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11 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

I could be wrong, I was looking at the back of the car and the cable so it could have been another make; the position of LH Rear was correct though.

 

It looks like the BEV version is on the front but the Hybrid may be on the right.

 

 

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53 minutes ago, octave said:

 

 

It looks like the BEV version is on the front but the Hybrid may be on the right.

 

 

The position of the charging point is going to become very important with street parking, needing to be on the kerb side, given that Councils are likely to pounce on any cable crossing a footpath as a trip hazard, and road authorities will fine people for the roadside connection I saw. That should lead to kerbside charging poles as part of parking meters or in much the same position.

 

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5 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

The position of the charging point is going to become very important with street parking, needing to be on the kerb side, given that Councils are likely to pounce on any cable crossing a footpath as a trip hazard, and road authorities will fine people for the roadside connection I saw. That should lead to kerbside charging poles as part of parking meters or in much the same position.

 

These issues are being addressed   All charged up: Councils push for kerbside car charging         Now you can charge your EV from the footpath

 

 

 

 

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17 minutes ago, tillmanr said:

You would then need to restrict parking beside these installations to only EVs to be effective. I am sure this would find wide acceptance in parking poor inner suburbs, not.

 There are problems  real and perceived. I am not convinced that a gradual change towards EVs represent a greater challenge than the adoption of the early motor vehicle.  Petrol stations sprang up because it became impractical for the masses to buy their fuel from a pharmacy.   What people tend to do is to extrapolate forward to a time where most people drive an EV but they imagine this situation with todays infrastructure.  When I was a child my family got to the point that they could afford to have to phone connected.  This involved much trenching and conduit running up walls.  When I built my house the done thing was to get the house prewired for telephone. Nowadays you would not build a house without provision for internet.

 

Whilst it is true that some premises may pose difficulties for EV charging there are many years before this problem needs to be solved in every case.

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12 hours ago, octave said:

After what appears to be a frantic WikiSearch you reassured us all that Councils could charge EV from the footpath.

 

"Whilst it is true that some premises may pose difficulties for EV charging there are many years before this problem needs to be solved in every case."

 

Now we get this BS; you can't be half pregnant Octave.

 

My Council with around 75,000 cars, a high percentage parked on the streets, announced it has 3 charging points at the Council offices.

 

We got the old story about your short trip in New Zealand with the lesiurely lunch, but Australian conditions are more like the US>

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-rented-an-electric-car-for-a-four-day-road-trip-i-spent-more-time-charging-it-than-i-did-sleeping-11654268401

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

After what appears to be a frantic WikiSearch you reassured us all that Councils could charge EV from the footpath.

 

No. my point was that infrastructure is adapting.    As you point out eVs are a tiny portion of the fleet and it would be ridiculous to over capitalize or get too far ahead of the curve.   A network of petrol stations or sealed roads did not predate the motor car.  Not such a frantic wikisearch as you condescendingly put it.  I am quite aware of what is happening with the EV space and quite involved with our local council.  Your article about people travelling across the US was no doubt something you searched for either frantically or not. Actually I am familiar with that article  There are plenty of critiques about the mistakes they made and the suggestion was that it was designed to fail.      

 

The Wall Street Journal Made A "Trip" By EV...And It Just Proved How Clueless People Are About EVs..

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

Now we get this BS; you can't be half pregnant Octave.

 

 

I am not sure why you believe I am posting BS here.    The streets are probably 25 years plus away from being purely populated by EVs.     With most manufacturers announcing phase out times in the early 30s we will see plenty of ICE vehicles around into the 40s (if they are still economical].

 

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

My Council with around 75,000 cars, a high percentage parked on the streets, announced it has 3 charging points at the Council offices.

 I am not sure what area you live in but it is somewhat surprising that there are only 3 chargers locally.  I have 6 within 2km of me also interestingly in the nearby industrial area I noticed a couple of private chargers belonging to businesses.   There is a wool business, not quite sure what it does (grading or bailing or something).  I stopped for a chat with a fellow because I wanted to ask about his particular EV.  It seems that he and a couple of other workers pay a small weekly amount to charge their cars whilst  working. The building also has rooftop solar.   Seems like a nice arrangement.

 

2 hours ago, turboplanner said:

We got the old story about your short trip in New Zealand with the lesiurely lunch, but Australian conditions are more like the US>

You are being a little contemptuous here. Auckland to Wellington is about 650KM  much of it through steep hilly country.  He has toured the South Island (extremely hilly)   Certainly in Australia we do have vast distances and for the near term although people are doing epic trips it is more of an enthusiast project.  I most certainly would not suggest that anyone needing to do this kind of driving should get an EV at this point in time.    

 

Your council area may only have 3 charging points at this time.   Geelong has 11 public sites each with multiple outlets plus another number of Chargeshare (where an individual makes their home charger available for a price)

 

If as we get towards the 2030s EVs are not filling the bill then ICE vehicle sales will soar and EV sales decline.  I believe if this happens the manufacturers and governments will step back from EVs.   

 

Petrol cars will not be totally disappearing anytime soon.   

 

Turbs we are discussing ideas here there is no need for talk of BS and frantic wikisearches and the condescending "old short New Zealand"    I am more than happy for us to politely disagree with each other and to discuss ideas.

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Creating areas for plugging in cars is not an enormously difficult piece of infrastructure work. If you really want to run a cable from your house you can already buy simple footpath safe covers which are approved in Australia, they're used in the building industry already.

The whole henny penny issue of "not enough charging points" is lets face it, pretty easy to solve and is only required for inner city areas without offstreet parking which isn't the majority of Australian car owners. City planners want residents of high density housing to catch public transport.

The extra generating capacity and load on the grid is a much more difficult, especially given the fact that fossil fuels are being progressively phased out. Cars tend to be at home during the evenings and at work during the day when solar is generating cheap power. Given that solar and wind often generate more power than the grid is absorbing, are you going to pay people to charge their cars during these peak times to take power off the grid? If so who's going to pay?

 

Services and infrastructure will adapt, often in an unexpected manner and often to the chagrin of city planners and Governments.

 

A good example of adaptation is the creation of the suburbs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburb historically these were created by better transport options and now 70% of Australians live in the suburbs. Given that most people tend to like to live in a house houses compared to apartments this trend will accelerate now that many workers have demonstrated the ability to work remotely as the requirement to commute has evaporated for this set of workers.

Property developers and city planners have been actively marketing the concept of "liveable cities", with convenient local shops, high density housing and mass public transport, prizes are given for the "best cities" which demonstrate "high density" services however these are sponsored by vested interests.  Large active marketing budgets trick people into buying into this concept, as the profit margins are better on apartment blocks, and it allows Governments have large centralised service centres such as industrial hospitals. However given the choice people pick free-standing homes, views and larger living areas. Economically this preference is easy to demonstrate, the percentage of high income earners living in apartments is significantly lower than the general population. The whole e-working concept will create a second wave of urbanisation as knowledge workers can now live further from their "work offices".

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One big advantage of electric vehicles is energy security. We generate all our electricity in Australia, but most of our fuel is imported.

 

We spend 50B/year on defence, but really, if someone parked a submarine in the shipping channels and threatened to sink any tanker on it's way to Australia, how long would we last?

 

Diesel trucks might be great, but they rely on the supply of fuel.

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2 hours ago, BrendAn said:

Truckies will solve the problem every time.

I saved one's job once when the Company was going to sack him for deliberately continuing to drive a truck and blowing the motor instead of stopping.

The driver said there was no indication; the motor just crapped itself.

He certainly wasn't far from his depot but I pointed out there was a telephone box on the highway a few kilometres back and everyone knows a truck always breaks down either in the depot or at a telephone box.

 

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3 hours ago, turboplanner said:

Truckies will solve the problem every time.

I saved one's job once when the Company was going to sack him for deliberately continuing to drive a truck and blowing the motor instead of stopping.

The driver said there was no indication; the motor just crapped itself.

He certainly wasn't far from his depot but I pointed out there was a telephone box on the highway a few kilometres back and everyone knows a truck always breaks down either in the depot or at a telephone box.

 

That's macca. The host of what's up down under. An off-road and caravanning tv show.

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6 hours ago, BrendAn said:

Clearly a comedy video, but by the looks of the comments on it, people actually think he is making a serious point?

 

What those who took it as gospel forgot to note what that he ignored an amazing energy source right above his head; the sun... Which companies are learning to exploit to move away from fossil fuels. One example is here: https://www.solarsense-uk.com/commercials/commercial-ev-charging-and-solar-carports/. Just google solar ev recharging..

 

Now, of course, they won't quench the thirst of massive trucks (and maybe trucks in the outback aren't suitable for EV-ifying), but maybe the new solar tech being pioneered in SA may solve that.

 

And of course, drilling for oil is sooooooooooo environmentally friendly.. at least virtually all minerals and materials used in EV world are recyclable.

 

BTW, EVs won't solve the climate warming issue, but they are a lot cleaner in the cities, and they are a heck of a lot more pleasant to drive.. and give a lot better low-down power (or delivery of it, anyway), which is about the only place a good deal of power makes sense in Aus, thanks to the revenue raising higher speeds provides to the government.

Edited by Jerry_Atrick
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20 minutes ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

Clearly a comedy video, but by the looks of the comments on it, people actually think he is making a serious point?

 

What those who took it as gospel forgot to note what that he ignored an amazing energy source right above his head; the sun... Which companies are learning to exploit to move away from fossil fuels. One example is here: https://www.solarsense-uk.com/commercials/commercial-ev-charging-and-solar-carports/. Just google solar ev recharging..

 

Now, of course, they won't quench the thirst of massive trucks (and maybe trucks in the outback aren't suitable for EV-ifying), but maybe the new solar tech being pioneered in SA may solve that.

 

And of course, drilling for oil is sooooooooooo environmentally friendly.. at least virtually all minerals and materials used in EV world are recyclable.

 

BTW, EVs won't solve the climate warming issue, but they are a lot cleaner in the cities, and they are a heck of a lot more pleasant to drive.. and give a lot better low-down power (or delivery of it, anyway), which is about the only place a good deal of power makes sense in Aus, thanks to the revenue raising higher speeds provides to the government

Seriously. He was taking the p15s out of the Greenies that harp on about electric cars when there is a charging station running on diesel. Nuclear power is what Australia needs not all that solar crap you are talking about.

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Well, the Ukraine has had its electical infrastructure bombed the carp out of...

4 hours ago, BrendAn said:

Nuclear power is what Australia needs not all that solar crap you are talking about.

As someone who has worked in the nuclear generation industry, I would dispute that, except there was a vid on helium cooled reactors in Japan that may be a game changer in that area (https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Japanese-gas-cooled-reactor-restarts). These would be ideal for Australia as you don't have to site them near sustained water supplies. But you still have the issue of waste and managing it, which is currently an expensive exercise. And the reactors themselves are an expensive exercise.

 

In the mean time, there are cheaper, safer and more practical game changers in solar (and other renewables).. and the tech will move much more rapidly: An example of not needing the diesel generator is hereL https://chargearoundaustralia.com/ .

 

After all, the sun is the solar system's biggest nuclear reactor - fusion, as it transpires.. we have yet to be able to scale it, though it is the holy grail.. So why not utilise the sun?

 

EVs, by the way, are not going to solve climate change.. but they are far less polluting in other ways.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Jerry_Atrick
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I can't see solar being able to propel a loaded vehicle with a family in it very far at a time. The electric vehicles that have crossed the Nullarbor are feather weight single seat contraptions that pick the best time of year to do it. . Some days you can have a 30 kn headwind .other times it is overcast and raining for days on end. That is the challenge I think. What do the solar cells do in those conditions. 

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What happened, or what is happening to LPG/LNG ? We may not be rich in oils, but we have large amount of gas, here in Victoria.

My other car is LPG-only Commodore and I noticed they have closed LPG bowsers at 2 out of 4 local petrol stations. 

The problem is they simply close the tap without providing an alternative. None of those stations have electric chargers.

 

 

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31 minutes ago, Bosi72 said:

What happened, or what is happening to LPG/LNG ? We may not be rich in oils, but we have large amount of gas, here in Victoria.

My other car is LPG-only Commodore and I noticed they have closed LPG bowsers at 2 out of 4 local petrol stations. 

The problem is they simply close the tap without providing an alternative. None of those stations have electric chargers.

LPG started out as a VERY cheap fuel.

At the time I was designing control systems for electric fork trucks, I had to move to drawing up an LPG unit, and LPG worked very well in that industry for decades.

 

I supplied a lot of LPG conversions for trucks for much cheaper running with the low LPG cost.

There was nothing like a big 392 cu in V8 powered 8 tonne International for fast trips out into the country and back before the 100 km/hr limit. Chrysler had the 318 cu in V8 which was almost as fast. I designed a 25 passenger coach once to operate out of Mildura with the girls basketball team to go to Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney etc at a comfortable 135 km/hr cruise. Those were the days and LPG didn't take much off the top and the tank wasn't all that much bigger than a petrol tank.

 

Holden and Ford both built LPG only car models and the refueling infrastructure started to become reasonable.

 

Naturally the Commonwealth Government replaced the excise they were losing with an excise on LPG, and the retailers bit by bit moved the price up close to petrol prices.

 

The result was a big shift to diesel, which killed the big petrol engine builds.

 

Then LPG failed the Emission tests, and no one was able to design an engine which could clean it, so sales of LPG Cars stopped. I've forgotten when that was, but probably 20+ years ago.

 

Today the refuelling infrastructure is shrinking as the LPG vehicles go to the wreckers a year at a time.

 

CNG had a short stay.

I had the job of testing a trial truck with the big fleets.

CNG produces less power out of the same engine as a diesel, so the drivers canned it 100%

The tank was huge and operated at 2000 psi, so heavy and that intruded into bin and luggage space. Benders Buse Service in Geelong had a hundred CNG buses, but went back to diesel.

Some people persevered with them in trucks where speed wasn't an issue, but the refuelling infrastructure was never as promised, and only a few diehards use them thes days.

 

The hundreds of years supply of Bass Strait gas disappeared. Perhaps it was sold to the Chinese for 1.5 c/lt, perhaps the story was BS.  Same with the northwest shelf. 

 

 

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14 hours ago, BrendAn said:

Seriously. He was taking the p15s out of the Greenies that harp on about electric cars when there is a charging station running on diesel. Nuclear power is what Australia needs not all that solar crap you are talking about.

Seriously what Australia needs is both, it's not an either or thing. Solar power is cheap up to a certain percentage of your grid, especially when you have consumers who only care about cheap power not intermittency. Think of a swimming point with a salt water chlorinator as long as you get about X hours per couple of days you're sweet.

However when you're wringing the neck of a process which needs 24x7 power to provide a return on capital its a different story. Think of aluminium refining or ammonia generation or even H2 generation of course you'll buy cheap solar power when it's available however you need a low cost continuous power solution to fall back on. Fossil Gas or Hydrogen is neither cheap not carbon neutral, neither is battery power of scale that you'll need.

Of course you could say well just turn off the refining during the night or dunkelflaute periods however unfortunately many of these components are damaged by cycling processes. And also you're not generating the return on capital of the equipment when it's off so from a business perspective it stinks.

 

It will take at about 10 years to bring nuclear generation online assuming broad based cross bench support and consensus politics unless of course small modular reactors turn out to be economic however

 

By the way that generator is powered by biodiesel rather than fossil fuel so its powered by newly captured carbon new sunlight not dinosaur sunlight.

But is does give some some indication of the footprint difference required for a solar-battery-storage solution which would be the size of a couple of a number of tennis courts compared to a bathroom size footprint.  Getting off fossil fuels will be very hard and if done poorly expensive.

 

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Jerry - Re the University of Newcastles printable solar panels, I found this in their FAQ's .....

 

Quote

The projected efficiency of a pilot scale installation is around 1%–2% with a lifetime of between one and two years. For manufacture at scale, this would correspond to a cost of electricity as low as GBP 0.50 per kWh.

 

This would have to be a major University waste of time and effort on a project of no promise, wouldn't it? I mean to say, everyone is looking to reduce waste in our new, clean, green world - and here's a bunch of researchers producing printed, foldable solar panels that only last a year or two - creating a vast amount of landfill - and their efficiency is 1% - 2%?? I could get more efficiency out of a magnifying glass setting fire to wood shavings!

 

On top of that, they're carrying 12 roll-out solar panels that weigh 18kgs each - making a load for the car of 216kgs! And no-one even mentions how long it takes to recharge the Tesla from those roll-out panels!! You sit around for hours while your 2% efficient solar panels, that weigh a staggering amount, trickle-charge the car? These Uni people really do love wasting money on projects with little future promise!

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19 minutes ago, onetrack said:

Jerry - Re the University of Newcastles printable solar panels, I found this in their FAQ's .....

 

 

This would have to be a major University waste of time and effort on a project of no promise, wouldn't it? I mean to say, everyone is looking to reduce waste in our new, clean, green world - and here's a bunch of researchers producing printed, foldable solar panels that only last a year or two - creating a vast amount of landfill - and their efficiency is 1% - 2%?? I could get more efficiency out of a magnifying glass setting fire to wood shavings!

 

On top of that, they're carrying 12 roll-out solar panels that weigh 18kgs each - making a load for the car of 216kgs! And no-one even mentions how long it takes to recharge the Tesla from those roll-out panels!! You sit around for hours while your 2% efficient solar panels, that weigh a staggering amount, trickle-charge the car? These Uni people really do love wasting money on projects with little future promise!

Universities never fail to surprise me. That's an old invention, around 2003, I was going to use it to power semi trailers. It was a derivative of Contact, the sticky sided prints we used to use to modernise our homes, then rip them off 6 months later (so I should have smelt a rat), they were touted to replace the silcon panels which were going through a let down period when we discovered they collected dust so needed a washing regimes, didn't produce anywhere near their rated out look, would crack etc. so we were more cautious but got the horse and cart into motor vehicle branding, someone will invent a fix tomorrow afternoon etc., and it was crap, that's if you could connect it so we didn't go further than the samples.

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