Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

Electric cars?

Would you buy an electric car?

  • Already own one

    Votes: 10 5.1%

  • Yes - would definitely buy

    Votes: 43 21.8%

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

    Votes: 78 39.6%

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

    Votes: 37 18.8%

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

    Votes: 25 12.7%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.1%
  • Total voters
    197
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sptrawler said:
The issue of on-street electrical vehicle charging is becoming more prevalent as bizarre scenes continue to emerge throughout Sydney.
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As a couple of random comments:

I don't have figures for anywhere in Australia but in the US state of Tennessee about 45% of homes park cars at a location to which power is readily available. That's from a proper survey conducted across a statistically sufficient number of properties, supported by government and the local utilities, so should be accurate. So from that it seems about half can be charged easily and about half can't (bearing in mind that the survey results included homes with no car, so 45% of homes is very close to half of the homes with a car).

How that relates to Australia I'm not sure but gut feel tells me it won't be hugely different. For reference the largest city (on a "greater metropolitan" basis) in Tennessee is Nashville with population of 2 million so directly comparable to Perth or Brisbane. Second largest is Memphis with population of 1.325 million so directly comparable to Adelaide. Total state population is 6.77 million. So it's not a high density "big city" sort of place really, there's a lot of freestanding homes much as we have in Australia it's not all high rises etc.

On the question of charging from streetlights, that one is very much an "it depends" situation.

There are certainly existing streetlights where it could be added quite easily. Plenty of capacity is available and supply is on 24 hours per day.

There are also streetlights with power not supplied, at all, when it's daylight and which have no spare electrical capacity at all when the lights are on. They have zero potential to add a charger without major works to replace cables which may itself require installing new conduit (so digging up the street).

So it's highly dependent on local circumstances. There are differences between Australian states (eg the older suburbs of Hobart, including the CBD, with it's centrally switched system and pilot lines), there are differences in terms of how much spare current carrying capacity exists and so on. Even within the same suburb it can be inconsistent. Then there's the existence of ripple control in Qld and NSW and the potential to apply that.

That said.... For overhead lines where there's a 230/400V supply available well in most situations it wouldn't be difficult to put a charger on the pole so long as it can all be externally mounted and the relevant transformer has sufficient capacity. Where it does become difficult though is that in many cases the pole isn't in a useful spot for charging vehicles, indeed in some states poles have very intentionally been placed on property boundaries etc historically wherever possible.

So it varies.
 
Opportunity like this doesn't happen very often. A chance for us to not only sell our resources but to process and manufacutre.

‘Logical sense’: Hint of Elon Musk’s plans for Australia
Australia’s most senior Tesla executive has dropped a big hint about what Elon Musk could do Down Under.

Australia’s most senior Tesla executive has hinted the electric vehicle giant could open a local manufacturing plant.

Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm told the National Press Club in Canberra the company wanted to have manufacturing capability on every continent.

She said Tesla needed to “be in all of the major markets” in order to compete in a world moving towards the widespread use of electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries.

“Producing vehicles on continents is important,” Ms Denholm said on Wednesday.

“Because when you’re when you’re setting a supply chain for the long term, you want … the kilometres those cars travel before someone actually owns (them) to be as short as possible.

“And that includes shipping and sea freight because, again, all of those processes add to CO2 emissions.”

Ms Denholm said Tesla was looking to rapidly expand its production capability and had recently opened factories in Berlin and Texas, in addition to existing facilities in China and in California, Nevada and New York in the US.

Some of these facilities, which Tesla calls “Gigafactories”, manufacture electric vehicle parts and others make solar panels, batteries and other renewable technologies.

Australian tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes said last year he had been pushing Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk to build a local “Gigafactory”.

“I’ve called him again, I’ve done a little bit of lobbying over time on the Gigafactory,” Mr Cannon-Brookes told Renew Economy’s “Energy Insiders” podcast in November 2021.

“Look, at some point, I think it makes logical sense to me. I don’t pretend to understand the internals of those businesses exactly, but it’s clear that we have a lot of the raw materials.”

Mr Cannon-Brooks played a key role in having Tesla build its large energy battery in South Australia in 2017, following an exchange on Twitter with Mr Musk.

But Tesla has been quiet on whether it has plans to build a manufacturing facility in Australia.

Ms Denholm said Tesla was likely to build more factories as part of the “exponential ramp” in manufacturing needed to fulfil its ambition of producing 20 million electric vehicles by 2030.

Ms Denholm downplayed concerns about Mr Musk’s engagement with Chinese officials in light of the US government’s push for businesses to soften their ties with China.

Asked if she was concerned about Tesla being caught up in strategic competition between Washington DC and Beijing, Ms Denholm said: “As I said, for me, markets around the world are really important.”

Ms Denholm, who also chairs the Technology Council of Australia, used her speech to the press club to urge the nation to set up the infrastructure to refine and manufacture battery cells and electric vehicles using its mineral resources.

Ms Denholm said Australia’s car manufacturing industry – which after a slow demise folded in 2017 with the last General Motors Holden – could be reignited.

“We have the skills and we can retool and get people into advanced manufacturing, which is tech and manufacturing converging,” she said.

“Tesla is a prime example of that: We’re producing vehicles in California, which is one of the most expensive places on the planet, and shipping them all around the world.”

Industry Minister Ed Husic told an information technology conference in Canberra on Wednesday that the Albanese government was committed to building renewable technology in Australia as a priority.

He said the government would earmark “up to” $3bn of its National Reconstruction Fund to support its Powering Australia Plan.

The plan includes shoring up local manufacturing capability to speed up the rollout of renewables and “potentially EVs for the transport sector”, Mr Husic said.
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The manufacturers starting to explain the reality, to the politicians, whether they listen or not is another question.
www.drive.com.au

The world isn’t ready to go fully electric, BMW and Bosch CEOs warn – report

Industry bosses from BMW and Bosch say diversification is the only path out from internal-combustion engines.
www.drive.com.au www.drive.com.au
As Europe faces a looming gas energy crisis, giants of Germany’s automotive industry are warning against the complete adoption of electric vehicles as the sole means of mass transportation.
The CEO of BMW, Oliver Zipse, says Europe isn’t ready for a hard cut-off of petrol and diesel engines, telling attendees at the carmaker’s Innovation Day event last week his company thinks "it's wrong to switch off the combustion engine in Europe".
"The industry will look different in terms of scale and structure than it does today if it goes to just one technology," Mr Zipse said, according to German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche.
The comments echo those by Japanese car giant Toyota and US automaker Ford who say motorists will still need a choice of what powers vehicles of the future, because not every country is rolling out electric tech at the same speed – and the world's energy mining resources would be overwhelmed if every vehicle on the planet switched to electric power tomorrow.
With the European Union recently agreeing to a ban of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035, the BMW boss warned a deadline for banning internal-combustion engines “would lead to distortions that nobody here can control anymore”.
Despite BMW already beginning its roll-out of electric vehicles – with it’s range of battery-powered ‘Neue Klasse’ models set to launch in 2025 – the company is also pursuing hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, a technology it has been quietly developing for two decades.
While BMW has now accepted electric powertrains as a viable alternative to fossil fuels, Mr Zipse said last week hydrogen is “the only raw material that can be sustainably produced and stored,” while also having infrastructure benefits.
"You can convert a [traditional fuel station to hydrogen] in two days. The way there is relatively short, unlike with electromobility, where you need connections to the medium-voltage grid and you need a charging infrastructure for every car,” he said.
“That's a lot of work. That will work, but not as the only solution. This is going to take far too long. That's why we firmly believe in hydrogen. It will come and it will come at BMW, I am very, very sure of that.”
 
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it makes sense to have a factory dedicated to . No tooling changes, less parts to carry etc.
RHD version of EV's If we look at a map showing all the markets where RHD vehicles would be shipped to, Malaysia seems to be centrally located, certainly more so than OZ, plus it would have lower labour costs, as well as construction costs.
The obvious place is India, given that is has a population equal to all the others put together, but Tesla and the Indian government have been unable to agree to the conditions of manufacturing vehicles in India that suits both parties.
Mick
 
Yes @mullokintyre the size of our domestic market is the real issue, if the cars are made in Malaysia or India a smaller portion of them require shipping, whereas if they are produced in Australia, most of the production would require shipping quite a long distance.
There really isn't a lot of practical reasons to build the cars here, battery production here makes more sense than complete vehicles IMO, the batteries are quite heavy and ship filling capacities would be good as they are compact.
 
sptrawler said:
... the size of our domestic market is the real issue, if the cars are made in Malaysia or India a smaller portion of them require shipping, whereas if they are produced in Australia, most of the production would require shipping quite a long distance.
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“Producing vehicles on continents is important. Because when you’re setting a supply chain for the long term, you want … the kilometres those cars travel before someone actually owns (them) to be as short as possible."

What Robyn Denholm is saying is that total kilometers for all components must be included in the final calculation.

Malyasia does have some things going for it, however, Australia has a lot more. We have all the minerals required to build an EV, we have vast amounts of land, a stable and modern society, "Australia’s car manufacturing industry could be reignited. We have the skills and we can retool and get people into advanced manufacturing, which is tech and manufacturing converging”
 
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mullokintyre said:
.......... plus it would have lower labour costs, as well as construction costs...........
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I doubt the labour costs are a significant input these days. The 19 metre long, 18-wheeled, 38-tonne heavy-duty fully electric truck, the Volvo FH, takes only six hours to go through the Volvo production line from initial frames to completion.

Interesting article "First drive of Volvo’s heavy duty electric truck".
 
JohnDe said:
Cost and centrality are not the issue, as mentioned by Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm - “Tesla is a prime example of that: We’re producing vehicles in California, which is one of the most expensive places on the planet, and shipping them all around the world.”
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do you mean , we do it in california as most of our income is actually a tax redistribution, not car sale thru the fines(ohh sorry credits) others car sellers pay to Tesla??
So Australia govs would have to pay big to compensate for our costs disadvantages, and with the way Australia ATO works , the deal would end up being a net loss..we are used, look at Timor gas, Chevron etc
 
Country Lad said:
I doubt the labour costs are a significant input these days. The 19 metre long, 18-wheeled, 38-tonne heavy-duty fully electric truck, the Volvo FH, takes only six hours to go through the Volvo production line from initial frames to completion.

Interesting article "First drive of Volvo’s heavy duty electric truck".
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Adding to that, Australia's labour cost is competitive -

Labour Costs - Countries - List

This page displays a table with actual values, consensus figures, forecasts, statistics and historical data charts for - Labour Costs. This page provides values for Labour Costs reported in several countries. The table has current values for Labour Costs, previous releases, historical highs and...
tradingeconomics.com tradingeconomics.com
 
JohnDe said:
Adding to that, Australia's labour cost is competitive -
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Interesting, @JohnDe, but I wonder how accurate a couple of the figures are. There are 45 countries listed and if we rank them from 1 lowest cost to 45 the highest cost, then NZ is supposedly the highest at 12 times higher than Australia. That doesn’t seem to pass the pub test.
We come in at 11 which is admirable. Turkey at 44 and 3.9 times Australia????? Maybe these are a couple of outliers. The rest I can accept as reasonably logical. North Korea is not there of course so slave labour is not included.


Labour costs.jpg
 
JohnDe said:
Opportunity like this doesn't happen very often. A chance for us to not only sell our resources but to process and manufacutre.
Click to expand...
I like the way Tesla people make statements like “Producing vehicles on continents is important”, hahaha it sounds like a statement Elon would make.
 
Country Lad said:
Interesting, @JohnDe, but I wonder how accurate a couple of the figures are. There are 45 countries listed and if we rank them from 1 lowest cost to 45 the highest cost, then NZ is supposedly the highest at 12 times higher than Australia. That doesn’t seem to pass the pub test.
We come in at 11 which is admirable. Turkey at 44 and 3.9 times Australia????? Maybe these are a couple of outliers. The rest I can accept as reasonably logical. North Korea is not there of course so slave labour is not included.


View attachment 147107
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Pity how high labour costs have become a pejorative, as opposed to an indication of standard of living.
 
SirRumpole said:
Pity how high labour costs have become a pejorative, as opposed to an indication of standard of living.
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This is not a m8near relation, when the salary is high but taxes higher and wasted, your high supposedly hourly rate does not mean wealthier, and definitively not happier person
 
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