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 22.1%

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

    Votes: 78 40.0%

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

    Votes: 36 18.5%

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

    Votes: 24 12.3%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.2%
  • Total voters
    195
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qldfrog said:
Btw @JohnDe how much was the cost of your home charger?
Genuinely interested as I usually cost it at roughly one year of EV savings (petrol,service and rego savings)
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$0.00 was the cost of the charger, as it came with the Tesla. I believe that all EV's come with charger.

If I wanted, I could purchase a fast charger like Tesla's Gen 3 Wall Charger, but I don't need one. I find that the standard 10A/15A charging unit supplied with the Tesla to be good enough for me. I plug it in, and it charges during off-peak.

There's a couple of handy Gen 2 chargers at my home-away-from-home at the coast, which is free charging.

52773830-9A79-42C5-B780-C7C3365091F1.jpeg
 
mullokintyre said:
No one in their right mind would buy a car as an investment, they will always be an expensed item in the balance sheet.
Sure people will point to half million dollar phase 111 Falcon GTHO, but you have to buy them and put them on blocks for ever.
You would likely be better off if you had bought the equivalent amount of BHP shares and kept them the same time.
The capital cost of the BYD was pretty much the same if we upgraded the wifes CX5.
The CX5 was the top of the range with AWD, heated and cooled seats, real leather, climate control blah blah blah.
The BYD is FWD rather than AWD, and does not have heated or cooled seats, but does have all the other blah blah blah stuff.
But I very much doubt we will recover the capital cost or opportunity cost of this car or any other car I have ever bought.
Mick
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A car is an expense, I don’t think any one is saying that you will recover the full cost of a car, and you don’t need to because it’s an expense.

But, where the “investment” comes in is where you decide to invest an additional amount to upgrade to a type of car that has lower running costs. In that case all you have to do to make it worth while is recover that additional amount.

For example.

If a petrol car in the category you want costs $50,000 but you can get an equivalent EV for $70,000 it’s not about recovering the entire cost of the $70,000 all you need to recover is the additional $20,000 you invested.

Of course if by spending the Extra $20k to get the other benefits that improve your life then you might not need to recover the full $20k to break even.

Also, if as in your example your ev was similar cost to your other option then all the savings are gravy.
 
mullokintyre said:
Yesterday we drove the BYD to visit children and grandchildren in the south eastern suburbs.
It was a there and back trip of about 440 kms.
Nominally, the BYD range of 420 kms means its quick charge short, but recent experience suggests that it would be significantly less than that, probably closer to 300 to 320 kms travelling with two on board at the 110km speed limit on the Hume freeway.
So while the rest of the family partied on, I made a quick 3 km detour to a local council parking area that had four charging slots, two with a cable, and two without cable. Only one was available for use, the other three all being occupied by Teslas. One was a Tesla Y model, and the owner gave me an enthusiastic tour of it. He did not seem at all interested in me returning the favour and showing him the BYD.
So, after about an hour, I had added about 10% of charge which i thought wold give me about a 40kms buffer up my sleeve for the return home.
My original thoughts were to drop into the Cooper street BP station, which nominally has 4 charging stations, but when I checked the Evie Ap, only one was working, and that one seemed to be frequently full, as it was when I drove past it on the way down , and the way back.
The fall back position was to detour about 15 kms to the maxi chargers in Avenel.
As we approached the decision point where I had to either detour to Avenel or continue the 70 odd kms to home, we still showed 34 kms of buffer, so i decided to just keep going - it was dark, raining, and two of the passengers wanted to watch the tennis on TV. Well that came back to bite me.
Around 12 kms from home , I got the " you need to charge right now" message, and we still had about 15 kms of range showing.
At the 6 km mark from home, the range suddenly plummeted to zero from the 10 kms that was showing.
In a couple of the test reviews from America for the Rivian and F250 Lightning, both of them had a reserve when it gets to 0 that gives another 12 to 15 kms of emergency, so I thought all would be well. Not so with the BYD.
It shifted itself to Neutral, and just stopped the engine and we coasted to a halt with the lights of the outskirts of town almost within spitting distance. A quick phone call, and a mate came to rescue us and bought a petrol driven generator with him.
Unfortunately, the 1.7 KVA genny kept cutting out as the load on the granny charger was too high.
So we got a lift back home, I grabbed the diesel ute, struggled to get it loaded it up with my 5kva diesel genny, and retraced our steps.
The bigger genny took about about 45 mins to get us enough to limp home, but only just.
Lesson learnt, highway driving decimates range. When in doubt, recharge.
As a secondary observation, a lot of the charging stations shown in plugshare are painfully slow, and the ones I have attended so far , do not charge at the max rate if all the stations are occupied.
So much to learn with running an EV , especially if you live in a regional area.
Mick
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After my self inflicted debacle last Sunday, I now note that the NRMA and other road side assitance orgs may come to my rescue.
From The Driven
NRMA is to equip two of its patrol cars with 4.8kWh battery packs to help out electric driving members who have run out of charge in their EVs.
The motoring and roadside assistance company says the 4.8kWh lithium-ion battery packs will be able to provide 1km of charge every two minutes. After as little as 10 minutes of charging, a vehicle will have 5km of range to get to the nearest charging station.
The two NRMA patrol vans with the battery packs will be located in Sydney and Canberra.
We are seeing more and more EV drivers call us for assistance so it’s clear the need for this kind of support is increasing,” Tim Bryant, a roadside assistant driver, was quoted as saying in there NRMA statement.

“We want to provide outstanding service to our Members no matter what car they drive. We know one of the biggest deterrents for those looking to purchase an electric vehicle is range anxiety – will they run out of charge far from charging facilities.”
Click to expand...
Mick
 
mullokintyre said:
After my self inflicted debacle last Sunday, I now note that the NRMA and other road side assitance orgs may come to my rescue.
From The Driven

Mick
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The very reason I bought the Kona, I had borrowed a friends Ionic 5 and it was using 20kW/100km on the motorway.
Even another mate, who has a Tesla 3, reckons when he went to Albany which is about a 500km trip from Mandurah, 400km is about the most he would risk.
They went to Kalgoorlie recently and decided to take the Mazda 6 and leave the model 3 at home. ?
As you say, the E.V's take some getting used to, I don't think range anxiety will go away, until there is a huge amount of charging infrastructure.
I'm yet to do a long distance trip in the Kona, so I haven't had the experience yet, how did the wife take it. ;)
 
​
Tesla has opened select Superchargers in Australia to all other non-Tesla electric vehicle so we tested the BYD Atto 3 EV DC Supercharging at the Tesla Supercharger in Bathurst NSW | Tesla Tom of Ludicrous Feed​
BYD ATTO 3 CHARGING AT TESLA SUPERCHARGER IN AUSTRALIA | February 2023​
​
NB: At the 11 minute mark, I've since been informed you can lock the charger under the car's 'New Energy' Settings​

 
mullokintyre said:
She was the one who wanted to get home to watch the tennis, so she did not say much.
But if looks could kill .....
Mick
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Yep, one of those say nothing moments, if she is wrong say nothing, if your wrong apologies. :rolleyes:
I'm always in trouble for being paranoid about things going wrong and being over cautious, funny how we've travelled all over Australia for 50 years and never been stuck. ?
 
SirRumpole said:
An interesting take on the pros and cons of PHEV's.

Skip to 5 mins to avoid the ads.

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Spot on and why I decided to buy the pure E.V.

Also why I used the Outlander as an example, in the farmer living on an off grid system 20km from town, IMO it is the only scenario where the PHEV makes any sense at all.:xyxthumbs
 
sptrawler said:
Yep, one of those say nothing moments, if she is wrong say nothing, if your wrong apologies. :rolleyes:
I'm always in trouble for being paranoid about things going wrong and being over cautious, funny how we've travelled all over Australia for 50 years and never been stuck. ?
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37 years for me, including never having run out of fuel. Though I have helped family & friends that don't know how to read a fuel gauge.
 
SirRumpole said:
Maybe. ;)

My preference at the moment is a SUV type vehicle with some off road capability.

Not sure if Tesla makes anything in that area at present.
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Tesla cybertruck is still vapourware, they say retail deliveries will not start till early 2024 now, then you have to wait for RHD versions to kick in.
Rivian R1S and R1t , Ford F150 Lighting, Hummer, and Chevvy Silverado are all currently in production, some for over a year now, but still no announcements about RHD versions, in the case of the Rivian, and Hummer, they may never make RHD versions.
Chinese builder SAIC recently announced the LDV eT60, and electric version of its $WD ute , the T60. Unfortunately, the eT60 is only 2WD, with a paltry 310NM of Torque and a maximum of 1 tonne braked towing capacity, which retails for the princely sum of $92,990 RRP.
You may be better off getting an offroad capable vehicle you like, and paying someone to convert it to electric.
Mick
 
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