Unless you live in a particularly tech-y apartment, own a house, work somewhere that will let you charge, or rent a house that happens to have a garage with power, you have pretty much zero capacity to charge your vehicle with any semblance of regularity. I don't have any figures, but I reckon that's a significant fraction of Australian car users gone in those categories.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
Lmao zing. I can't put one down to my basement carpark from my apartment tho!
With more Ubers and eventually driverless cars, over time the average person won't even need to own a car, much less charge it themself. They'll simply order one to pick them up with an app when they need it. And those who have private ownership of a car, will authorise it to drive off and charge itself when convenient.
The first lawful use of fully driverless technology on our roads, might be for electric vehicles to drive at a much lower speed limit during low traffic hours to and from a charging station. It'll be like a social gathering for robots while we're all safely tucked into bed. What could go wrong…
@Scrooge McDuck: I'm going to miss internal combustion engines. The sound, the rumble, heck even the smell! I'll also miss the primal clunk of an H-pattern gearbox and clutch pedal.
From combustion chamber design, fuel injection, valve train design and timing, induction and exhaust, it's hard to think of a technology with more engineering behind it. The thermal efficiency and specific power output of today's highest tech internal combustion engines is a marvel to behold! But it will all soon be consigned to history like the typewriter.
Oh shit, a manly tear just came out.
I might have to be an underground petrolpunk in the future…
@Scrooge McDuck: Hobbyists will keep it alive. And there will be a retro revival, like the turntable, when it is considered cool again :-)
@bluesky: And everyone will thank the hobbyists when we lead the resistance to victory against the machines.
@bluesky: Until you cannot get insurance for them. And then the Gov bans them after they kill a few people.
@Ti-au: Not getting insurance has not stopped hobbyist in many areas – base jumping, sky diving, rock climbing etc etc.
Even if Gov ban it from public roads, activity can carry on in special designated areas. Steam train engines still run today on special lines here and there. Enterprising businesses will create parks or rings, like Nurburgring – to cater to these enthusiasts. They may have to sign some waivers, hardly a deterrant for the enthusiast.
@Scrooge McDuck: Dispelling the myth: "Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18–20%."
@cameldownunder: Your comprehension skills fail you.
I wrote:
today's highest tech internal combustion engines
You wrote:
most engines
Do another Google search for the most efficient rather than the average, and provide your source this time. Or don't, if you just want to feel right.
@Scrooge McDuck: My grandpaw really missed the clippity clop of horse shoes and the smell of horse shit. I wonder what the folks of 2100 are going to miss?
@Herbse: The price difference between a petrol and a diesel may be as much as 4 years worth of fuel and other expenses.
Cost conscious motorists may want to work out the TCO for 5 years before deciding on change from an ICE to EV.
@Scrooge McDuck: I am going to do kickstarter a mod to create the sound and vibration for an electric car. You can make it sound like anything.
I don't see me every owning an electric car. I'll stick with diesel until I don't need my own car any more.
We recently bought a new car and didn't want to be buying "old technology" if electric is the way to go. I don't think we're anywhere near that yet.
I reckon current technology would only be suitable for commuting, and then only if charging stations were available or it's convenient to get sufficient charge at home. I'm more of a long distance driver.
I'm also not ditching my oil shares.
100% this. People who do have the capacity to charge their car will let it roam around picking up people who can't afford a car for a small fee. The car will become an income producing asset.
Seeing how people here trashed shared bikes here in Sydney and Melbourne. I don’t think I would trust anyone using my driverless car in future.
Considering the distances involved in Australia, renting a vehicle for trips may not be as possible as with other continents.
Even better. you'll need multiple leads.
AS/NZ 3000 rules state extension cords shouldn't exceed 30m in length.
Joining is a continuation of that cord.
if NZ can build carparks like this, I'm sure Aus can too
https://www.facebook.com/ElectricCarCafe/videos/vb.213855149…
NZ could also build an NBN - while we can't.
That sound is… unsettling
Is this one of the testers?
Once or twice I have plugged an extension cord into an outlet that is near their pool equipment but I only did so to power a lamp and a blender and I didn't even have to go over their fence to reach it.
I was waiting for that to be referenced.
was a great troll post while it lasted
what you need to invest in is wireless charging like they have now with phones
put a charging pad in the driveway and just park the car on it overnight
That's why Japan going for hydrogen fuel
Japan are going for hydrogen fuel because they don't have the same opportunities for generating renewable energy that we do (unless geothermal technology advances). In a renewable energy age, they will be an energy importer. For us, it doesn't make much sense to convert electricity from renewable sources into hydrogen and then back into electricity in the fuel cell of a car.
It's a good opportunity for us to be a hydrogen exporter to countries like Japan though.
it doesn't make much sense to convert electricity from renewable sources into hydrogen and then back into electricity
Hydrogen gets a lot of hype, but it's a rather stupid idea in most scenarios.
At the moment pretty much all hydrogen comes from oil. Guess who promotes hydrogen…
Future of the transportation will rely on an energy mix.
If we want to go for a fossil fuel-free future, hydrogen or some other energy storage will be needed.
Shipping, airliners, trucks and long distance train travel will require such energy storage other than the best batteries we have today.
Although hydrogen is largely derived from fossil fuel sources now, once hydrogen has a bigger market as a fuel, alternative sources can be explored as the mass production makes them economically viable.
Hydrogen has it's merits and to dismiss it would be short sighted. It offers better range and quicker refuelling, both key points to mass adoption. Oil companies are promoting hydrogen, yes, that I'm sure they will leverage their servos along with it to build refuelling stations. Another point for hydrogen.
It offers better range
Compared to what?
By volume its density is 1/3 of petrol. It is double that of lithium batteries, but the devil is in details as shown by current hydrogen vehicles having about the same range as fully electric ones.
Hydrogen has it's merits and to dismiss it would be short sighted. It offers better range and quicker refuelling, both key points to mass adoption.
Hydrogen's downside is storage and transportation.
To be fast to recharge as a liquid fuel, hydrogen has a boiling point of -252.9 C.
No car is going to be able to keep it at that temperature, even if you manage to fit them with vacuum flasks that need to be heavily reinforced to stabilize the pressure.
Yes, you could also have it as a gaseous form as well, but then it's no longer dense, which means you need to refuel more often.
For it to be energy dense and safe, you would need to store it as a metal hydride, a solid with hydrogen bonded to it essentially.
Eneloops anyone?
It's unfortunate but fossil fuels are relatively convenient for it's use and ease of transport.
Not so convenient for climate change though..
@cwongtech: New tech from CSIRO will make it much easier to transport, still has the problem of energy density, but should make it easier for use as truck fuel.
CSIRO New Tech
The membrane separates ultra-high purity hydrogen from ammonia, while blocking all other gases.
Ammonia has a BP of -33.34 C
Much better than Hydrogen's -252.9 C I guess
I hope you understand that extracting hydrogen from water is child's play. Here, I will give you something to google : Electrolysis
Based on what do you say Japan doesn't have the same opportunities ?
Here, I will give you something to google : Electrolysis
And in return you can look up things like costs, return on investment, etc.
Yes, electrolysis is simple. It is also very expensive in energy costs which is why no-one does it, and instead make hydrogen chemically from oil or natural gas.
If you have the energy to convert the waste product (water) back to a fuel then you might as well use that energy in other other ways, like charging batteries. As the parent post said "electricity > H2 > electricity" is dumb.
If the cost of electricity in Japan is free, then that'll work fine. It doubt it is.
Also never mind the issues around storage; it's energy density is a bit ordinary (by volume about twice that of lithium batteries, a third of petrol) and so on.
So yeah, apart from niche use cases hydrogen is stupid.
I think you missed the point entirely. Hydrogen is only "renewable energy" if it is produced using electricity from renewable sources in a process known as… electrolysis. Even then, it's probably best described as a zero-emissions storage medium - it's only useful for transportation otherwise it's pointless losing all that energy converting electricity to hydrogen and back to electricity. So where is Japan going to get the renewable energy for electrolysis? They clearly don't have the same opportunities as us. Which oddly is what I said in the first place…
@dazweeja: Renewable energy goes beyond geothermal & solar:
Japans suitability for RENEWABLE wave, tidal & wind discussed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014811…
Researchers appear to find Japan HIGHLY suitable to renewable energy production.. given an extensive coastal area, and virtually no locations at a great distance from it there appears to be potential here.
And whilst parts of Japan are exposed to extreme weather events, technologies like underwater tidal turbines can help alleviate these issues.
Japans suitability for RENEWABLE wave, tidal & wind
Which could be any country on Earth, including Australia.
Hydrogen cars usually have fuel cells, that is the hydrogen is used to produce electricity, that turns the electric motor. In other words a variant of electric car.
The point @dazweeja is making is converting electricity (from renewables or not) to hydrogen to then make electricity from is very wasteful.
If electricity was free and lithium batteries didn't exist then hydrogen would make sense.
You can make a combustion engine with hydrogen, but since air contains nitrogen they produce nitrogen oxides, ie pollution. Yes children, the 'only emits water' is only true if you burn H2 with pure oxygen. The ICE hydrogen engine is a bit of a non-starter; higher cost, lower power and pollutes as well. Fuel cells just work better.
lithium batteries
EV manufacturers must address these allegations as part of their responsible employment and sourcing practices.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-toll-of-the-cobalt-mining-i…
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/children-cobalt-mining-congo-cb…
EV manufacturers must address
So these guys: http://www.glencore.com.au/EN/Pages/home.aspx get off scott-free then? Fair enough, I'll convert my car to coal-powered steam then.
@whooah1979: https://www.google.com/search?q=glencore+lithium+drc
Someone has to be digging it up. Odd the miners never get mentioned, only the end-users.
@D C: I'm not familiar with Glencore and their dealings in the DRC.
It does look like the DRC are doing right by their citizens by increasing their mining royalties. Consumers that need or want the DRC's resources are from nations that may easily afford to pay a bit more.
https://www.ft.com/content/382c3d24-f726-11e8-8b7c-6fa24bd54…
I'm not familiar Glencore and their dealings in the DRC.
Glencore is the biggest player in the DRC, and care little for the working class: http://www.industriall-union.org/special-report-glencore-the…
Like I said, everyone rails again the Apples & Samsungs & Telsas of the world, but the people actually creating the mess never get mentioned.
LOL, street parking is even easier with government rollouts project like certain test streets in europe.
OP is referring to highrise apartments with 500 underground carparks.
No one is going to pay to retrofit 500 power supplies point, pulling cables everywhere, to each and every carpark spots in every underground carparks of high density apartments.
Why not? If you did them all at once it would be a couple of hundred dollars per spot.
Who's paying?
@berry580: Strata for a unit block, with power tied back to unit meters.
I can imagine when electric vehicles are common, it will be pretty easy to get a strata to agree when the investors can’t get tenants and the occupiers want to buy an electric car.
power tied back to unit meters
That's the hard part.
If you were just running a power point to each park, it would be pretty cheap. Individually metering them drives the cost up substantially. Maybe the power companies (or gov't subsidy) would bear some of the cost? They're presumably getting a lot of future business…
@abb: Every unit block will have a different configuration, so it depends what you are imagining when you think of wiring them up.
A Meriton style highrise can pretty easily route cabling around parking garage ceilings, dropping off at each space. The meters themselves are also typically accessible to wiring.
Hooking up the 1960s 3-storey blocks like I used to live in would be a different approach, but gain, running some conduit around seems not too costly.
Alternatively, it might be cheaper to set up a second metering point near the parking, with each space being separately metered by the strata, with their usage added to the quarterly bill. This approach avoids tying the points back to individual meters in exchange for adding a quarterly task to the body corporate.
@mskeggs: Not sure what wiring looks like in the highrises you mention, it sounds like they break out all the metering near ground level and wire upwards from there ?!
The tall building I used to live in had meters on each floor (they report back to the power company, no-one had to come read them). In that situation, I think individual metering would be required in the carpark, as running a cable down from the 20th floor meter box to the subterranean garage would cost a bomb.
In any case, it's certainly doable. Just a matter of who pays and how much…
A lot of houses in the inner cities don't have a garage e.g. in Melbourne - Carlton, Brunswick, Fitzroy, Richmond, East Melbourne, North Melbourne, West Melbourne, Yarraville, Seddon etc.
He's from Perth where 5 bedrooms dual garage house is 300k.
Oh. He's not going to be able to retrofit his $80K Holden ute to EV so he doesn't need to worry
He's from Perth where 5 bedrooms dual garage house is now 285k.
tongue firmly in cheek
Those suburbs are where losers are…. duh!
Lmao are you having a laugh mate? Anyone can finance an EV. Hyundai will have multiple affordable EVs on the Australian market within the next couple of years. Mitsubishi will too most likely.
Personally, I'd rather spend my hard earned on quality of life and early retirement than buying an overpriced house I have to drive to everyone day to get anywhere. Could I 'buy' a house with a carport? Absolutely. Most Australians could. But not everyone does, which is what prompted this question in the first place.
At some point in the future, all cars in this country will be EVs, except maybe some enthusiast ones. Max 15-20 years before the last new ICE car is sold, at least for personal use. And I'm not some Tesla fanboy, I love internal combustion.
We're still burning coal and no solid incentives/infrastructure for EV rollout.
Pretty sure we will lag behind once again and be the last to transition over.
Could I 'buy' a house with a carport? Absolutely. Most Australians could
With a median income (earnings - tax) of $44,000 according to the Gratten Institute most of the country cannot afford to purchase property.
(But they keep acting like temporarily embarrassed millionaires and insisting that everyone is affluent in Australia).
I said A house… Not a good one in a good place. Not a temporarily embarrassed millionaire here, no intention to buy a house.
@[Deactivated]: Do you plan to pay rent after you retire? What reasonable rent in Sydney? $500 a week? Over 60 years you'll have paid $1.5 million in rent, and not have been allowed to put up a picture, as well as not having anything should you decide to "sell up" and do something different, or give anything to your kids.
@brendanm: No children planned, yes I'm happy to rent as it allows flexibility. I will inherit property from my parents as will my partner, eventually.
As for not having something to "sell up"? Didn't know you knew what my investment portfolio looks like!
@[Deactivated]: Fair enough, more meaning that the rent money could also be an investment rather than dead money, paying off someone else's investment.
@brendanm: I don't think that's a great argument. How much has your equivalent house cost, and what will be the cost of upkeep when it's an old house in your retirement?
I think OP's investment of the savings by renting might well cover their costs in retirement better than your house.
@SlickMick: Upkeep for me personally isn't really an issue, as I am quite handy. Money wise, I was paying $450 a week rent, my mortgage is $500 a week, paying more than I have to. I have also installed solar, which has bought yearly power bills of approx $2400 down to under $400. Then there are slightly higher costs of rates and water that offset that. Positives are that I'm paying off something that will be mine, rather than paying off a house for someone else. In the under 24 months I've had it, the value has increased by 20-25% going off sales in the same block. If I sell/move out, I get money. If I move out of a rental, I get nothing and have thrown away $X thousand dollars. If I want to put in a pool I can. I can mount my tv on the wall. I don't have a property manager coming into my house every 3 months.
LOL. What sort of loser doesn't have a garage for their car?
Is it just me, or are there more ignorant comments on OzBargain lately?
We live in Sydney and can't afford to park all our vehicles in garages. It's just the way it is over here on east coast.
What sort of loser doesn't have a car for their garage?
Bikies!
Damn, -51, tomorrow will be a better day for you sir.
Well I wont transition.
Good luck!
I'll just drive old cars? not hard
Will you refine your own petrol too?
Sure, until there are so few people driving ICE cars that there's no economic rationale for production of petrol or diesel. It's not as far away as people think.
@TheBilly: You're not hearing us. Cars from the 60's ran on petrol, with lead added yes, but unleaded isn't comparable to electrons!
@Scrooge McDuck: And old engines can run unleaded fewel just fine … it not like the government abolished lead petrol and all cars stopped running. OP is talking in absolutes. The complete abolition of fossil fuel from society is atleast 100+ years away even if EVs become mainstream. So for the next 50 years I think people will have a choice so the topic of discussion is pointless.
@TheBilly: Did you read my comment at all? The fact that people drive muscle cars when the general automotive regime is still ICE has literally no bearing on what driving a 2010 ICE car will be when the automotive regime is electric.
@[Deactivated]: Wrong …. You are talking absolutes. In 50 years people will still own and drive petrol vehicles no problems. There will be no complete abolition of fossil fuels etc. maybe on 150 years but not 50.
In 50 years people will still own and drive petrol vehicles no problems.
In Australia where we're rather backwards, maybe not so the rest of the world.
As the article: https://qz.com/1341155/nine-countries-say-they-will-ban-inte… says there's a bit of talk of phasing out non-electric vehicles in 20 years, and given the lifespan of a car is 10-20 years then 50 years seems reasonable.
Of course it's all just talk, but it'll be like incandescent light bulbs. By the time they were banned no-one wanted them anyway as fluorescent & LED bulbs had improved and were preferred. Same will happen with electric cars.
@D C: This sounds sensible and is probably the only worthwhile perspective. I don't like it when the fan boys talk in absolutes and state in 20 years petrol cars are finished. The only thing that is going to happen is the technology will improve and Electric Vehicles will gain more and more market share and progressively dominate from not finish. Petrol / Diesel vehicles have a long way to go and this 20 year deadline is not going to happen where they are just deleted from history. For example, the improvements in fossil fuel efficiency has been immense and I'm sure those industries will work to continue those improvements along with electric vehicles. I remember a time where nobody would think about owning a 4x4 however nowadays the diesels are so efficient the modern 4x4 diesel is probably more efficient than the 15 year old petrol sedan or big hatch etc.
@TheBilly: Blind Freddy can see electric cars are the future.
Tesla gets the press, but everyone else is gearing up to make them.
Once the prices drop people will also realise the running costs are lower, not just the electricity to run it but all that 'scheduled maintenance' goes away; there's none of this oil change every xxxxx km crap, no broken timing belts, blocked injectors and so on. You don't even need to change the brake pads as often.
This happens with all new tech, I mentioned light bulbs, someone else mentioned power tools (battery vs corded). Eventually even the dinosaurs switch over.
20 years isn't an unrealistic time period where the number of EV cars will outnumber ICE.
Well I wont transition.
Embrace who you really are!!
I am an engine
[TheBilly - Well I wont transition.]
Well, will you transform then?
I'm investing in an extension lead start-up at the moment. Here's hoping.