Electric Vehicle: Will you buy one

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › Electric Vehicle: Will you buy one - if not why not?

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MarkH67

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#1839707 6-Aug-2017 07:57

I have to agree with Aredwood, people should be encouraged to charge after peak load times are over.

Most EVs can set a timer for charge to begin, specifically for this purpose. But on most power plans you don't need to, you can just plug in and charge when you get home. The easiest way to get people to set a timer would be to charge more during peak loading times and less during off-peak times, with smart meters in most homes this should be easily doable.

Charging for peak loading times can also encourage other behaviours that help. It is possible to set a heat pump to turn on and warm up the house before you get home so that it is only running on & off to maintain the temperature during the peak load time, this is better than getting home at 5:30 to a cold house and running the heat pump at full power until the house is warm - that is a lot of current draw if lots of people do that!

Another benefit of charging more for peak load times is that some people will consider buying something like the Tesla Powerwall which can be used to store power at the cheapest time of day and let you draw from that stored power when the power supply is at the highest price. This would actually help the power grid more than buying some solar panels.

Batman

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#1839712 6-Aug-2017 08:30

I like the idea of a powerball - tow a 1 tonne trailer for extended range!

On a more serious note, I wonder if your consumer item (iphone) will become more expensive to produce thanks to the lithium going up in price.

On an even more serious note, petrol might go down in price and V8s might become more popular again.

Hmm ... I wonder what those who can see the future see here - anything like that?

MarkH67

517 posts

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#1839762 6-Aug-2017 10:26

Batman:

I like the idea of a powerball - tow a 1 tonne trailer for extended range!

On a more serious note, I wonder if your consumer item (iphone) will become more expensive to produce thanks to the lithium going up in price.

On an even more serious note, petrol might go down in price and V8s might become more popular again.

Hmm ... I wonder what those who can see the future see here - anything like that?

I like the idea of a powerball, specifically a 1st division powerball win - I'd buy a Tesla Model S P100D. Makes me wish I COULD see the future!

Lithium will go down on price, with more demand comes more ways to get lithium and economies of scale with its extraction. Lithium just isn't all that rare or hard to extract and unlike oil you don't need as much of it. When you run a car on electricity you aren't depleting the lithium, you can run that car for years without needing more lithium. Also - there is not a huge volume of lithium in a lithium ion battery (the battery has a casing, anode, cathode, separators and lithium ions - it isn't a big lump of lithium metal).

Petrol wont be getting overly cheap. The governments all over the world want people to transition away from petrol so if the price drops too much they will be adding some form of pollution tax. France and GB want to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2040 with the aim of having almost all petrol and diesel cars gone from the roads by 2050 - V8s are NOT going to become popular again except as collector items for enthusiasts. Netherlands and Norway are talking about banning sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2025 - WOW!

With GB, France, Netherlands, Norway and others talking about banning petrol and diesel cars there will be a very large rise in the development and production of electric cars. But even more importantly the Chinese government is pushing hard to get their populace to switch to electric cars and THAT will make one enormous difference to the market for petrol cars. The electric car market over the next decade is so huge there is absolutely no way that we wont see many dozens of new EVs coming on to the market and huge resources poured into the R&D of batteries. Coming in now is exactly the impetus we need for the development of battery technology and it's about time too!

Sidestep

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#1839769 6-Aug-2017 10:58

MarkH67:
Lithium will go down on price, with more demand comes more ways to get lithium and economies of scale with its extraction.

Don't know if I agree with you there.. because speculation.

Lithium can be mined from rock, but at the moment the cheapest way to production's extracting it from naturally concentrated salt brine.
Although China and Australia have decent deposits, a good marker for speculation in the lithium market is to look at the performance of “Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile”, listed as SQM on the NYSE.
In the last year it's trajectory has been steadily up.

It's a Publicly listed Chilean miner with a large percentage of its revenue through the production of Lithium from brine – actually from the largest Lithium rich deposit in the world - the Atacama Desert salt flats, high in the Andes of Chile Argentina & Bolivia.

Speculators see increased demand due to battery production coupled with existing markets (grease, alloys, ceramics etc) pointing to a supply crunch.
Partly because so much of those easily extractable deposits are tightly held by governments - China, Bolivia, Argentina etc. Speculators love supply crunches.

Agree the worldwide price of petrol's not going to go down much in the near term.

In spite of the gradual shift to renewables the world still runs on oil, and at $50US barrel oil's hovering around the actual cost of production
There's a chance of a spike upward though – either worldwide due to some geopolitical crisis, or locally due to currency fluctuations, or physical supply constraints - damage to Marsden Point?
In the US at least, there's been a renaissance in big V8 pickup and SUV production. Temporary?

Rikkitic

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#1839780 6-Aug-2017 11:16

Sidestep:

In the US at least, there's been a renaissance in big V8 pickup and SUV production. Temporary?

Rednecks prematurely celebrating what they mistakenly think Trump's election will mean for them.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

Linuxluver

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#1840023 6-Aug-2017 17:27

MikeAqua:

kryptonjohn:

There's a few other factors to take into account. If most EV users charge overnight every night, they would not make use of public charging facilities as often as they would make use of petrol stations. Many people could go for months without using a public charger. The public EV stations would tend to be used by those on long journeys, or forgot to charge overnight etc?

It's hard to predict the usage pattern.

I agree that daily commute demand should largely disappear. People will justs charge at home or wherever they can in the course of their daily routines.

I wasn't very clear but I was specifically thinking about highway service centres\, where there is a sizeable volume of traffic that has to stop and top up. For example perhaps the Z and BK in Turangi - a logical stopping point for Aucklanders heading south or Wellingtonians heading north. Or any service station in Picton, they get very busy just before ferry check in times (on-board charging would resolve that). Or whatever is built on SH65 so EVs can get from Nelson to ChCh.

Good points. Yes, when cars have major range there may be bottlenecks around charging.....though a car that has 500km range can charge anywhere 200km either side of Cook Strait, for example, plus many may be staying at homes or hotels....and not need public charges on that leg. It will be interesting to see how this develops. Certainly, Tesla have the right idea. They never install less than 4 bays at a Supercharger...and usually 8.

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MarkH67

517 posts

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#1840037 6-Aug-2017 17:32

Linuxluver:

Tesla have the right idea. They never install less than 4 bays at a Supercharger...and usually 8.

They have 4 bays at the Hamilton Supercharger, definitely a good thing for Tesla drivers.

For places like Picton that might have many EV drivers wanting to charge at the same time - I would hope that they just add more charging bays as needed. The good thing is that the charging bays don't need to be at a service station, they have a few at the ferry terminal and some more near some cafes.

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cokemaster

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#1840243 6-Aug-2017 20:45

MarkH67:

Most EVs can set a timer for charge to begin, specifically for this purpose. But on most power plans you don't need to, you can just plug in and charge when you get home. The easiest way to get people to set a timer would be to charge more during peak loading times and less during off-peak times, with smart meters in most homes this should be easily doable.

Indeed. Most of the common plan are anytime but there are significant savings to be had by switching to a night and day plan. I was formerly with Electric Kiwi and had the car queued up to charge but found that the hour of power just wasn't long enough using the household plug charger.

I settled on the Meridian EV rest easy plan which basically gives you the option of having 'Nights' at 9PM-7AM or 'Nights and Weekends' (9PM-7AM weekdays, all day weekends... but slightly higher peaks). It works out for us to be around 11c/kwh (including GST + PPD). We also do most of our washing/drying during this period so it works well for us. Basically - it works out to be $1 a day for my commute.

It does involve installing a new smart meter, even if you already have one (they install it free of charge) and there is a small cashback offer too.

They also offer some alternative night and day plans but they tend to be 11PM to 7AM. Other power companies also offer night and day pricing too but I'm finding it harder and harder to get pricing out of them... often I am forced to either use a price compare website or email/call them directly.

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frednz

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#1840263 6-Aug-2017 21:17

cokemaster:

MarkH67:

Most EVs can set a timer for charge to begin, specifically for this purpose. But on most power plans you don't need to, you can just plug in and charge when you get home. The easiest way to get people to set a timer would be to charge more during peak loading times and less during off-peak times, with smart meters in most homes this should be easily doable.

Indeed. Most of the common plan are anytime but there are significant savings to be had by switching to a night and day plan. I was formerly with Electric Kiwi and had the car queued up to charge but found that the hour of power just wasn't long enough using the household plug charger.

I settled on the Meridian EV rest easy plan which basically gives you the option of having 'Nights' at 9PM-7AM or 'Nights and Weekends' (9PM-7AM weekdays, all day weekends... but slightly higher peaks). It works out for us to be around 11c/kwh (including GST + PPD). We also do most of our washing/drying during this period so it works well for us. Basically - it works out to be $1 a day for my commute.

It does involve installing a new smart meter, even if you already have one (they install it free of charge) and there is a small cashback offer too.

They also offer some alternative night and day plans but they tend to be 11PM to 7AM. Other power companies also offer night and day pricing too but I'm finding it harder and harder to get pricing out of them... often I am forced to either use a price compare website or email/call them directly.

Thanks, that's good information. It's great that you can get a plan that is around 11c/kwh, our price is more than double that! I guess most EV owners who charge up mainly at home are aware that you need a night and day plan, but it's yet another thing that potential owners must take into account if they want the best possible price for charging up their EVs.

Linuxluver

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#1840282 6-Aug-2017 22:14

frednz:

Thanks, that's good information. It's great that you can get a plan that is around 11c/kwh, our price is more than double that! I guess most EV owners who charge up mainly at home are aware that you need a night and day plan, but it's yet another thing that potential owners must take into account if they want the best possible price for charging up their EVs.

My LEAF is rarely under 40% when I get home. Unless I'm going long distance I just charge it to 80%. I can always top it up at a fast charger if I need more at short notice. This means I'm only adding at most 40% / day which would be about 11kWh. For me, that's about $2.20. Maybe I could cut it down to $1.10......but that might involve as different daily fixed rate or higher costs elsewhere on the plan. So I don't bother....

Either way it's so much cheaper than a petrol car I' more than happy.

If I *really* wanted to be cheap, Mercury have a free, 32amp public charger about 800m (10 min walk) from my house. I could go around there in the evening for a couple of hours, plug in the car and walk home...and go back later to pick the car up, having charged for free.

Can't be bothered. :)

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kotuku4

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#1840336 7-Aug-2017 08:49

Will I buy one? Yes and No.

I already have an E Bike for the short commute to work. so Yes.

Just selling my Primera Wagon for a bigger Toyota Estima, this will be a weekend family car.

I bought a cheap car and will save for the next one to be an EV, for running around and my wife for work as she does far more km than me.

Cheap because I don't do many km and don't want too much money tied up in a flash car, or borrow to do it.

If anyone is interested 1999 Nissan Primera SW 1.8 4AT ONLY 75000km one owner NZ, Silver, Clean and tidy, towbar and roof racks.

Linuxluver

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#1840349 7-Aug-2017 09:15

kotuku4:

Will I buy one? Yes and No.

I already have an E Bike for the short commute to work. so Yes.

Just selling my Primera Wagon for a bigger Toyota Estima, this will be a weekend family car.

I bought a cheap car and will save for the next one to be an EV, for running around and my wife for work as she does far more km than me.

Cheap because I don't do many km and don't want too much money tied up in a flash car, or borrow to do it.

If anyone is interested 1999 Nissan Primera SW 1.8 4AT ONLY 75000km one owner NZ, Silver, Clean and tidy, towbar and roof racks.

My wife and were looking at a bigger car a few years ago. But we still needed a second car for the days we had to go in different directions...or one of us had to be out of town for a few days.

In the end, we worked out it was cheaper to have two smaller cars and for family occasions drive them both to where we wanted to go. With two 5-seater cars we could take up to 10 people if needed. Having one large and one small was actually more expensive than having two small cars....and it also meant one of us would be taking a big car on small errands with only one person in it most of the time. Hmmm.

But we only have two kids. The third kid was going to need a bigger house and bigger car....and cost as much as the other two combined. We're OK with two kids. :-)

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frednz

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#1848352 18-Aug-2017 09:23

What do you think of this recent article:

"A NZ guide to the pros and cons of buying an electric vehicle"

And this recent comprehensive report from the Productivity Commission is well worth a read:

Low-emissions economy: Issues paper - August 2017

dirtbag

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#1854453 28-Aug-2017 23:09

Would I buy an EV? A month or so back if asked this the answer would have been probably not. Since then things have changed somewhat and now its not a question if I would buy and EV but what colour interior and exterior, battery capacity and extras. So what changed my mind? In short education.

My wife and I have been looking around for a replacement for our aging people mover and have test driven a number of contenders. Friends of ours who import Hybrid and EV vehicles lent us a Leaf for a few days to try and we loved it. Having not really considered an EV before when we looked at how we used our car which is mostly short distance running and commuting(which for my wife is only a 20km round trip)a Leaf became a serious contender. Our initial budget would have only brought us a 2013 -2014 24kW Leaf but by factoring in the fuel and RUC savings in the short term and higher petrol prices in the longer term it made sense to us to revise the budget step up to the later model with the 30kWH battery.

We don't tend to change vehicles often so by opting for the larger battery we figure it will be cycled less so should maintain capacity for longer and even if after 10 years if it has lost 20% of its capacity as Nissan say can be expected we will still have a very usable 24kWH eqv car.

Initially the the whole range thing was a minor concern but having read a number of Linux Lover’s posts in these forums it appears that it is possible to get most places in this country using the available charging infrastructure which is only set to improve.

So now the hunt goes on to find a Leaf that ticks the boxes on our wish list. Lets hope that it does not take too long so we can start enjoying EV ownership and the feel good factor emission free(heavily reduced) driving will bring.

RUKI

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#1854852 29-Aug-2017 15:46

dirtbag:

...... So now the hunt goes on to find a Leaf that ticks the boxes on our wish list. ....

I am doing more 30kWh Japanese to English conversions these days vs 24kWh. Newer Leafs are equipped with more safety features. And a number of well established dealers are bringing those 2016 models from Japan into the country. So you would have a lot to choose from. I have already saw Leather trim and 4 Cameras options in Japanese Leafs which previously were only available from UK imports.

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