I'm just thinking it'll be one of those things that human driving sticks around.

Much like the idea of washing dishes by hand, burning wood to keep warm and so on. One of those things that'll still exist long after logic says it ought to have ceased.
 
The problem is moxjo there are two parts to the issue, one a lot of energy is wasted using electricity to make hydrogen, but hydrogen is a good storage medium for energy.
Two cars don't need a huge amount of energy to drive them, therefore a battery can store enough and it doesn't waste any energy making it, so for cars batteries are great plug it in it sucks up a charge and can do 500klm.
Now with bigger energy consumers like B doubles, hauling freight across Australia hydrogen makes sense, fast fill times low weight and minimal space, that counteracts the loss of efficiency making it, if you used batteries that weren't swap out pack's the time lost charging would be significant and then the weight and space would be an issue.
 
What is this idea of
a lot of energy is wasted doing h2 from electricity..not really true as fars i remember, all this energy is retrieved the other way when generating electricity from h2?
Note i can not check much here now but i think this is true.
After whether we use h2 in ice would indeed add the losses of ice but considering you do not have toine lithium, just use pure h2...i doubt there is a fundamental issue there.
Not part of the talk and replacing fuel in your car by ammonia does not give billions profits to Musk or WEC but otherwise pretty good bet in term of not producing CO2..if this was the aim
 
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