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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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It's ok,even with AC you got twice the range of the only EV ute in Oz if it does any work
But yes, 10% hit for using AC is significant.could it be a design issue and your AC is powered directly by the battery?
 
qldfrog said:
It's ok,even with AC you got twice the range of the only EV ute in Oz if it does any work
But yes, 10% hit for using AC is significant.could it be a design issue and your AC is powered directly by the battery?
Click to expand...
Thinking about it, it is probably as you still want ac at the red light when your motor is off.
On an ice, the engine running powers via a belt your AC, when you idle or go downhill, brake or slowdown, the AC is basically (energy) free.no such thing on an EV..sure regen brake reloads the battery but you loose on charge discharge for the AC during this time.
Interesting
 
qldfrog said:
It's ok,even with AC you got twice the range of the only EV ute in Oz if it does any work
But yes, 10% hit for using AC is significant.could it be a design issue and your AC is powered directly by the battery?
Click to expand...
How much does a petrol car use to run the AC? I know that the old commodore used to see a visible change in the rev counter when idling and I switch on the AC, but I don’t know the % change.

@sptrawler was that extreme change in the consumption just when the AC first came on and had to blow really hard?

I know with My Tesla if I set the climate to 22 degrees it doesn’t normally require much energy to maintain that temp, but first 2 minutes of so the AC will blow really hard to get it there.

Can you control your AC via your App? If so maybe on hot days switch it on to cool the car a couple of minutes before you unplug, so that you draw that from the power point.
 
Having the AC run of the battery is great for when you have to wait in the car for some one and want the AC running and it only requires the small little electric mortar running, rather than idling my old 3.6 Litre commodore engine.

I don’t think the benefit of having your AC run “free” for a few seconds when you brake or roll down hill comes close to the energy saving of EV regen Braking.
 

Kona's EPA rated range estimate may be most accurate of all EVs, however, the Tesla's actual driving estimate is one of the best. Tesla estimate is continually updating by taking into account things like temperature, altitude, etc.

A 10% consumption increase using the A/C can't be correct, it is probably caused by the management system and an update will most likely resolve this. However, a faulty A/C pump could be causing an issue and if it is you need to get on top of this early. The worst case that I've seen with my Tesla is 1%. If I were you, I would report it now and keep a data log.

It's important to note that different automakers use different testing cycles to estimate an EV's range. Moreover, the tests that Tesla uses for the EPA are also different from rivals'. For this reason, some people have worked to prove that while Tesla's vehicles don't often live up to their EPA-rated range in real-world driving, some competing EVs actually exceed the range estimates, especially in the most ideal conditions.​
​
Meanwhile, Tesla's vehicles aren't set up this way. Owners can choose to look at the car's remaining range, which isn't a "range estimator" like that of almost all other EVs. Tesla owners can also choose to switch to another mode that shows the battery percentage remaining. Most Tesla owners we've talked to have suggested paying attention to the percentage to have a better idea of how much range you have remaining.​

Tesla Reportedly Adds New Factors For EV Range Accuracy

Gas car range varies widely, but people don't pay attention to it. However, it's a big factor when it comes to EVs. Tesla seems to be tweaking its range game.
insideevs.com
​
 
Thanks for the info @JohnDe , it goes in for the first service on 12 Dec, I will ask them to check it.
I will take some pictures of the readouts, yesterday was the first day I had used the A/C, so I only took a passing interest as we were driving down the motorway.
 

That is not how they work.

An EV motor does not need to run to power the A/C pump.

ICEVs engine stay on when traveling downhill, it needs to, otherwise the A/C pump stops. A few new high end ICEV models have a electric A/C compressor, but not many.

Regen braking produces more energy than the A/C uses, an EV is actually more efficient in stop-start driving.
 
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As a convert to the concept of renewables and EV's ( but not for myself ) I believe a limit should be put on the size and power of EV's.

Otherwise we will continue to make bigger and wider highways and squash young families in to smaller and smaller adjacent house blocks.

EV Public transport should be cheap enough to limit the growth of EV private transport as occurred when the ICE replaced the horse.

gg
 

Are you asking that governments introduce rules that make it illegal for manufactures to design and build EVs to the current sizing regulations? Or would you prefer other means, such as - massive tax increases on large vehicles, and tax discounts for small vehicles?
 
This is a worldwide problem in cities.

Larger and more complex highways and interchanges are being built to accomodate more and more vehicles.

I don't have a suggestion as to how to implement my idea, but building more roads just encourages motorists to get bigger e.g SUV and more powerful cars.

There is an opportunity to limit vehicles with this change from the ICE to EV and it would be a good time to grab it.

gg
 
If anyone actually purchases purchased a BYD, 0lease contact me/describe your experience.
We got a great test drive review so far but keen on more info
 

I can't see regulators being able to do much to alleviate the problems that you highlight. Introduce tax incentives and people will scream blue murder, make laws banning certain size vehicles and people will scream, make infrastructure smaller and people will scream and crash.

Maybe Elon Musk and Tesla are onto something, develop and build autonomous vehicles to reduce the number of vehicles required on the road.

 

 
I would agree on your two points in the first sentence.

It really is getting ridiculous though the proliferation of highways which is in indirect proportion to the the time saved to get somewhere.

Whenever I travel south to the three villages, Noosa Heads, Brisbane or Coolangatta I travel the inland route via Belyando Crossing as the Bruce Highway particularly within 100 - 200 km either side of George St. has been a construction site for the last five years.

Autonomous ( aka Zombie ) vehicles are here already in ICE form, hordes of Victorian caravans clogging up Queensland highways in winter with the obligatory bowlers' hats showing in the back window. It won't solve it for me in my Arnage if the silly bas**rds from East Bentleigh or some other godforsaken place go EV travelling nose to a*se at 80kph.

My solution would be only to license smaller EVs. Incentives would not work.

gg
 
I thought I would have a bit of a look through the screens on the Kona and found these ones. I switched the A/C on and then A/C off, the car showed the projected range.




 
sptrawler said:
I thought I would have a bit of a look through the screens on the Kona and found these ones. I switched the A/C on and then A/C off, the car showed the projected range.

View attachment 149636


View attachment 149637
Click to expand...
So its estimating that running the climate control will reduce your range by 7%, I guess it also depends on the temp you set it too does it?
 
JohnDe said:
Are you asking that governments introduce rules that make it illegal for manufactures to design and build EVs to the current sizing regulations?
Click to expand...
I'm definitely not in favour of doing away with private cars as such, there's a perfectly good reason why they're by far the most practical transport option for many, but on the other hand I'm none too keen on the "arms race" we have at present with ICE cars.

Some of the utes in particular would pretty much run straight over the bonnet of a small car in the even of a head-on crash, leading to a situation where anyone with even the most basic knowledge of physics starts thinking they ought be buying a big vehicle simply because the chances are, in the event of an accident, the other vehicle is indeed going to be somewhat heavier than a "large" car was just a few years ago.
 
sptrawler said:
I would guess so, I will have a play with different settings, it is quite interesting.
Click to expand...
One other trick I have learned when it comes to winter, is that using the heated seat uses less energy than heating the whole cabin using the climate control.

———————

When I said that to one of my friends he mentioned that “that’s the good thing about petrol cars, heating them doesn’t use extra fuel” but I quickly pointed out that is because you are always wasting about 50% of your fuel to heat loss, so it only seems like it’s not using extra fuel because you are always just wasting all that energy all the time, so capturing a small portion of it is easy, but EV’s are so efficient that if you want some extra heat most of it has to come from your battery, because there just isn’t the wasted energy anywhere.
 
Value Collector said:
One other trick I have learned when it comes to winter, is that using the heated seat uses less energy than heating the whole cabin using the climate control.

————
Click to expand...

Not sure about that. Heated seats use heavy wire as a resistor, electrical current is passed through the wire which heats up because of the resistance. This is an inefficient use of electricity, and is why Tesla changed its cabin heater from a resistor type heater to a heat pump.
 
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