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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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I don't know.........for me I tend to categorize vehicles by driving behavior on the road.
Probably rate them dick to super dick to well.......I am old and grumpy so A hole escapes from my tight lips ... seldom........honest
You have Ford Ranger drivers following 50mm off your back bumper the frustration obvious only then to pass on the left back in to fill the safe travelling distance you were leaving between you and the car in front. Audi Q 7 drivers weaving between cars disappearing into the distance. Older Ford Falcons been driven with people of a lesser IQ etc.etc

Our local Countdown yes that Aussie one with the disguised WW in the middle of the logo, has a free charging station in the car park sponsored by the local power company. I don't go to that car park often but I have seen what are best described as disputes over the time one or other has spent in the space plugged in as it were.
And the Prius drivers...well...have the licence to never let you in ...The Nissan leaf drivers and the EV nv200 van drivers and well the EV Golf drivers all have that smirk on their face as they line you up from behind to silently take you out at the knees in the car park.......
......looking for the word here .....Seniors .....on their mobility scooter taking you out as they almost complete that final stage of the high speed turning maneuver necessary at approach and leaving the pedestrian crossing at warp speed.
There appears to be a correlation between the turning arc calculation of the mobility scooter and the strategic positioning of the money machine used to distract the victim.

There is nothing wrong with a drip or two of black oil on the Car Shed floor in my opinion.

All the best

bux
 
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To be honest, I am a bit sentimental also. I loved ripping apart engines and putting them back together when I was doing my apprenticeship.

These days, I don't even have a car; however I am not married with kids and live in very close proximity to the city.

Realistically: we should be building a new era of public transport that is efficient, clean, fast, reliable, frequent and cheap; within our major cities, if we really want to tread lightly on the planet.

Not light rail in Sydney
 

Perhaps Elon's next venture! Clean public transport. You can send me the check in the post Elon
 
over9k said:
There's a documentary called "pump" where the former shell head honcho states that he reckons it'll take 3-4 decades for most cars to be electric only.
Click to expand...

If we take "most" to mean 95% or so (my assumption) then that would happen if we reached a point ~15 years from now where all new car sales are EV's.

A point often missed is that the average lifespan of a car is a bit over 20 years unless it's written off in a crash or stolen. Hence there's still plenty of year 2000 cars in daily use today but very few that are pre-1990.

So if we assume that ICE cars are still manufactured in at least a significant volume over the next decade then 30 - 40 years to get to electric dominance seems reasonable.
 
Chronos-Plutus said:
Perhaps Elon's next venture! Clean public transport.
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I don't know in regards to what but in terms of next ventures, well it's been reported in the media that he's been having discussions with Australian shipbuilder Incat.
 
Smurf1976 said:
I don't know in regards to what but in terms of next ventures, well it's been reported in the media that he's been having discussions with Australian shipbuilder Incat.
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A ship that produces hydrogen, from seawater, for its propulsion system?

Or just electric batteries?
 

You missed a few major points.

1, Electric cars are a lot more efficient than gasoline cars, so it takes a lot less BTU’s to drive a mile using electric than it does Combustion engine.

2, refining oil and pumping It uses electricity and natural gas itself, so when you aren’t Refining oil you use less electricity.

3, cars can be charged at odd hours, allowing you to use existing capacity That goes unused or idled back at certain times.
 

Come now; really? We are talking about ~4 Terawatts of nameplate capacity that will cost ~USD$24 Trillion just for the powerplants; if we say ~USD$6 Billion per GW of nuclear capacity.

$24 Trillion dollars, buddy. Then add on the cost of the transmission networks and recharge stations.

Just in the USA alone.

I like Elon; not in a gay way, because I am not gay , however we have to be reasonable here.

Tesla can still do very well in the auto market though.
 
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The other issue of course that must be added to the equation, is the replacement of the existing fossil fueled power generators + add the other forms of transport, other than cars e.g trucks, planes etc.
Like I said at the beginning of all these discussions, most people can't get their heads around the enormity of the issue, they just keep chanting "do it and do it now".
Then when you try to explain the enormity of the problem, the good old chestnut of just put in wind turbines and solar panels is thrown up, because the idiotic media keep dishing up the nonsense and the muppets swallow it up like ice cream.
 

The stranded assets are colossal. Realistically; it won't be happening this century.

Perhaps: if there is a massive coordinated effort with the big energy players; that are supported with government funding, to start building nuclear powerplants NOW. If so, we might be able to get to 100% EVs before the end of this century.

Not likely though.
 
I think it is plausible Australia could become full clean energy generation, but I think that probably still would require a nuclear component, but we are in the unique situation of having great resources(flat land mass, sun & wind) and a small population.
So electric cars will actually assist in the storage capacity, to support the intermittency of the renewables.
Just my opinion.
 
Chronos-Plutus said:
A ship that produces hydrogen, from seawater, for its propulsion system?

Or just electric batteries?
Click to expand...

I don't know but Incat itself is quite innovative. Ships built by the company have held the Trans Atlantic crossing speed record continuously since 1990 for example, two later Incat-built ships having broken the 1990 record in that time.

Their vessels have mostly used conventional diesel engines although they've built LNG powered ones too for customers who wanted them. That's LNG to power the passenger ship, not a ship to transport LNG as a tanker etc.

What they're doing with Tesla I've no idea but it has been reported in the mainstream media that he's been talking with them.
 

I agree with you that it can be done. Not easy though and still an expensive transition, even with our low population. I would start with:

- A large tidal barrage powerplant in North WA, that produces hydrogen.

- Municipal waste will be incinerated to produce electricity.

- Biogas plants that produce methane from human and animal sewage, and green waste.

- Roof-top solar for all houses that are deemed economically feasible.

- Bass Strait integrated hybrid wind and marine turbines.

- Ethanol production in Far Northern Queensland.

A nation that doesn't need to rely on mining for fossil fuels anymore; at a great cost, major energy players onboard, and of course government funding.
 

I would rather to just have a small nuclear powerplant to power the ship.

In saying this; we could have the majority of the exposed surface of the ship harnessing solar energy. Then when the ship is anchored we can have a wind turbine deployed.
This will recharge Elon's batteries for the ship.
Hydrogen might be more efficient if we had the economy in Australia to support it.
 

I am not sure you understood my points.

to produce 1L of petrol, you don’t just need oil, you also need electricity to run the refinery, if you instead just charged a car with that electricity the car would be able to drive nearly as far as a petrol car goes on 1L of fuel.

Eg. Petrol = Oil + Electricity, where as if you just take that electricity consumed in oil refining and put it into a Tesla you get almost the same driving distance as the petrol.

Which gets me to my other point, you were comparing BTU’s of Gasoline to BTU’s of electricity, as if electric cars require the same amount of BTUs to travel similar distances, electric vehicles do not need the same amount of energy as Gasoline cars, due to much lower losses and regen braking etc.

also do you really think the world is going to go electric over night? The process will be gradual, and any adjustments to the grid can be made easily over that time frame.
 

I understand your points and disagree, we have reached an impasse. You still have to mine the coal, uranium; or drill the gas or oil; to create electricity; to then recharge your EVs.

I have put forward my numbers, you put forward yours.

I basically don't believe this will be a whale oil to crude oil transition.
 
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Chronos-Plutus said:
I understand your points and disagree, we have reached an impasse. I basically don't believe this will be a whale oil to crude oil transition.
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I am not sure how you can disagree with facts.

it takes 6KWH of electricity to make a gallon of gasoline. (That’s electricity the refinery is drawing from the grid)

When that gallon of gasoline goes into a car it drives the car 24 miles, however if you instead left the oil in the ground and just used to 6KWH of electricity The refinery was going to draw from the grid to charge a car directly you would be able to drive 20 miles.

So a large chunk of the electricity needed to charge cars can come from reductions in the electricity the draw Refining oil.

https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/gasoline-costs-6kwh.html
 

You still have to mine the coal, uranium; or drill the gas or oil; to create electricity; to then recharge your EVs.

If you think you can supply all the power from wind and/or solar then provide me with the numbers please; just for the USA.
 
Chronos-Plutus said:
You still have to mine the coal, uranium; or drill the gas or oil; to create electricity; to then recharge your EVs.

If you think you can supply all the power from wind and/or solar then provide me with the numbers please; just for the USA.
Click to expand...

I have already been down this rabbit hole.
 
Chronos-Plutus said:
You still have to mine the coal, uranium; or drill the gas or oil; to create electricity;

.
Click to expand...

We are already doing that to produce the 6KWH of electricity we need to refine each gallon of gasoline we produce. (I really think you are not understanding the point here)

Not to mention we could burn the oil to make electricity rather than refine it into gasoline, and with the electricity savings and the oil itself run 3 electric cars instead 1 gasoline one.

meanwhile I charge my car at home using my solar panels directly, which by the way uses less electricity than my electric hot water system.
 
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