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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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Tysonboss1 said:
I'll agree to disagree, Because I can easily see that mankinds leap from fossil fuels to renewable energy ( in all it's sources ) will be equal in importance to man learning to exploit oil.
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Renewable in that context would have to satisfy all of mankind's growing needs.

I suspect our future lies in harnessing new types of energy, renewable and non-renewable in combination perhaps. Non-renewable will play a big role though though as we harness the resources of the solar system, the galaxy and perhaps the universe.

Energy from non-renewable resuorces has been the thrust behind the technological advancement of the past few hundred years.

Smurf1976 said:
The ability to profitably (in energy terms not necessarily financial) extract oil is however temporary such that internal combustion is at best a stepping stone to some other technology.
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That is true of all energy generation from fossil fuels.
 
Tysonboss1 said:
Put solar panels on it and it will charge while your at work or doing your shopping,
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Would definitely help, and coupled with regenerative braking the car could turn out to be rather efficient indeed. I think perhaps 'the car that costs nothing to run' might be a bit out of reach though with current technology, but that would be the goal .
 
Tysonboss1 said:
Buffet owns chunk of this company.
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Tyson, you might like to listen to this recent edition of BBC's Global Business and Peter Day's fascinating interview with BYD's Wang Chuanfu about their electric car. Excellent stuff!!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00d3djg
 


One idea I was mentioning to my brother is....
since electric cars don't need as much air intake as a combustion engine, wouldn't it be a good idea to put a mini wind turbine where the air intake is and that would move when the air flows in when the car moves and hence generate extra electricity.

It would also mean using less batteries and less weight.


When nano batteries become common then that will be the end of the combustion engine - In March 2005, Toshiba announced[1] that they had a new Lithium-Ion battery with a nanostructured lattice at the cathode and anode that allowed the battery to recharge a surprising eighty times faster than previously. Prototype models were able to charge to eighty percent capacity in one minute, and were one hundred percent recharged after 10 minutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanobatteries
 
Moving my water tank today to put in a bigger one, fire water tank live in WA bush fires every where.

OK haven't loss totally yet water tanks to cars? It reminded me about the time the guy who sunk my bore 18 to 20 years ago brought along the latest mobile phone in a cradle weighted around 10 to 15 Kg if I remember correctly.

Could only find a pic of similar hand set below.

I was working at the time around the latest process control instrumentation that had the latest smarts so I was interested as the talk was around wireless control.

We have gone from that to now where the phone size is determined by screens, fingers and hand sizes not component or battery.

Reducing component size / power consumption and improving battery's was relatively quick and so I think it will be with cars if populations buy them.
 

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I thought about that myself, However The extra drag caused would more than offset any electrical generation.it would come under the Perpetual motion theory.

There is undisputed scientific consensus that perpetual motion would violate either the first law of thermodynamics, the second law of thermodynamics, or both. Machines which comply with both laws of thermodynamics but access energy from obscure sources are sometimes referred to as perpetual motion machines, although they do not meet the standard criteria for the name
 
Tysonboss is right, this would constitute a perpetual motion machine. The energy in the air intake is actually created by the engine of the car pushing the car through the air, and hence this is not an external source of energy.

Indeed, ideally the electric car should require no air intake for its power components and motors. This would mean you would only need intake for the air conditioner, and hence could use smaller intakes away from the front of the car - allowing for a more aerodynamic body perhaps. However, in practice the power converters, the batteries, and the motors all run at less than 100% efficiency, and hence require cooling.
 
drsmith said:
That is true of all energy generation from fossil fuels.
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True. But to run a practical internal combustion engine requires a high grade liquid or gaseous fuel with a high energy density per unit of volume (since it has to fit on the relatively small vehicle).

In contrast, anything that will burn can be turned into electricity. Given that the majority of the world's known fossil fuels are not in the form of high grade liquids or gases suitable for use directly in cars, it is necessary to upgrade them (with a consequent huge energy loss by the way) into either high grade fuels or electricity if they are to be used for this purpose.

There's plenty of fuel around, it's just that most if it isn't high quality oil or natural gas. One of the reasons I'm none too keen on using gas or oil for things like running factory boilers or generating baseload (as distinct from peaking) electricity. It seems an incredible waste of limited resources when we have far more plentiful alternatives for generating power or fuelling boilers.
 
I see Tesla is aiming to "ramp up" production of its cars. I wonder do these cars have longevity, reliability and strength. With the present global warming doomsday scenario, rapidly expanding the Tesla flock is smart business.
 
Wysiwyg said:
I see Tesla is aiming to "ramp up" production of its cars. I wonder do these cars have longevity, reliability and strength. With the present global warming doomsday scenario, rapidly expanding the Tesla flock is smart business.
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I Don't disagree with the sentiment.

And 98 years ago the guns fell silent... and if you turn away from the cenotaph in Martin Place and look to the north east you'll notice a car show room, I Don't ever remember a car showroom in Martin Pl in any time past. But there's one there now. And the car on display the harbinger of the cars that will come that never sip a drop of gasoline nor will any other that are produced by the company that designed and delivers these ones, cars that aim to be powered by the sun and the wind. And every other serious car manufacturer scrambles to catch up.

Jack Rickards recent broadcast aired the rumour that forward orders for the Tesla Model 3 are up to 700,000 units...

Don Watson made the point on this weeks Q&A that politicians of either major party will not make any form of stand against the fossil fuel industry...
Elon Musk sees the production capacity for 100 of the Gigifactories he is construting the proto-type for in
Nevarda, as we see jobs evaporate in our current car industry across Victoria and South Australia, in the Latrobe Valley coal power generation dinosaur whilst elsewhere the coal industry looks to destroy our agricutural assets using the fig leaf of the miniscule employment involved.
How long will it take for whoever fills the postion of Australin Minister for Industry to grow a pair

trump election has Tesla Stock trending down, for the time being...

From the time of the launch of the Chevy Volt to today(not much more than 5 years) has seen a fall in the price of battery storage from above $1000/US to sub$140/US per k/WHr of storage... the tide is turning.
 
1360/hp or 1mega/watt... sub 2years drawing board to roll out...
setting the new track record (7min 05sec)for an EV at Nurburgring;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJD-Ip1meuE


How long before FormulaE graces a track in Australia???
In some forms of agriculture you best to kill everything before you plant a new crop... Maybe the same sort of thing applies to the Australian car industry.
 
To the point quotes from that article ...
I think what should be allowed to happen is let the entrepreneurs, let the capitalists work it out, because ultimately if it doesn’t make economic sense it won’t be sustainable.
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and
"Volkswagen has made it very clear, very public, that they want to introduce electric vehicles at the same pricepoint as what you would pay now for a diesel.”
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Wysiwyg said:
To the point quotes from that article ...

and
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Yes as the article says, subsidies just distort a sensible market, which ends in tears.

The problem is, those with vested interests, always seem to be the vocal minority, that end up with the most say.
 
Why are the questions in the poll loaded?
You have to either vote for electric or petrol or nothing?

Why couldn't questions like:

Would battery electric be preferable?
Would hydrogen fuel cell electric be preferable?
Would petrol/diesel electric hybrid be preferable?

To just say is electric preferable over petrol, is no brainer dumb ABC lateline question.IMO
Of course electric is preferable over petrol, if everything else is constant, who set the questions?
If you are going to post up ballots, at least use some thought provoking questions.
Not questions, where you are chasing a known result, this just exemplifies why polls are useless. IMO

God I hope this isn't the tack, the forum is going to take, I first skimmed past the poll without reading it.
My rant for this week.
 
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I agree with you. I did read the poll and didn't answer because I personally would buy a hybrid, but there are other questions like "I prefer to take public transport..taxi..Uber...walk...cycle" etc.
 
So_Cynical said:
Inevitable
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They've worked their way through forestry, fishing, CSM fraccing, coal mining, (un)safe borders and gay marriage. Next they're coming after our cars.

Naturally, it will become immoral to own a petrol or diesel engined car.
 
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