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Electric cars?

Would you buy an electric car?

  • Already own one

    Votes: 10 5.0%

  • Yes - would definitely buy

    Votes: 43 21.6%

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

    Votes: 79 39.7%

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

    Votes: 38 19.1%

  • 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 7.0%
  • Total voters
    199
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All in agreement, soon ICE will be the one for specialized useage
We tend to forget that steam engines powered our whole industrial revolution and wind water mill before not to forget horses
Radical changes can and will happen
 
Electric Cars were very popular in the 1890's following the invention of the lead-acid battery. Nice to see them coming back into their own 120 years later now that mass economic production of Lithium-Ion batteries is taking off. Half the value of an EV is currently contained in the battery pack, which by value is mainly nickel. Outside the battery pack you have a fair wack of copper in the motor and wiring. Nickel and copper. The big wave of demand for the metals required (nickel, copper, lithium, cobalt) is going to come over the next couple of decades because these metals will be highly recovered and recycled through the EV lifecycle. It's going to be the projected growth of EV to 50% of all vehicles (from bikes to big trucks) over the next thirty years that is going to drive the next mega-cycle in these metals.
 
qldfrog said:
All in agreement, soon ICE will be the one for specialized useage
We tend to forget that steam engines powered our whole industrial revolution and wind water mill before not to forget horses
Radical changes can and will happen
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“The stone age did not end because the world ran out of stones, and the oil age will not end because we run out of oil.”
 
qldfrog said:
True but when both the coalition and labour agreed to do that, it got destroyed by the Greens.
Politics at its worst..well done the Greens...
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If Labour & Coalition both agree on something, Greens never have the numbers to stop it in the senate. Are you sure Libs were on board?
 
BlindSquirrel said:
If Labour & Coalition both agree on something, Greens never have the numbers to stop it in the senate. Are you sure Libs were on board?
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You see how quickly it was forgotten.
Both labor and coalition had a carbon tax before the election.labor won Abbot took over breaking the bipartisan accord.but labour plus green had the numbers to pass the carbon tax.
Green claimed it was not enough and rejected the deal
Yeap the extinction rebellion and cie
Feel free to check....
 

Hydrogen Vechicles are still “Ev’s”, it’s just that the electricity is sourced by passing hydrogen through a fuel cell instead of coming from a battery.

So take the battery out of an Ev, and replace it with a fuel cell and a hydrogen Tank and you have a hydrogen powered car, so the tech is very similar.

the big problem I see is that Hydrogen comes from two main sources.

1, Natrual gas (cheapest)

2, electrolyzing water (expensive)

The natural gas option is still bad for the environment, but if we try to use option 2, we end up wasting a lot more electricity than it would just take to charge batteries, and we are signing up to continue buying stuff from the petrol stations when we could be just charging or battery at home with the solar from our roof.

you could technically make your own hydrogen at home, but it would require all sorts of extra equipment, to electrolyze the water, then compress the gas etc.

I think having the power just go directly to your battery from your roof is much easier.
 

Sounds like Tony.
 
Libs would have repealed it anyway as they did with the one that did get through, though Greens wouldn't have known that at the time. I agree, Greens should have taken what they could get.
 
BlindSquirrel said:
Libs would have repealed it anyway as they did with the one that did get through, though Greens wouldn't have known that at the time. I agree, Greens should have taken what they could get.
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Please do not rewrite history
Greens could have voted labour proposed carbon tax and it would be legislation then and now
 
qldfrog said:
Please do not rewrite history
Greens could have voted labour proposed carbon tax and it would be legislation then and now
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Not rewriting anything, what happened happened. Whatever carbon-tax legislation that was put into place by Labor was repealed (on the 17th of July 2014) by the next Liberal government.
Abbott was crowing about it, alongside "stopping the boats".
Perhaps if it was put in place earlier (had the Greens done the right thing) then benefits would have had time to show and Libs wouldn't have repealed it, but that's unlikely because they'd already turned it into a nigh-on religious argument.
 
BlindSquirrel said:
Perhaps if it was put in place earlier (had the Greens done the right thing) then benefits would have had time to show and Libs wouldn't have repealed it, but that's unlikely because they'd already turned it into a nigh-on religious argument.
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That is assuming there were any benefits, Australia has gone from one of the cheapest power cost Countries in the first World, to one of the dearest, I struggle to understand how adding another cost to power would have been a benefit.
Maybe it would at a social and moral level, but at an industrial and economic level I think it would have just accelerated the speed of our obvious economic decline.
When there is an agreed universal carbon tax, which I'm sure will have to happen, we no doubt will join in, but to apply a tax on manufacturing that no one else is applying can only end in tears IMO.
Just my opinion.
 
We're only just now starting to see local microgrids popping up which means that long-range power transmission will no longer be required; all those cables and wires no longer need to be maintained over such a distance.
This is an example of the sort of thing that could have been introduced if there was a stable legislative environment for renewable power, rather than legislating a carbon tax, repealing it, hinting at future legislation, having it quashed by a vocal minority of backbenchers. There is a benefit to being among the first movers into a space and as we're in a country with an abundance of sunlight we should have been right there.
 
Actually if you read up on the thread on the power system, you will find that the long range transmission system is going to require many billions of dollars spent on it, by the time we change over to renewables.
There is an advantage as you say being first moving into the space, but there is no point getting there and having a completely trashed economy when you arrive, that would actually be the worst outcome as our welfare system would be the first to suffer any cutbacks.
There is a lot of info in the 'future of energy generation and storage' thread, just use the search function, it is a well informed thread.
By the way on a per capita basis, we are leading the World in the uptake of renewables, by a considerable margin.
That is one of the reasons the electrical distribution system in the Eastern States, is in such a precarious position.
 
Btw @BlindSquirrel , do not think people like @sptrawler or myself are against renewable, we are just engineers and like facts and sciences to lead decisions and designs, not political bias or heart
If we had more hydro storage capacity, i would vote 100% solar and wind
As is we are not ready and getting the worst of both worlds down South, in qld so far ok with solar
 
The new BMW X3 electric.
https://www.drive.com.au/news/2020-...e=smh&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=tile-4

Of interest from the article:
BMW says this is the first electric motor to be produced without the need for rear-earth metals.

If they actually mean that they have developed an electric motor suitable for vehicles, that doesn't require rare earth magnets, it could have a dramatic effect on demand for rare earths?
 
The original Tesla used an induction motor, so I looked this up and the model 3 uses a permanent magnet (to increase efficiency), seems a backward step to me.

Good find guys.
 
qldfrog said:
Btw @BlindSquirrel , do not think people like @sptrawler or myself are against renewable, we are just engineers and like facts and sciences to lead decisions and designs, not political bias or heart
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I think it’s fair to say that if we compare now with the big environment versus development debates of the past, particularly those relating to energy, then much has changed.

Most engineers these days have at least a reasonable acceptance that the environmental arguments are valid and likewise there’s plenty on the “green” side who’ve come to an understanding as to why great big coal-fired power stations hold such an attraction on the energy supply side.

In both cases there’s an understanding than the opposing side’s views are held with good reason and that the question is about how to find a mutually workable way forward. A way that doesn’t involve system collapses, either electrical or ecological, and which doesn’t bankrupt society.

As such to the extent there’s a conflict it’s largely a manufactured political one not one that involves real environmentalists or real engineers both of whom have come to accept each other’s point.
 
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