Society/Culture Woke. Can you tell real from parody? - Part 2 -

[kranky al]

The pace of technology should never be underestimated. The iPod was released in 2001; I'm sure in 2006 there were statistics showing its sales weren't all that hot, that CDs were still showing robust sales. Then the iPhone came out in 2007 and he we are 15 years later and CDs are dead. Think of all the things the internet has killed off in 25 years, streaming etc. Obviously cars are a much larger investment, but all it will take is a single development, an influx of second-hand cars from government fleets and the changeover could gather momentum rapidly. I wouldn't be surprised if ICE are the preserve of enthusiasts in 20 years.

Filling up your car for $6 is an incentive
Servicing your car for chump change in an incentive.

Once they get the range up and make batteries more modular so you can swap them as they get old etc

 

[Scotland]

Filling up your car for $6 is an incentive
Servicing your car for chump change in an incentive.

Waiting half an hour to fill up your car is a disincentive.
Having a 10 year old car you effectively need to replace is a disincentive.

Once they get the range up and make batteries more modular so you can swap them as they get old etc

This will be huge, the question is how far away is it and what happens to the EVs already on the road?

 

[kranky al]

Waiting half an hour to fill up your car is a disincentive.
Having a 10 year old car you effectively need to replace is a disincentive.

It is, mum and dad however have an ice car and an electric. The electric is used 90% of the time - the ice mostly sits there and is used for long trips or if they forget to charge.

They charge off solar and it costs them pennies per mile to run

This will be huge, the question is how far away is it and what happens to the EVs already on the road?

Lots of evs will be bought second hand by people who have short commutes

 

[faible]

It is, mum and dad however have an ice car and an electric. The electric is used 90% of the time - the ice mostly sits there and is used for long trips or if they forget to charge.

They charge off solar and it costs them pennies per mile to run

Lots of evs will be bought second hand by people who have short commutes

The weird panic about EVs is weird. No one serious is telling people they have to get rid of a perfectly good ICE car to buy an EV.

A lot of Australians seem to fixate on the 1% of driving they might do for a long weekend or holiday, where they're driving a couple of hundred k's, instead of the daily driving they're doing constantly.

I never 'got' them until I had one as a rental. They're great for what they're mostly used for - urban and city driving.

The criticism I'm reading here seems to largely be uninformed stuff that's not reflective of reality. I love a high powered petrol engine, there's nothing that can replace the emotional and tactile sensation of driving one, but I can also recognise that for a lot of the population who simply want a practical, reliable car, EVs will become the obvious choice moving forward - especially for anyone who's got off-street parking where they can charge it overnight.

 

[sr36]

The weird panic about EVs is weird. No one serious is telling people they have to get rid of a perfectly good ICE car to buy an EV.

A lot of Australians seem to fixate on the 1% of driving they might do for a long weekend or holiday, where they're driving a couple of hundred k's, instead of the daily driving they're doing constantly.

I never 'got' them until I had one as a rental. They're great for what they're mostly used for - urban and city driving.

The criticism I'm reading here seems to largely be uninformed stuff that's not reflective of reality. I love a high powered petrol engine, there's nothing that can replace the emotional and tactile sensation of driving one, but I can also recognise that for a lot of the population who simply want a practical, reliable car, EVs will become the obvious choice moving forward - especially for anyone who's got off-street parking where they can charge it overnight.

Plus with the rate of technological progress in this space, it's pretty clear that the inconveniences will disappear pretty soon and they'll be the car of choice for longer trips too.

It's a no brainer that the world is going this way. Some are just terrified of change.

 

[faible]

Plus with the rate of technological progress in this space, it's pretty clear that the inconveniences will disappear pretty soon and they'll be the car of choice for longer trips too.

It's a no brainer that the world is going this way. Some are just terrified of change.

Interactive chart: Electric car range over time – Hannah Ritchie

hannahritchie.com

The end of range anxiety: how has the range of electric cars changed over time?

The average range of electric cars has more than tripled since 2011.

www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com

A quick google finds this. From 2011 - 2022 the median range of EVs has gone from ~ 117km to ~ 395km.

 

[sr36]

Interactive chart: Electric car range over time – Hannah Ritchie

hannahritchie.com

The end of range anxiety: how has the range of electric cars changed over time?

The average range of electric cars has more than tripled since 2011.

www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com

A quick google finds this. From 2011 - 2022 the median range of EVs has gone from ~ 117km to ~ 395km.

Yeah, it's already changed. I drove a friend's EV from Adelaide to Melbourne - really easy -the only real difference was it required stops to be pre-planned rather than more spontaneous in response to the petrol gauge.

 

[faible]

Yeah, it's already changed. I drove a friend's EV from Adelaide to Melbourne - really easy -the only real difference was it required stops to be pre-planned rather than more spontaneous in response to the petrol gauge.

Probably not a bad thing safety-wise to have rest stops last a little longer either.

 

[kranky al]

Yeah, it's already changed. I drove a friend's EV from Adelaide to Melbourne - really easy -the only real difference was it required stops to be pre-planned rather than more spontaneous in response to the petrol gauge.

And that will change too.

Imagine car parks having roofs made from solar panels at food shops - charge while you eat…..

 

[happy_eagle]

And that will change too.

Imagine car parks having roofs made from solar panels at food shops - charge while you eat…..

Solar would charge the cars too slowly for it to have any meaningful impact like this.
A standard (not quick) charger on an electric car can take up to 10 hours to charge fully. Solar is going to be considerably slower than that.

 

[Mofra]

Solar would charge the cars too slowly for it to have any meaningful impact like this.
A standard (not quick) charger on an electric car can take up to 10 hours to charge fully. Solar is going to be considerably slower than that.

Solar to power storage and the charging to run off the storage?
Sounds like an inverter issue more than anything.

 

[sr36]

Solar would charge the cars too slowly for it to have any meaningful impact like this.
A standard (not quick) charger on an electric car can take up to 10 hours to charge fully. Solar is going to be considerably slower than that.

Its difficult to imagine beyond the way we currently do things or direct replacements, but there's some crazy sci fi stuff going on in this space. China's building roads that charge your ****ing car. They'll be shit and ineffective to begin with, but **** knows where it leads.

 

[Scotland]

Plus with the rate of technological progress in this space, it's pretty clear that the inconveniences will disappear pretty soon and they'll be the car of choice for longer trips too.

It isn't "pretty clear" at all.

A small car usually gets around 6-7 L/100km. An equivalent from the 1970s got what, 10 or 11? Improvement was incremental, not exponential. An 80 kWh EV today vs 10 years ago can do how many more km, 100? I think the Tesla Model Y with the 95 kWh can do about 600 which is pretty good.

There are clear technical challenges with EVs and associated infrastructure. Ohm's Law didn't stop being a thing. To move a 2 tonne car you need a certain amount of power. To charge a battery you need a certain amount of time based on the current and voltage you have available. Australian domestic electricity runs at 240V and most houses only have 10-30A circuits. Fast charging at home is basically impossible. Fast charging stations require significant investment, which is happening but will take time.

I look at EVs part of the overall electrification strategy rather than just evolution of motor vehicles. There are 1.6 million rooftop solar systems in Australia generating 5 GW of energy. This is great, but are we actually making a difference? Solar has introduced new challenges to power grids which were originally only designed to have generated power distributed to end users and these are being addressed with battery storage. We're still a long way from having a grid that can reliably operate from renewable energy only, let alone the capacity of renewable energy generation to do that. Factoring in all cars being EVs and a cultural shift of everyone charging them at home overnight that is another factor the grids have to consider.

It's a no brainer that the world is going this way. Some are just terrified of change.

I don't know why people frame this binary argument of pro EV or resistant to change.

I'd love to get an EV, but not when it's $80,000 and takes me half an hour to get 200km if I run out of juice.

 

[JackOutback]

I'd love to get an EV, but not when it's $80,000 and takes me half an hour to get 200km if I run out of juice.

EVs are starting around $40,000 these days.

 

[Scotland]

EVs are starting around $40,000 these days.

Yes and non EVs are starting at $20k. EVs are much more expensive than equivalent ICE cars, which is a big part of why it is still a niche market.

 

[sr36]

It isn't "pretty clear" at all.

A small car usually gets around 6-7 L/100km. An equivalent from the 1970s got what, 10 or 11? Improvement was incremental, not exponential. An 80 kWh EV today vs 10 years ago can do how many more km, 100? I think the Tesla Model Y with the 95 kWh can do about 600 which is pretty good.

There are clear technical challenges with EVs and associated infrastructure. Ohm's Law didn't stop being a thing. To move a 2 tonne car you need a certain amount of power. To charge a battery you need a certain amount of time based on the current and voltage you have available. Australian domestic electricity runs at 240V and most houses only have 10-30A circuits. Fast charging at home is basically impossible. Fast charging stations require significant investment, which is happening but will take time.

I look at EVs part of the overall electrification strategy rather than just evolution of motor vehicles. There are 1.6 million rooftop solar systems in Australia generating 5 GW of energy. This is great, but are we actually making a difference? Solar has introduced new challenges to power grids which were originally only designed to have generated power distributed to end users and these are being addressed with battery storage. We're still a long way from having a grid that can reliably operate from renewable energy only, let alone the capacity of renewable energy generation to do that. Factoring in all cars being EVs and a cultural shift of everyone charging them at home overnight that is another factor the grids have to consider.
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I don't know why people frame this binary argument of pro EV or resistant to change.

I'd love to get an EV, but not when it's $80,000 and takes me half an hour to get 200km if I run out of juice.

The reason why the argument gets framed like this is that arguments like this occur with every new technological advancement. And it's been occurrring for centuries.





Of course there are obstacles and there are obviously valid concerns about those obstacles, but the reality is that many of those stressing about obstacles are re-incarnations of those protesting about smallpox vaccines, or the rollout of electricity through streets. If you're watching this space and think it's unlikely that the obstacles around mass EV use will be solved - then you're not watching this space. The obstacles being discussed are nothing compared to the crazy notion of rolling this volatile electricity thingamy jig into every home.

 

[Scotland]

Cool.

 

[Kram]

Cool.

In case you haven't already worked it out you are dealing with a religion here bro.

 

[Scotland]

In case you haven't already worked it out you are dealing with a religion here bro.

Are they going to set up an EV colony in the ancestral home of Nikola Tesla?

 

[sr36]

Cool.

In case you haven't already worked it out you are dealing with a religion here bro.

The whole thread is about the two great religions of the world that always clash: the religion of change versus the religion of preservation.

The religion of preservation works it's guts out, but always loses out in the end with later generations of preservers trying to preserve something different. And they're having some short term wins in the woke wars.

The timeline is a guess and I'm betting Australia lags behind Asia on this, but Internal combustion engines are going to be superceded like most of our current tech. It's inevitable. There's too many issues with it.

 

[Chief]

Solar to power storage and the charging to run off the storage?
Sounds like an inverter issue more than anything.

Easy to fix that with a trip to Tosche Station.

 

[Scotland]

Easy to fix that with a trip to Tosche Station.

You can waste time with your friends after your chores are done.

 

[JackOutback]

In case you haven't already worked it out you are dealing with a religion here bro.

It's not a religion, it's just technology. And anyone with a passing knowledge of history will know how fast things can and do change. I don't have an electric car, I think Elon Musk is a kent, but I also know petrol cars are on the way out. It's just a case of being aware and prepared.

 

[kranky al]

Solar would charge the cars too slowly for it to have any meaningful impact like this.
A standard (not quick) charger on an electric car can take up to 10 hours to charge fully. Solar is going to be considerably slower than that.

1) You don’t charge solar to car battery, you charge solar to battery/ storage, battery to car.

That way you make the most of the oversupply when there are no or few cars charging and you can charge at night

2) 500kw of panels @400v can supply 1.25kA 10kw of panels a lot less.

Solar is only limited by the amount of panels you have

a 500kw solar system is about $600k + a battery to suit.

A small investment for say a McDonalds or kfc etc on the highway compared to the traffic it would bring in if it were priced cheaper than a regular charge point.

 

[Frank Bunn]

Fast charging at home is basically impossible.

Any charging at home is unfeasible for many people. Many residences don't have off-street parking so it can be pot luck to find a park close to your house. The best case scenario of parking in front with a high voltage cable over the footpath is not ideal. Properties that do have off-street parking might have two or more car owners.