Are we on the brink of an electric car revolution?

[BritDownUnder]

Got the first part of my EV rebate paid yesterday. $2400 with the second part being processed which should be $3000. The main charger will be installed in a few weeks which will enable 100% solar charging.

I filled one of the other cars with diesel yesterday and am still getting over the shock of actually going the petrol station again.

[johnny]

I filled one of the other cars with diesel yesterday and am still getting over the shock of actually going the petrol station again.

A nice feeling to have though ultimately. I go a couple months, no fuel for the ICE needed, slightly higher electric bill, then I take a trip and its like...WHAT!!! HOW MUCH FOR A FILLUP!! I have become spoiled the same way as you. Give me my EV or give me death!

[BritDownUnder]

I filled one of the other cars with diesel yesterday and am still getting over the shock of actually going the petrol station again.

A nice feeling to have though ultimately. I go a couple months, no fuel for the ICE needed, slightly higher electric bill, then I take a trip and its like...WHAT!!! HOW MUCH FOR A FILLUP!! I have become spoiled the same way as you. Give me my EV or give me death!

Yes to Sydney airport and back - 460km, 285 miles - cost me $60 in fuel alone never mind the parking, tolls etc.

[emordnilap]

In Ireland there's a €5,000 grant towards a new electric vehicle; it's set to come down to €3,000 next July, then the grant will be phased out.

Now, cynical old me says prices will of new vehicles will drop by about the same amount once the grant goes. It works a bit like rent subsidies.

[BritDownUnder]

Economics 101 says that a subsidy just increases the price by the subsidy. I think the intention was to kick start the electric car market in Australia.

The NSW subsidy is only for vehicles below $68,000 so no Tesla is included but they still sell well.

Some interesting US subsidies for electric cars in their Inflation Reduction Act that would warrant a discussion thread all of its own. Clearly aimed at the US car manufacturing market and to reduce reliance on China. I understand the Tesla Berlin Battery manufacturing plant has already been canned as a result, in favour of one in good old Texas.

[emordnilap]

Economics 101 says that a subsidy just increases the price by the subsidy.

Per-zactly!

[Lurkalot2]

A guy I work for has a mid range tesla and I was recently talking to the electrician who fitted a charger which I think he said was a 10kw. He went on to say that he had calculated that it costs £54 to charge the car for it's range of about 300miles. That seems expensive to me although I've nothing to judge it against. Is that cost correct or has the electrician made a mistake with his maths?

[clv101]

A guy I work for has a mid range tesla and I was recently talking to the electrician who fitted a charger which I think he said was a 10kw. He went on to say that he had calculated that it costs £54 to charge the car for it's range of about 300miles. That seems expensive to me although I've nothing to judge it against. Is that cost correct or has the electrician made a mistake with his maths?

That's wrong. For the Tesla Model 3, that 300 miles range comes from 60 kWh battery. At (tomorrow's) price cap of 34p/unit that's just £20.40 or about 6.8p/mile.

[adam2]

The calculated cost of £54 might have been true if electricity prices had increased to the levels recently forecast, but as above it is demonstrably not true at present prices which are expected to hold for two years.

[Lurkalot2]

Thanks for that . I thought it seemed somewhat high. After I'd posted I remembered a friend who has a Renault Zoe . Only a 60 mile range but adequate for what she uses it for and cheap to charge she said ( although that was some time ago) .
The guy with the tesla was telling me that he gets the 300 miles normally but taking his daughter to university it dropped to 140 but then there were four people and a load of luggage in the car.

[BritDownUnder]

I got my Zappi charger installed late last week and got the facility that allows you to charge the car with excess solar (the feed in tariffs being so low these days) and works well. I took the car off for the longest trip so far 300km round trip and used 61% of the battery. Claimed km remaining was 159 km. Surprisingly at the time, the outward journey was much less efficient than the return journey but then I realised the outbound journey involved a gain in altitude of about 450 metres which assuming the car weighs 2 tonnes is over 2kWh on its own and that was repaid somewhat by the decline in the return journey. Not a hot day but with headlights and air conditioning the ancillary loads were 4% of total battery drain.
I think there is scope for journeys of 400km between charges in this car.

[emordnilap]

I think there is scope for journeys of 400km between charges in this car.

That's plenty for a car in these islands. My longest drive ever (with one short break) was 398 kilometres. With good planning an EV would be fine.

[BritDownUnder]

I think there is scope for journeys of 400km between charges in this car.

That's plenty for a car in these islands. My longest drive ever (with one short break) was 398 kilometres. With good planning an EV would be fine.

According the to range remaining at the end of the trip I could have done 455km. There is a lack of fast chargers here at the moment effectively limiting me to a radius of about 200km but that is fine for nearly all trips. There are 7kW AC chargers in most towns but the 50kW and 100kW DC chargers are rare and according to one website quite a few are not working.

I put in 17kWh into the car today from solar alone plus heating all the hot water.

[Mark]

Tesla's first European factory needs more water to expand. Drought stands in its way:
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/03/11316953 ... ge-factory

Deep in the pine woods just southeast of Berlin is a massive Tesla factory that opened earlier this year as Europe's first manufacturing outpost for Elon Musk's electric vehicle company. The site's main facility has the same amount of space as 130 soccer fields, and it is humming with activity, churning out a few thousand vehicles a week.

But Musk's plan to triple the size of the operation is running up against one big problem: The plant is in a drought-stricken part of the country where water is scarce, and it takes a substantial amount of water to do things like paint exteriors, cast vehicle parts and cool heavy machinery.

[kenneal - lagger]

Oh! dear!! He should have built it in the north west of England. Plenty of water there unless climate change or the failure of the Gulf Stream changes things.