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 21.9%

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

    Votes: 78 39.8%

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

    Votes: 37 18.9%

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

    Votes: 24 12.2%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.1%
  • Total voters
    196
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qldfrog said:
VC so the coal you burn to charge was under your charger
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You factored in distribution losses already in regards to the ev.

Your model is basically comparing the worst case scenario Eg. 100% coal vs petrol that magically appears at the car with no prior energy losses.

You are ignoring the fact that

1. a large chunk of each barrel of oil is lost in the making of the petrol/diesel components.

2. refining that petrol/diesel requires about 1Kwh of electricity per liter of petrol produced, and that electricity itself could be used to charge cars.

3, worst case scenario 100% coal doesn’t exist in any state of Australia, all states have a mix of renewables, gas and coal.
 
Value Collector said:
it was 2000, at the time in Qld lots of ampol/caltex were privately owned “distributorships”, I don’t know if they still operate this way.

However, the constant up selling pretty much every servo does to his day tells me things haven’t changed much, and the margins on fuel wafer thin at the retail end.
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Fuel is about 85% of there revenue
Maybe they will turn into big battery banks with access to cheap power and flog it to the pointy heads in their electric cars with fast charging options
The servos are on good real estate regardless of the outcome
Hopefully they still sell pies
 
I’m keeping out of the debate for the reasons I’ve stated, too much ideology, but I’ll note that a similar argument applies elsewhere too.

For example gas versus electric hot water. If the electricity comes from fossil fuels, and the water heater is not a heat pump, well then gas wins for efficiency and emissions.

If there’s to be any shift to sustainability however well then we’re shifting to electricity from renewables not fossil gas.

Therein lies the dilemma - short term versus long term and it’s the same no matter what the end use is (hot water, heating buildings, cooking, transport, anything) apart from those where due to efficiency benefits electricity always clearly wins.

In Australia we’ve got both extremes and a ship sailing between them.

On one end there’s Victoria with the highest market penetration of reticulated gas anywhere on earth (that claim’s a few years old but probably nobody’s beaten it).

On the other end there’s Tasmania. 94% of homes with electric hot water, 90% with electric cooktops, almost 100% electric market share for ovens and two thirds electric share for residential heating with the rest mostly wood (and over 90% share for commercial). Add in the reality that 60% of electricity consumption is going into heavy industry and it’s among the most electrified economies on the planet.

Now which is more sustainable?

Well the Longford gas plant (Vic) and the Devils Gate power station (Tas) both opened within months of each other. Reality today is that one’s almost out of gas, literally so, and the other’s humming along and will be for a very long time yet. Devils Gate isn’t cooking the planet either despite its name.

Obviously that can be extremely different depending on the means of generating the electricity but so long as it’s renewable then it’s inherently more sustainable than continuously taking fuel out of the ground.

That remains so even if the renewable energy itself has an environmental impact, and it invariably does impact something somehow, but it’s still more sustainable as such. Doesn’t run out, doesn’t warm the planet to any major extent, doesn’t start wars and whatever damage it does cause is mostly reversible in practice within a relatively shor time.

So there’s a major long term versus short term aspect to all this.

Short term, depending on circumstances, diesel might win. It depends.

Long term, well as per the old advertising “the future is electric”.
 
SirRumpole said:
This will be the big battle in the EV market in the future I reckon.

Batteries vs Hydrogen Fuel Cells.

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and as discussed before , it is actually a battle of centralised toward..potentially..decentralised source of energy; governments and corporates would probably prefer hydrogen fuel for that reason..
The best would be an hydrogen battery..noting impossible in the concept but probably need mechanical compression so not realistic
 
Value Collector said:
3, worst case scenario 100% coal doesn’t exist in any state of Australia, all states have a mix of renewables, gas and coal.
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Well strictly speaking I could say there's no coal at all used for power in the NT although someone would then probably point out that it's technically not a state. :)

Seriously, so long as we don't have people charging EV's during the peak then the power supply side isn't going to be hugely problematic. Ideally charging 10am - 3pm would be a real winner, to the extent there's any zero or at least low emissions energy going to waste that's largely when it happens, and second best would be 1am - 6am since it's not unknown that some wind goes to waste overnight although it's not overly common.

That varies a bit between states by the way but those that aren't there yet are rapidly approaching it as more solar is installed so I won't bother with the detail for those that aren't since it'll soon be obsolete anyway.

Worst time = during the evening peak the absolute extreme of which generally occurs between 6pm and 8pm depending on location, season and weather. The further away from that toward the low demand periods, the better. Reason, apart from any increase in the peaks driving up costs, is that's when you'll find the highest network losses and the least efficient generation running along with the energy losses of getting it running in the first place.

Getting the right approach to charging EV's will make a big difference to all this. It's one of those things where "if everyone does it......" then collectively it's serious power being drawn or not drawn so the timing does matter. Best = fill in the gaps in demand for other purposes. Worst = add to the current peaks. Anything else sits in the middle in terms of impact.

There's a few companies with ideas of doing some clever things in that space by the way. There are some different ideas around, ranging from consumer incentives through to centralised remote control, but they all have the same underlying objectives of filling in the gaps in demand with EV charging and not adding anything to the current peaks.

This can be done, it can be made to work, the questions are about the detail of doing it.

A point to remember though is that from an environmental (as distinct from technical etc) perspective the aim isn't to use electricity per se but to avoid the use of fossil fuels. If an EV isn't an option for whatever reason well a diesel or petrol car getting 5 litres / 100km beats one using 10 litres / 100km and don't even mention those getting 1 mile to the gallon or whatever.

As for me - no EV at present although I made provision for it with some electrical works done last year. My ICE driven car isn't too bad though - uses 7 litres / 100km typically. Not fantastic but by no means the worst car around for fuel consumption. :2twocents
 
Value Collector said:
You factored in distribution losses already in regards to the ev.

Your model is basically comparing the worst case scenario Eg. 100% coal vs petrol that magically appears at the car with no prior energy losses.

You are ignoring the fact that

1. a large chunk of each barrel of oil is lost in the making of the petrol/diesel components.

2. refining that petrol/diesel requires about 1Kwh of electricity per liter of petrol produced, and that electricity itself could be used to charge cars.

3, worst case scenario 100% coal doesn’t exist in any state of Australia, all states have a mix of renewables, gas and coal.
Click to expand...
So redo the computation with these figures, proper ones, and add battery production costs..i mean nickel etc per year usage
Get the coal percentage in your grid, it costs to get coal to the power plant too, even more to import NG from shale as per Victoria model get
figures roughly and honestly
then we can have a debate and facts, no preconceived idea
You start here by
I can not be wrong, his diesel ute can not possibly create less co2 than me..never good to fell conned i know..
Lets start anew
Give me facts and we can end up with
In 2020, in tasmania buy a Tesla, not in qld..etc etc
That is where this thread should be
No rush, we all have busy lives
Please factor the fact my ute will still be running after 500k km
Or lets use the Commodore if you want to
An ugly car i would never buy and see as worst case scenario for an ice but lets get figure and facts..not links
 
qldfrog said:
So redo the computation with these figures, proper ones, and add battery production costs..i mean nickel etc per year usage
Get the coal percentage in your grid, it costs to get coal to the power plant too, even more to import NG from shale as per Victoria model get
figures roughly and honestly
then we can have a debate and facts, no preconceived idea
You start here by
I can not be wrong, his diesel ute can not possibly create less co2 than me..never good to fell conned i know..
Lets start anew
Give me facts and we can end up with
In 2020, in tasmania buy a Tesla, not in qld..etc etc
That is where this thread should be
No rush, we all have busy lives
Please factor the fact my ute will still be running after 500k km
Or lets use the Commodore if you want to
An ugly car i would never buy and see as worst case scenario for an ice but lets get figure and facts..not links
Click to expand...

The numbers have been done before by multiple organizations and EV’s always come out on top.

Even in the worst case scenario Where there is no renewables in the mix, Ev’s break even with petrol/diesel.

Go back and watch that video I linked.
 
Humid said:
What and Woolworths and Coles don't
Try going outside more and have a look around
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again you have lost me.

your original point was that fuel makes up a large portion of “revenue”.

my point was that “revenue” and profit are different things.

Eg. Where a company makes its “profit” is more important than where it’s largest revenue is.

You could sell petrol at break even if you thought it would help you sell more cigarettes and snack foods.

hence the reason some businesses provide free car charging to bring in customers.
 
These global transformations of industrial technology don't happen overnight. I feel safe betting that over the next five to ten years most electric vehicles will be using NCM or NCA lithium-ion batteries. Grid storage will be a combination of lithium-iron, hydrogen batteries, flow batteries, molten salt batteries, who knows what else. Long distance transportation of energy generated from renewable sources will shipped as hydrogen. Something not mentioned by anyone here (I understand this is a discussion about vehicles rather than transport in general) is that the world's shipping fleet is also going to transitioning off hydrocarbons too. I suspect hydrogen storage would be most relevant to powering shipping.
 
Value Collector said:
again you have lost me.

your original point was that fuel makes up a large portion of “revenue”.

my point was that “revenue” and profit are different things.

Eg. Where a company makes its “profit” is more important than where it’s largest revenue is.

You could sell petrol at break even if you thought it would help you sell more cigarettes and snack foods.

hence the reason some businesses provide free car charging to bring in customers.
Click to expand...

Mate all I wanted was a pie
 
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