Actually, it's called a "Defensive Driving Course", and it's highly recommended for all young drivers. Learn how to handle a car with / without anti-lock brakes on a skid-pan, effects of worn tyres, etc - all done in controlled conditions by professional instructors.
They have defensive driving courses here, but you don't need to do one to get a licence, so most drivers don't go. We don't have the skid pan stuff here, so not a lot of practical experience but great to hear that the capital cities have those facilities available. Someone here did try to set up a drift track so people could learn car control skills, but were shut down as it promoted hooning.
The batteries are definitely the most expensive component. The typical household battery installation is 5kw. I forgot the minimum specs now, but last I heard Teslas now start at 70kw, so at least 14x the cost of a home battery system (not accounting for installation costs)
It's about $12,000 for a tesla power wall, with a 10 year warranty, not small bickies, probably only viable for rural properties without grid access.
Fleets of self driving cars with lease options or PAYG are 100% the future. The sooner the better. No more requirements for a garage. No requirements for traffic lights. No real need for speed limits. And if your boss is a jerk, you can even work on your way to work.
Fleets of self driving cars with lease options or PAYG are 100% the future. The sooner the better. No more requirements for a garage. No requirements for traffic lights. No real need for speed limits. And if your boss is a jerk, you can even work on your way to work.
I doubt if self driving vehicles will ever be economically viable in regional areas, but having experienced capital city traffic a few times I can see why it would work there.
What sort of average range do you get out of 85KWH, or percentage thereof?
It is one thing I have never really seen, there is all sort of blurb about estimated touring range, but how far can $25 worth of electrons actually drive you in normal real world use with aircon and headlights etc?
[...] No more requirements for a garage. No requirements for traffic lights. No real need for speed limits. And if your boss is a jerk, you can even work on your way to work.
Fleets of self driving cars with lease options or PAYG are 100% the future. The sooner the better.
Dunno about that. For every benefit, there is a downside.
Listening to radio reports this morning, it seems Uber have finally admitted they got hacked last year and lost details on millions of drivers, users, where they went and when as well as credit card details.
Feedback after the news indicated a lot of locals are reporting being scammed within days of using their cards with Uber????
Monocultures like Uber probably dont care about "securing" your data as much as yr bank, so it will be interesting if ease of being driven around is cheaper than burgeoning identity ( or plain simple ) theft.
What sort of average range do you get out of 85KWH, or percentage thereof?
It is one thing I have never really seen, there is all sort of blurb about estimated touring range, but how far can $25 worth of electrons actually drive you in normal real world use with aircon and headlights etc?
full charge on 85kwh = ~400km. Air conditioning doesn't use much power, I haven't really noticed a difference in range while using it. The car lowers down close to the road at highway speeds for better range. I don't know exactly what the price of electrons are these days, but at an estimate of $0.27/kwh, a full charge is around $23. That gets you 400km in a large, high performance luxury car. After 18 months, I've rarely charged at home, and when I do, I lower the charge rate to utilise my on-roof solar.
Not sure where the free part is they have probably paid $100000 for the batteries in the car and how many years do they last?
10 years replacement, unlimited km warranty. Reports so far on the older models are very little degradation due to the active liquid cooling and charge management of the battery.
So, basically to equal the "Fuel" cost a regular car would need to do something in the region of 4L/100KM. Even if the price of power doubled there are not too many cars that size which would equal the cost, and that is assuming that the price of petrol remained static. And that is for those who missed the boat on free Tesla charging in perpetuity (Which was inevitable once they got enough units out there)
I have long thought that once there is a commuter car available that had a safe range of at least 300km and around the $50K mark it would become viable even for me with a 140KM round trip to work each day.
A 5kw powerwall isn't going to charge an 85kw battery for free.
Most "urban commuters" don't need a full 400 km range every day - you would do a daily "top up" if you want your EV to to be a "zero-cost-to-run" proposition.
As you said, you get about 400 km range on an 85 kW.hr battery, so a 13.5 kW.hr daily "top-up" will give you around 60 km range, which would exceed most people's typical daily commute.
Even if you start the week with a close-to-empty "tank", you could well be fully topped up come the next weekend. E.g. think of a typical weekly cycle for someone doing 25,000 km/year - say 500 km in a typical week (e.g. 5 weekday commutes @ 50 km plus another 250 km on the weekend). Even if you come home on Sunday night with an almost flat battery, you charge overnight and and you've got something in excess of 60 km range for your 50 km daily drive on Monday morning; by the end of the week, your charge level exceeds the coming weekend's 250 km driving.
Your mileage may vary (pun intended!), but many people should indeed be able to run an electric car from the Sun using a single Tesla Powerwall most weeks.
(But yeah - if your boss will let you charge for free, why would you send money on solar infrastructure at home!)
So, basically to equal the "Fuel" cost a regular car would need to do something in the region of 4L/100KM. Even if the price of power doubled there are not too many cars that size which would equal the cost, and that is assuming that the price of petrol remained static. And that is for those who missed the boat on free Tesla charging in perpetuity (Which was inevitable once they got enough units out there)
I have long thought that once there is a commuter car available that had a safe range of at least 300km and around the $50K mark it would become viable even for me with a 140KM round trip to work each day.
We're still in the very early days of practical EVs, so the price of EVs will keep going down, and the price of energy (especially non-renewables) will keep going up. Simple economics still favour petrol cars at present, but the balance is shifting.
I think we're pretty much at the "tipping point" right now - e.g. the Tesla Model 3 for US$35,000 (which translates to say AU$50,000, if the government doesn't tax it as a luxury car) is within range of a typical household for a full-size family sedan, and would have much lower running costs than the equivalent Mazda / Toyota / Ford petrol-powered car.
When all the global manufacturers get their next-gen EVs on the market in a couple of years, we'll cross that "tipping point" for good. The first models on the market will still tend to carry a premium price (in part, to recoup the development costs, and partly because "early adopters" will be prepared to pay a premium), but give it another 5 to 10 years, and I think we'll all be checking out EVs as a viable option to replace the Camry as our "daily drive".
I think you are right. I have mentioned the Leaf a few times, and I could honestly see one of them replacing (Or displacing into towing only use) my current ute in three years or so when the lease gets to or near the end.
My first mobile phone cost $5,500.
The first radio was gigantic and needed multiple huge steel plates.
The first TVs cost probably many months pay for the average person.
The EV will get cheaper and better as will methods and places to charge them.
There will be folk who will always be there pointing out why something can't be done and so often they are wrong because of an inability to comprehend possible change.
A little off topic but does anyone know the approx price of the new Tesla wall?
I will need one pretty soon.
Alex