Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Works great, providing you can afford the expense, don’t hit a strong headwind, and enjoy the adventure of exploring country towns while waiting for a recharge.
Electric car put to the test in regional and rural NSW
By Ben Deacon and Rosie King
Posted 6 hours ago, updated 2 hours agoMore than 60 public electric vehicle charging stations are being built this year around regional New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland in a bid to make electric cars a more practical option in regional Australia.
But will this be enough to make electric vehicles (EVs) work in the bush?
To find out, I hit the highway for a 1,200-kilometre regional road trip in an electric car.
In the end, I made it home — just.
…
Leaving Sydney, the car told me I had a range of 410 kilometres, leaving me a margin of 70 kilometres. Tight, but doable.
But outside Sydney, I drove into the teeth of headwinds strong enough to shake the car.
Very quickly, the car started recalculating the range. It was now telling me I wouldn’t make it to Jugiong. The headwinds were drastically affecting the range of the car.
…
I was pretty sure I’d make it, but if the charging station was out of order, the car would go flat.
…
The last 40 kilometres before Yass was a white-knuckle experience.
…
What I didn’t know was how long it would take to charge the car, which was almost dead flat.
…
There’s a natural relationship between regional touring in an electric car and lunch. Instead of fast food at a highway service station, the longer charge times of electric cars lend themselves to a more relaxed schedule to poke around a small town. It is less “pit stop” and more “electric back roads”.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-06/how-practical-are-electric-cars-in-regional-australia/12731896
What can I say – No sale.
I could imagine myself one day buying a hybrid, if the cost comes down. A lot of my driving is short range school runs and shopping trips, it would be kind of cool to mostly keep the car topped up from home.
But I would miss the convenience of just filling up the tank if I’m in a hurry, or if I forgot to plug in the charger. I sometimes make one day business journeys well over 500km return. Having to stop for an hour every few hundred km on a long distance trip, suffering range anxiety if the weather turns, would just drive me nuts.
The ABC “regional and rural” test looks like a pretty benign road route. You don’t have to get far off main roads in Australia to encounter some shocking driving conditions. Tip for tourists, if you plan to explore anywhere further than 50 miles from the coast in Australia, and don’t plan to stick to major motorways, your “A” road could turn out to be a bumpy dirt track. Hire a gasoline or diesel 4WD.
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Ever wonder why I returned my top notch electric cordless leaf blower and keep using the 20+ y.o. second hand purchased gasoline one ?
… and the lawn mowers, and snowblowers people abandon on their bulleva .. booliva, boulivar … in their ditch because they wouldn’t start ?
Guys who know, and understandably this might be the difficult to understand point for green strawman argument spreading trolls, work to fix them and get rewarded for their work by selling affordable overhauled appliances.
All of this virtue signally. No one talks about the amount of rare earth required to make a 1000 lb battery or that 80% of it is controlled by China or that children as young a 4 are being used to extract the rare earth. Britain used to be a source as was the U.S. but the chemicals required to extract the lithium was too much for the environmentally concerned. The demands of the Green New Deal would likely destroy Inner Mongolia and much of Africa. Who cares?
Driving around the interior areas of NSW with an electric vehicle would be a suicide mission. At best you would wind up being towed back to civilization after your car ran out of charge somewhere on the Western Plains.
“At best you would wind up being towed back to civilization”
Except that Teslas (and other BEVs?) can’t safely be towed, but must be loaded onto a flatbed truck. (Which will make clearing a traffic jam fall of dead BEVs much more difficult.)
Whilst the private sector financed petrol (gas) stations, many of EV recharging stations are funded on the public purse. Similarly highways are funded through fuel taxes which EVs avoid. Petroleum fuel cars are taxed at the time of purchase whilst EVs have reduced tax and/or subsidies. Hardly a level playing field.
Gerard,
Some States took part of my taxes and yours to subsidise rooftop solar electricity. This resulted in a bad reduction of frequency properties, threats of more blackouts, higher prices, distorted market fundamentals — almost all for virtue signalling.
Subsidies for charging stations face similar bads. Why oh why is self flagellation so trendy just now?
Imagine the backup at Kimba (SA) waiting for a free EV charger. The line would stretch back to Iron Knob. No thanks.
PS there is no petrol at Iron Knob either despite road information to the contrary. A few anxious moments.
I tend to avoid Kimba.
Not because of Kimba itself, but I have family around there.
I get on with a lot of my family by physically spending time with them as little as possible. 🙂
But yes, for those not playing in Australia, Kimba isn’t even real outback, it is rural. Yes you get some towns that have all the basics us city types take for granted, but you discover the ‘next town’ on the map where you planned to stop is actually just some wheat silos.
Managing fuel with a real vehicle can be tricky enough, but at least economy figures for ICE don’t jump all over the place while you are still driving.
Also, for the record, I drive a 2L turbo diesel. 5.0L/100 and 1000km per tank plus more torque than a chat room. Great car.
Good luck crossing the Nullarbor with that mate.
We crossed the Nullarbor in a Statesman with a non-supercharged 5 litre (308 cu in) V8. Present car is another Statesman with a 3.8 litre (232 cu in) supercharged V6.
Lovely engine, makes some variable noise with throttle change. as opposed to the V8 that competes with it, but does not have much change in exhaust note.
It is all academic. This car can easily get to 180 kph (112 mph) but very few places now let you exceed 100 kph without risk of infringement. I don’t give a stuff what the fuel economy is. I have anly a few years of life left and that is earmarked for fun at all costs. Also, there is plenty of stupidity in buying an electric vehicle for outback driving in Australia. High odds of being stranded and putting emergency services to useless work.
I thought the article was funny and note from Sydney to Yass is one of the better main roads in Australia. If you cannot do that on an electric car then you have no hope once you get off the highway. Only “our ABC” – funded by all taxpayers whether they ever have anything to do with it or not – would write such a story but for once at least, this story realised it was impractical for a real country living person as opposed to a blow in from the city.
CO2 is not a reason for EVs. Many Tesla and EV people are like cultists….GM made an EV-1 that was for lease and many did not want to return the car when GM ended the program…and it used lead acid batteries. Highways are paid for thru gasoline taxes….currently EVs get a free ride. I do not see military vehicles powered by batteries….Police maybe better consider buying many extra EVs because when one is near discharge, an emergency would require a backup car rather than waiting for a recharge. The economics for EVs are not too attractive….so why buy one? Waiting on that new improved super battery? What if it costs twice as much?
TANSTAAFL
though I hear the moon is a harsh mistress.
Well played, well played.
Our very own Eco-Fascist director of Conservation in New Zealand found out for himself just how incapable these vehicles are
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12341219
In Victoria, Australia we have been locked up for the best part of 7 months now. The last 4 with a maximum travel limit of 5km.
Up to a month ago I had been using my diesel fuelled car to do the weekly shopping trip – basically the only reason I am permitted to leave home. Last time I used the car it came up with a pollution control system alarm. What it means is that the particle filter in the exhaust is getting clogged up. The usual way to fix that problem is to take the car out on the highway and cruise at speed for about 20 minutes. As it happens I do not have a racing track within 5km of my home so the car is in the garage with hood up and battery on charge.
On the plus side I am still above half a tank of fuel for the second tank fill in 2020. I expect the second tank will get me to the end of the year assuming we are permitted to go more than 5km in the near future.
My son bought a Toyota CHR hybrid this year. He is an essential worker and the car has had plenty of use this year. Tank holds 43 litres of fuel and he is getting up toward 1000km per tank. Apart from the claustrophobic nature of the back seat it is a nice car. Hybrids make a lot more sense than BEVs.
If they do insist on banning ICE cars there is always this solution.
As far as I can tell, no country in the world has the electricity infrastructure available to run all electric vehicles.
This infrastructure would cost several times as much as each vehicle added, so who pays? The Greenies say “wind or solar electricity is cheap, and electric vehicles wonderful”. In the UK there are not many people interested in wind or solar any more as they are now charged to connect to the grid, and therefore pay some of the infrastructure cost. They are still not paying for the gas backup for use at night or when there is no wind. Electricity prices are soaring to around 18p ($0.25) a kWh, and will get higher still if the Government carries on building offshore wind. They are NOT building the gas backup, so blackouts are expected! The whole lot is a pyramid selling scheme to wreck the country.
Its quite misleading to say the ‘fuel cost was zero’ because thats a false free good, there will be a cost to recharge these things and thats likely to cost more and more over time, possibly making petrol look cheap, who really knows.. ? Its also wrong to suggest there are zero emissions and environmental benefits which is also misleading. Nothing is zero emissions, its relocated emissions, perhaps reduced emissions but not zero. These cars also consume much more resources during their manufacture and disposal than a regular gas or diesel car, estimates put the ‘carbon debt’ of an EV at around 90,000kms before breaking even… some EVs never do enough kms to break even compared to petrol… some day they will be much better with development, but right now they are a long way from clean as claimed..
Not only is Sydney to Canberra a “pretty benign road route”, they did it in a season when they could get away without using either heating or air conditioning. If they did it in the middle of summer, they would be looking at multiple recharging stops.
From the article: “The last 40 kilometres before Yass was a white-knuckle experience.”
LOL!
I wonder how much time electric car owners spend stressing out over their next electrical charge. No thanks, I’ll stick with fossil fuels.
I didn’t miss the bit about- ‘The NRMA plans to install enough charging stations to drive as far as western New South Wales just using their network of chargers.’ ICE car owner members will be pleased their annual membership fee rises are being allocated to subsidising well to do EV owner members in this way. The climate changers are everywhere with their snouts in the trough or emanating feelgood with other people’s hard earned.
If I happened to live in a place like Jugiong, in the forthcoming EV future, I’d invest in a truck with a hefty generator on the back and various EV recharging interfaces. In the forthcoming EV future, there are going to be lots of run-out-of-electricity breakdowns along the Hume Highway.
As for tackling the “Gunbarrel” highway or the Tanami track in an EV – the mind boggles!
JC
You might find that there are some mitigation strategies that will impact your business plan.
Well the experts in the field certainly don’t think batteries will cut it for trucks-
https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/the-new-petrol-vs-diesel-why-hyundai-says-hydrogen-fuel-cell-trucks-81018
The whole buisiness about electric vehicles is in response to unproven assertions that CO2 is harmful and its entry to the atmosphere has to be reduced no matter how high a cost this entails. While that unscientific myth persists, you will have do-gooders interfering with you driving enjoymemt.
Here in Melbourne, local councils are linked to the United Nations through various programmes. The UN with IPCC is the main pusher of the myth, so Councils are doing costly, harmful things to the city because they are mostly responsible for roads. One of the more annoying ones is the subtraction of motor car traffic lanes and their replacement with bicycle lanes. Popular add-on extras are a drop in legal speed limit to 30 kph, installation of speed cameras and speed humps. This topic is fertile ground for insignificant little Hitler people to grab their 15 minutes of fame and annoy the hell out of ordinary citizens.