Has anyone seen the latest push by the Greens? It looks like the Toffee Apples (Labor branded but Green inside) are on the same track.

I'm all for reducing pollution, improving air quality etc. Happy to embrace sensible power and energy saving measures.

But realistically how do they think we can reduce carbon emissions by changing everyone to electric cars? All the kW of energy required to charge your new electric car has to come from somewhere, and for most people in Australia the energy is produced a looooong way away in coal fired power stations, with associated transmission and transformation losses (like 10% or more) to get it to the charging point. Then the vehicle charging process and conversion to motive power to make the car drive can't be much more efficient than 75-80%. Throw in the "solar" and "wind" argument, as a minimum you still have to get the energy to the car charger, but in reality it will probably be used to pump water from a low dam to a high dam and then run as hydro generation to produce the power - the whole process of which is lucky to be 50% efficient. Then a few still air and cloudy days and oops, no power!

The only way I see it being viable is for every house in every street to have over 25kW of solar generation, and people to charge their electric vehicles from their own rooftop solar. But wait - we are mostly all at work at peak solar times (10am-3pm). Battery technology still has to have a revolutionary breakthrough to make it viable, and even then the whole charge and discharge of your own home storage will only be about 80% efficient, then another 80% efficiency at best for it to charge your EV battery.

I don't see the Greens embracing Nuclear power, well fission at least. I still reckon the nuclear fusion reactor will be the way forward, but it still is not as far as I am aware a viable technology.

At the end of the day, if the Green epicentre of Australia (Melbourne) scrapped all its petrol and diesel cars this Easter, and they all bought electric cars, it would be chaos. Firstly, most of them wouldn't have a high current outlet to charge them overnight, and once they all did the Victorian State grid would meltdown due to all the extra Gigawatts of electricity suddenly required when people got home. Secondly, I doubt the Melbourne distribution grid could even handle the demand on it and would fall over. Thirdly, any EV fast charging points would be forever full. Fourthly, power prices would skyrocket, especially what is currently off-peak would suddenly be peak prices. Fifthly we'd suddenly have to build new coal fired power stations to replace all those that have been shutdown, and nuclear would not happen in this country. Remember to charge an EV's batteries it is a constant load of something like 15-20A for something like 10 hours. Imagine millions of these, all plugged in at once! Just do the sums, let's say 5kW or 5000W is the load of an electric car charger at home (approx. 240V x 20A). A million of these all on at once is 5,000,000,000 Watts (5GW). A unit at the big coal fired power stations in NSW is either 630MW or 800MW, most have 2 units. To charge those 5GW of electric cars we need 8 x 630MW units running FLAT OUT for the 10 hour charge time, and that is excluding the 15-25% losses getting the power from the turbo-alternator in the coal fired plant to the battery terminals of the vehicle. The maths simply don't add up!

Not sure where technology is going, and where we will all end up, but it won't be with 100% electric cars as we know them today! We simply do not have the generation capability to replace all the 100's of GW or more of internal combustion engines. There needs to be a big revolutionary development in power generation and probably storage to achieve it. If you read up on the horrid pollution and life impacts of the acquisition of the raw materials to make the current technology storage batteries you'll be horrified! And that is at today's production rate of batteries. Hopefully there is a clean, cheap and efficient battery technology on the horizon.

Have a read of Ergon's basic info on it:

https://www.ergon.com.au...g-your-electric-vehicle

They give a link to a calculator too. The problem with the calculations though, they are talking about energy being cheap in off-peak times to charge your vehicle. It is only cheap as there is excess energy. If everyone charges their EV's at the same time you'll be paying peak rates to charge your car. See how the sums add up when you have to pay 50c/kWh AND replace the batteries after 5-7 years at up to 25% of the cost of the car itself. Suddenly petrol or diesel cars at even $2.50 a litre look cheap! If we all went to electric cars and didn't build new coal or nuclear power plants I can't see there ever being an off-peak electricity period. The only way you'd save on both costs AND on carbon would be to have your own solar system and use all its energy to charge your car (Ergon say this in a breakout box on that site), but doesn't help when you want to charge your car elsewhere than home.

The fast charging of 30min approx. is a high current charge, which is somewhere according to Ergon between 25kW and 135kW. So taking the middle of this range and say 80kW, to have a bank of only 5 of these means you need 400kW of available power neglecting any losses in the process. To put this into perspective, 400kW is close to the maximum load of a medium sized pole top transformer, these are typically 500kVA which is about 400kW give or take. The kiosk substations you see in new estates with underground power can be 500kVA, 750kVA and up to 1000kVA from memory. Each one of these may supply up to 50 houses or maybe more. If you put in say 10 of these high capacity chargers for 50 houses you'd need another 800kW of power, roughly 1000kVA. So you'd have to essentially double the existing electrical infrastructure, and double the amount of generation to supply it.

Shorten is a Muppet, I wouldn't take any notice of what he says in regards to this! His spending promises don't add up without returns to excessive income tax rates, nor does his negative gearing promises. So his electric car stuff is even more fantasy given the current technology. I wouldn't trust what any Politician says with regards to energy, if anyone even mentions anything other than renewables even in a valid argument the lefties cry foul.

Edited by user Wednesday, 17 April 2019 11:49:53 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Remember the Hindenburg!

Hydrogen is best seen as a ‘battery’ in my eyes, use renewable energy to split water into its component parts ie Hydrogen and Oxygen, then burn the hydrogen as fuel with water and air (with less O2 in it) being the emissions.

BUT the safety factor has to be considered. Having so many drug f$&cked or otherwise useless drivers out there in control of portable bombs is somewhat concerning. Such propulsion may have to wait until we have reliable autonomous vehicles.

You might be right on Hydrogen, have a read here.

https://www.google.com.a...le-hindenburgs.amp.html

I think Mick has touched on a very important point.

Why is it that most politicians & academics don't seem to grasp that we need such huge infrastructure improvements to be able to recharge EVs & that if we do recharge these cars at night that solar power won't be of any help.

I do applaud the shear genius of Bill Shorten though, being able to recharge EVs in 8 minutes. Why isn't he working as chief engineer for one of the major car manufacturers ?

Dr Terry

To be fair,EV’s do have some upsides. Much less effort servicing them as they have far less moving parts. That in turn has its downsides to, less jobs for people.
My question relates to the braking system on EV’s. Are they using the electric motors to slow the vehicles when you push the brake pedal? If so, how touchy are the brakes? I ask as operating diesel electric haul trucks, the brakes are terrible in the wet. They are so sensitive and lock up instantly in the wet. You can’t feather them like a hydraulic or air brake system.
I should make myself clearer, the haul trucks use the electric motor as a brake, as far as I know it puts load on the motor to slow the wheel down.

Edited by user Thursday, 18 April 2019 8:44:55 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I actually would be happy to have a hybrid US truck once they build them, on the proviso that the next generation of battery technology comes with it. I looked at a hybrid when I bought my Mrs' Lexus RX350 in 2012. Could have had an RX450h for about the same $ (as 6 month old demos), but given it is now 2019 and the RX350 has only got 90,000kM on it I think I made the right choice - I'd have been up for batteries by now at around $8000 spend on a vehicle worth maybe $30,000 - no thanks! There is no way I would have saved $8000 in fuel with the hybrid. I did like the hybrid to drive, it had the same 3.5L V6 with about 200kW, and an extra 80kW of electric machine. In a US truck like a Ram of F truck you'd be looking at a 250kW supercharged V6 with maybe 100kW of electric machine behind it. But I'd want something better than the completely environmentally unfriendly Lithium technology batteries.

Hopefully I'll have a US truck next year, Nissan is supposedly doing a RHD Titan which I hope will be maybe $15k cheaper than the $80k converted Ram1500. I'll be buying the 5.6L V8 version if I get a Titan (unless they are stupid enough to only sell the 5.0L V8 diesel here) and fit a Harrop Supercharger kit to it (which they developed for the Y62 Patrol). if not I'll by a low kM used Ram1500 with a petrol V8 which hopefully are forced down in value by the availability of the RHD Titan. Once we get these RHD, hopefully a hybrid version comes along at some stage as they would be quite good. Having driven both the Aussie 7.3LTD F250 and a 5.0L V8 F150 in Alaska over long distances, when they are cruising they do it easy, like they are hardly using 20% of the engine's capability. In this case you'd be just cruising on the DC machine's propulsion, the petrol engine would only be needed to overtake all those slow Asian diesels towing vans way to big for them!

Speaking of another hybrid, when I was in Santa Monica last year, we hired electric pushbikes. What a great thing to get around on! They have a decent battery and can do 35+mph easily. Riding through Venice, if you stopped at the little canal crossing bridges the motor struggles on inclines like those but if you are pedalling (which I did mostly) and using the motor they are a breeze to ride. I normally sweat like a pig on a pushbike, but not on this. if you had decent cycle ways between home and work this is a great way to get to work, unless it rains bad though!

of course they will, and this is why I used the term "environmentally unfriendly" when it comes to battery production. Google up where and how Lithium and Cobalt are mined, and the effects it has on the environment.

It is all about CARBON and global warming. And all they seem to spruke about is what comes out of the car once it is made. If you factor in the actual CARBON cost of:

Building the electric car including batteries.
Replacing the batteries say twice during the life of the car.
Recycling the batteries.
Maintaining the car just like you would a normal car (tyres, brakes etc).
Recycling the old cars that get forcibly made redundant.
AND most importantly, expanding the electricity network (producing poles, wires, insulators, cables, transformers, switchgear etc), building new power generation (be it coal, gas, solar, wind, whatever) AND running it.

Add all that up and I bet you could drive around in a 2000+ anything, buy all the fuel required, and maintain it until it is no longer viable you still would not emit as much carbon as the above creates. This is of course ignoring the original carbon emitted to build the existing cars. Sure as old cars die new ones being made electric makes sense, but there is still a massive carbon cost in the rest of the list.

In reality the mentality is the same as the people who buy a new car to save on fuel, it is false economy. Like the person I know who traded in a perfectly good V6 Prado for something like $20k on the same thing but a diesel and $70k to save fuel! Now they have to put up with the diesel, less power, 25c per litre more for fuel, the stink of the stuff when you fill it up and the higher maintenance cost over the next 10 years. One buggered DPF after warranty expires and there goes 3x the fuel savings!

Edited by user Thursday, 18 April 2019 11:33:51 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Bill Shorten can not lie and if you don't vote for the greens you will die.


People in Australia still believe that Nuclear Power plants are still as dangerous as the crap that the old backward shit that USA still has.
Why does the USA have such backwards old total stupid dangerous total shit still.

Why is the Australian people kept in the dark as to the massive advancements we have nowadays, that old shit is like one who is driving around in a T model Ford and not knowing any better.

China is going to be way ahead of us in Australia and the USA using the very latest tec and we are going to be seen as f ing backward niggers who will not have a f ing hope of competing, we will be a 3rd world back water.

Anyone who has ran their own business and understands reality, does not piss about in ignorance or you know that you are f ucked, up shit creek without a paddle and no one gives a f uck. no one in the world is going to come save you because of your ignorance or what you thought was popular at the time.
To hell with being in the trend, making out that your a good bloke in the eyes of ignorant fools.

Cheap power is a must, without it you are Roo Ted as a Nation.

I am sick of these bludgers and no hopers wage earning slobs that turn around claiming to me, but we are a rich country don't you know.
like f uck we are ! such simple narrow minded c unts have never had to deal with reality of competing in the real world.
such c unts bleed all Company's dry or the company has to f off to Asia and these cunts can't see it, that they are shitting in their own nest.

I have a mate who was in the railway who was one of the ones who got the arse and he is spiting chips, but he is smart enough to know that they were shitting in their own nest sucking up with their dick head communist shit for brains union mates, they could not compete because of to many cunning good for nothing bludgers milking the system for all they could. he voted ALP all his life but now he is going to vote LNP he is beside himself in a rage that Shorten is going to snavel into his Super, as he only has 2 million in Super he can't afford to drive a car and is only 59yo and knows that he will never get a job again in his life, if he had to truly work he would go into shock after bludging and scamming in the railway for 40years. true story.