EV (electric vehicle) News & Discussion

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600 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#3101182 8-Jul-2023 09:40

Fiordland: I think the point we are missing is we are already far above almost any other nation on earth in renewables as a percentage of the energy consumption.

As a poor country with a small population and terrible current account deficits we are in no position to spend several hundred billion on upgrading our energy infrastructure to attempt to shift our combustion energy consumption onto the mains grid?

EV's have terrible range and are hideously expensive in upfront cost, they're about to get RUC and seriously mean sky rocketing cost of electricity.

They're also bleeding edge right now, NZ cannot afford to lead, we are a zero manufacturer of this tech and need to slow right down on deficit spending beyond our means. We need to wait, do the cheap, EV's easy gains and once the tech matures and drops in price.

Once Toyota in 2028 launches superior battery range and others the price will then be the largest issue. To replace quality vehicles like Outbacks and Hiluxes with quality, trustworthy suppliers we are going to be in the 2030's.

Bankrupting the country to try to virtue signal to a world that doesn't care about NZ's economy is foolish.

You forgot to add in cobalt...and those poor children. And how hydrogen is the way to go.

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Batman

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#3101183 8-Jul-2023 09:42

Fiordland: In NZ we import Indonesian coal to run Huntly coal station, each new EV adds to the demand exceeding supply of renewables. As the EV's expand so does the grid supply demand. It's far worse in Australia but they've vast gas fields which supply far cleaner energy than coal.

i don't drive EVs to save the planet, I drive my Leaf because it's the best car in town driving.

but i am still not sure of your claims

i think importing tourists and tourism in general also costs a lot of carbon

everything humans do produce CO2

anyway, all my neighbours burn wood fire where as i use a heat pump - coz i'm too cheap to install a fireplace

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#3101184 8-Jul-2023 09:43

Fiordland:

Once Toyota ....

i think you should stop ... Toyota's tech has been 5 years away 10 years ago and it's still 5 years away

i think you should test an electric car. forget the planet, it's amazing. it's a rich people status game, the average person can't afford it. you will feel very smug in one if you can afford one.

anyway, i also have 2 cars that burns 16L/100kms which i drive, if i rev them out for fun i can even get the number much higher. one of them already had an engine transplant ... :D

Fiordland

13 posts

Geek

#3101188 8-Jul-2023 10:04

I'm not able to drive a leaf as I've a life that requires practicality so the outback and Ute are the best city vehicles to do all the menial stuff and take equipment to the beach, etc. The leaf would struggle to tow a 3,500kg trailer or roof mount kayaks and so on.

Having worked around power distribution, high voltage electricians and heavy machinery I back Toyota to enter markets as they mature not at startup. Incumbency gives you the ability to wait and invest in a timely manner. Toyota is one of the pioneers incorporating batteries into vehicles and have full EV's in production but they struggle with the same crappy range as Tesla's. In NZ poor range is made worse by poor amounts of charging stations. I'm not interested until range pushes out to at least superior to a quality diesel ute which is currently roughly 750km. Even then the diesel ute can stop in remote NZ fuel stains and refill in under 5 minutes and easily carry extra fuel to double it's range.

I notice EV hardcore kiwi enthusiast's are claiming Toyota's demise, crazy stuff. They need to visit Japan, Toyota's headquarters. We have no idea in NZ how advanced Japan is in comparison to NZ. Toyota isn't going anywhere.

mudguard

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#3101190 8-Jul-2023 10:08

Fiordland: EV's have terrible range

Isn't range a non issue if people are actually honest about their average use?
I am a niche case for work as I do 40-50,000kms for work and twice a month I have days where I drive over 500k. But when I had a desk job I'd be lucky to do 100kms a week. Even that Honda EV with tiny range would be perfect.

Yes there are other use cases, towing the caravan the boat etc. But I drive a Corolla which has a very small boot. Perfect for one suitcase and a laptop bag. And in the 160,000 kms I've owned it, the small boot had been an issue maybe twice. Same for people with boats and caravans. Keep the towing car and drive an EV the rest of the time.

As for renewables, NZ is perfect almost. Think of the times we spill water and instead we could send that into EVs en masse.

I like to think we'll get to a point where the EV will act as a big back up battery for the house.

HarmLessSolutions

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#3101193 8-Jul-2023 10:12

As EVs steadily gain traction in the market, with prices reducing to parity with ICE equivalents, while battery tech improves both their range and chemical makeup and the wide range of utilisation that they are capable of becomes apparent and starts to be adopted the fossil fuel lobby are striking out in force. The recent Guardian article penned by Rowan Atkinson, now absolutely debunked is just one of numerous such attempts by the fossil fuel lobby to sow seeds of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) among the general public and the vein of this recent series of posts seems to be yet another attempt along similar lines.

As the owner of 2 EVs we consider that the investment we have made in them and the PV array that powers them and our home is our way of contributing towards a greener and less oil dependent future. The one frustration we have is the pace at which V2G is gaining traction internationally and particularly in NZ. V2G is a key way in which EVs will become part of the solution in terms of buffering generation irregularities from renewable sources on both a personal and utility scale.

The mistake the old mindset of cars being transport makes is that EVs are far more than a mobility device, they are also a significantly sized battery on wheels which can be used to transfer electricity both in terms of location and time. In the same way that Henry Ford stated that “If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.” the adoption of EVs is about far more than changing transportation modes, it is about a total disruption of the way we consume energy, own vehicles and use our planets resources. In terms of resources an EV can be almost totally recycled at the end of its life with minimal loss of the minerals that it consists of. The same cannot be said of the fossil fuels that an ICEV consumes continuously during its useful life, and that is before the argument of what the byproducts of that combustion are doing to our environment.

The idea that citizens can manufacture their own electricity for transportation is potentially a game changer for the energy sector and it has the potential to make the fossil fuel industry largely redundant, which they are obviously not going to let happen without a struggle. Unfortunately for them this disruption is already well under way and their arguments in favour of delays (including by the Japanese car sector), alternative fuel types (e.g. hydrogen to extend natural gas extraction and use of its existing infrastructure), disbeleif in the ability of grid/generation infrastructure to improve in step with demand (similar to the questions about petrol distribution 100 years ago), availability of battery resource materials (sodium based batteries on the horizon) and inconvenience of charging rates and infrastructure are all being overcome as this technology matures.

https://www.harmlesssolutions.co.nz/

Fiordland

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#3101201 8-Jul-2023 10:39

PV array that powers your house and two EV's?

Firstly are the EV's any equivalency to my Outback and Ranger?

Secondly what sort of PV array? Do you live in a meadow and have paddock installed a large PV array alongside a significant battery and diesel generator backup for cloudy months that's off grid?

If you have that's great but you're one of the lucky few that afford a luxury rural settings and have a couple of acres to setup a PV array.

A typical house with a bit of PV thrown on the roof and mains connection simply reduces the power bill, not comparable of course to a system that's off grid driving a house and two EV's.

EV's are right now nowhere near price parity with vast numbers of quality, cheap second hand traditional vehicles.

The Tesla model Y which could arguably somewhat replace my 22 Outback in cabin space has terrible comparative range at double the price and no racking with terrible charging availability compared to gas. You can get perfectly useable Outbacks for $20k.

Yes, the world needs to finish it's consumption of fossil fuels but NZ needs to be realistic about affordability and recognize it's already doing it's fair share compared to China, etc.

Scott3

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#3101202 8-Jul-2023 10:48

MarkH67:

Scott3:Why should they be taxed additionally when other fuels (i.e. industrial coal, BBQ LPG) are not...

I think ALL fossil fuels should have carbon charges added on. It would electricity generated by burning coal dearer - but that seems like a sensible change to me, we should be making our power grid greener so that electric cars are responsible for even less emmissions.

We already effectively have that via the ETS. The user I was responding to was proposing an additional carbon charge be applied to petrol and diesel, at roughly the same amount as the RUC component of petrol.

HarmLessSolutions

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#3101206 8-Jul-2023 11:06

Typically cherry picking the points you can relate to, range, energy demands and (out of date) EV prices.

We own a Leaf as a shopping cart and local commuter, and a Polestar2 for out of province travel and towing. Just under 400km of range for the Polestar so sufficient for most NZ journeys and at less than $10 to 'fill' from our grid tied 8.5kW of PV very cost effective. For now the grid is the most convenient buffer for our generation excess and shortfalls but as I mentioned earlier the adoption of V2G will largely serve that purpose in time, something that ICEVs aren't capable of doing.

Do you realise that numerous EV manufacturers are now reaching price parity with equivalent ICEVs, VW and of course the Chinese brands that are presently streets ahead of the incumbant Japanese makers? That pricing will transfer through to the second hand car market in the coming years as Japanese imported Leafs already have.

And in reply to your "fair share" comment, NZ has similar emission rate per capita to China so that's not something to boast about. We need to clean up our own house before slagging off others. As transport is responsible for 41% of those emissions a good place to start is to decarbonise our vehicle fleet.

https://www.harmlesssolutions.co.nz/

Azzura

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Ultimate Geek

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#3101208 8-Jul-2023 11:11

The leaf would struggle to tow a 3,500kg trailer or roof mount kayaks and so on.

No it won't...trailers will have their own batteries and motors of their own. Heck....I can't wait to see the horse trailers coming out with it. I imagine people with batteries in the trailers will use them as a kind of power wall when not towing them around.

Scott3

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#3101210 8-Jul-2023 11:23

Fiordland: I think the point we are missing is we are already far above almost any other nation on earth in renewables as a percentage of the energy consumption.

As a poor country with a small population and terrible current account deficits we are in no position to spend several hundred billion on upgrading our energy infrastructure to attempt to shift our combustion energy consumption onto the mains grid?

EV's have terrible range and are hideously expensive in upfront cost, they're about to get RUC and seriously mean sky rocketing cost of electricity.

They're also bleeding edge right now, NZ cannot afford to lead, we are a zero manufacturer of this tech and need to slow right down on deficit spending beyond our means. We need to wait, do the cheap, EV's easy gains and once the tech matures and drops in price.

Once Toyota in 2028 launches superior battery range and others the price will then be the largest issue. To replace quality vehicles like Outbacks and Hiluxes with quality, trustworthy suppliers we are going to be in the 2030's.

Bankrupting the country to try to virtue signal to a world that doesn't care about NZ's economy is foolish.

Describing NZ as poor is a bit deceptive. We may be towards the bottom of the OECD in wealth, but we are still considered a wealthy country. Our GDP per capita is more than double the global average.

On upgrading our electricity infrastructure to meet demand growth, this is a normal thing, that we have been doing for decades (although we demand largely had flat-lined since 2010):

Should note we have heaps of consented renewable plants, essentially just waiting for the energy demand to justify them being built.

Yes Huntly power station still has coal units (although 1 of the 4 has been de-commissioned), but they make up a minor share of our generation.

Report from Transpower into our energy future:

https://tpow-corp-production.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/public/news-articles/attachments/TP%20Whakamana%20i%20Te%20Mauri%20Hiko.pdf?VersionId=9abgY2Qw9Lb2BgKj8gocSC1hEoAaHQsa

On EV characteristics:

In general, Yes they are more expensive (note that some EV's are very close to parity. i.e. the MG ZS4 base comes in at roughly the same size and price as a Mid spec corolla hybrid hatchback).

Yes, there is a limited range of model's obvious gaps in the market (excluding grey market imports there are no station wagons that arn't crazy expensive, only one double cab ute, and it's RWD only etc).

Yes they have shorter range than petrol / diesel cars.

No light EV that has more than a 2500kg tow rating.

But I should note we are at the early adopter stage. A substantial amount of the population's needs are met by the current offerings. Towing larger trailers long distances is a fairly niche use case that frankly is not well served by current EV's.

On range, something like a Kia EV6 RWD LR (528km rated range), can do wellington to Auckland with just a single 18minute stop to charge in Taupo. For many people, this is good enough.

On Toyota, I do feel the EV community overstates their impending demise. Firstly they control the best (non plug in) hybrid tech around, so are making bank from it at the moment. Secondly other automakers (other than tesla) arn't really making a lot of money from EV's. They are also well places to serve poor and less climated concerned countries as ICE's get phased out in places like europe. And as you say, they will be ready to jump in on EV's when the tech is profitable.

On economics, there are big economic wins for NZ to move as much stuff as we can onto domestically produced electricity, rather than imported fossil fuels.

In terms of my use case, I can't justify the funds to buy a modern larger EV, so our out of town / towing car is an older Lexus RX (similar size as the outback). But a few years back we replaced out second car (a 2006 corolla hatch) with a 2014 Nissan leaf. Given my spouse doesn't drive long distances, we essentially gave nothing up in this swap, and the leaf is a heap nicer than the corolla.

Fiordland

13 posts

Geek

#3101211 8-Jul-2023 11:32

Can just imagine all the hefty insurance bills for enormously expensive horse floats as they become high value theft magnets.

As patiently explained decarbonization of the transportation fleet isn't achievable by battery packs as all it does is transfer load to the mains grid which is burning ever increasing quantities of coal.

A micro car in the leaf and another small sedan in the polestar are massive declines in quality of living as people cannot migrate kayaks, towing, etc, to these vehicles.

China is an adversary so good luck buying an EV from them that they control it's software, l wouldn't ever consider placing my trust in them for my transportation.

They have closed a lot of clean European and North American manufacturing and replaced it with coal powered dirty industry, the ramifications to the climate are apparent.

There is no parity in EV's to incumbent vehicles, that's a myth which is why the government is taxing incumbency so we can all convert to 'cheap' Chinese manufacturers to replace reliable, trusted
manufacturers from allied democracies.

Most kiwis struggle to afford a vehicle that's new and if they can their budget rarely exceeds $40k, essentially meaning a Chinese manufacturer making EV's from coal powered industry and forced Uyghur labour.

Azzura

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Ultimate Geek

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#3101214 8-Jul-2023 11:44

Fiordland: Can just imagine all the hefty insurance bills for enormously expensive horse floats as they become high value theft magnets.

I imagine they'll have built-in GPS trackers that will send an alarm to your phone if the thing so much as moves a centimeter and immobilizers built-in that lock the wheels when parked.

China is an adversary so good luck buying an EV from them that they control it's software, l wouldn't ever consider placing my trust in them for my transportation.

You seem to worry so much about China but are more than happy to advocate we fall even more behind ....as we wait for the right time.

If EVs are such a bad idea...what are you worried about....they'll never catch on. ICE vehicles will still be around for many many years to come----I've read they'll be around until the 2060's.

RunningMan

8879 posts

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#3101218 8-Jul-2023 11:56

Fiordland: [snip] As patiently explained decarbonization of the transportation fleet isn't achievable by battery packs as all it does is transfer load to the mains grid which is burning ever increasing quantities of coal.

Perhaps you mean ever decreasing quanties of coal?

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/coal-use-plummets-to-32-year-low

Less coal was burned in the last three months of 2022 than in any quarter since December 1990, Marc Daalder reports

After coal use in New Zealand soared in 2021, it has now plummeted to the lowest level in more than three decades, new statistics show.

The September 2022 quarter saw just 426,000 tonnes of coal burned for industry, process heat or electricity generation, rising slightly to 437,000 in the last three months of the year.

Those are the lowest levels recorded since March 1989 and December 1990, respectively, according to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's coal use data.

Obraik

2119 posts

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#3101219 8-Jul-2023 11:57

Fiordland: Can just imagine all the hefty insurance bills for enormously expensive horse floats as they become high value theft magnets.

As patiently explained decarbonization of the transportation fleet isn't achievable by battery packs as all it does is transfer load to the mains grid which is burning ever increasing quantities of coal.

A micro car in the leaf and another small sedan in the polestar are massive declines in quality of living as people cannot migrate kayaks, towing, etc, to these vehicles.

China is an adversary so good luck buying an EV from them that they control it's software, l wouldn't ever consider placing my trust in them for my transportation.

They have closed a lot of clean European and North American manufacturing and replaced it with coal powered dirty industry, the ramifications to the climate are apparent.

There is no parity in EV's to incumbent vehicles, that's a myth which is why the government is taxing incumbency so we can all convert to 'cheap' Chinese manufacturers to replace reliable, trusted
manufacturers from allied democracies.

Most kiwis struggle to afford a vehicle that's new and if they can their budget rarely exceeds $40k, essentially meaning a Chinese manufacturer making EV's from coal powered industry and forced Uyghur labour.

You keep going on about coal but you seem to ignore everyone that tells you you're wrong. Coal use for power generation in New Zealand is minimal. We only have one coal power generator in New Zealand (Huntly) and its max output is minimal when compared to all the other generators on the grid. The South Island is essentially 100% renewable since all generators on the South Island are renewable and it rarely takes power from the North Island.

There are plenty of large EVs but the majority of people who have a car are not carting around kayaks or towing.

As for New Zealanders buying new vehicles, over 50% of each year's private vehicle registrations are brand new vehicles.

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