Guest essay by Eric Worrall
What could possibly go wrong? Victoria wants all new vehicle sales to be EVs by 2030, while advancing plans to retire their largest reliable electricity generator by 2028.
Victorian government plans to dramatically boost the sale of electric cars by 2030
Exclusive by state political reporter Richard Willingham
Posted 5 hours ago, updated 4 hours agoThe state government wants half of all new cars sold in Victoria by 2030 to be zero-emission vehicles, and is offering subsidies of up to $3,000 to help kickstart ownership.
The Andrews government will provide 20,000 subsidies of up to $3,000 for new electric vehicle purchases under $69,000, as part of a $100-million plan to encourage electric vehicle use.
The first 4,000 subsidies will be available from Sunday.
“When people get an EV (electric vehicle) they are starting to save significant dollars off their bills,” Climate Change Minister Lily D ‘Ambrosio told the ABC.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-01/victorian-plan-to-boost-zero-emission-cars/100108626
The government of Victoria, one of the least sunny states in Australia, thinks solar and wind power will make up the shortfall caused by closing their dispatchable power plants.
Victoria regularly suffers managed outages and the occasional widespread blackout, so it seems unlikely the Victorian energy grid will cope with an influx of demand from adding more EVs to the road, even if they keep their big coal plant open.
Ya’ but think … Eric, you and your mates will be riding in style impressing the sheilas in your Ford F-150 convertible….
Fortunately very few Electric Vehicles are selling as even with massive Subsidies and Cost perks, they are too expensive for most people, too much trouble in refuelling and too limited in range for distances typical in Australia. They remain mostly second cars..
With luck, the next election will remove Dan Andrews, Premier along with his science-ignorant team before lasting damage is done. Unfortunately modern Victoria is rather like VicDanistan nowadays.
I saw an article yesterday claiming a large percentage of California EV owners were giving up their electric vehicles and going back to gasoline-powered vehicles because of the inconvenience of dealing with an electric vehicle.
Do you have a link?
It took me three clicks on this website to find it:
thank you!
I was told by a new company car EV driver how disappointing it was to take friends for a drive into the country from a capital city planning to recharge while having lunch. Upon arrival in the country town the recharger was not operating.
The afternoon planned drive was abandoned and they drove back to the city where the EV was partly charged at one of their homes to enable the driver to go home.
I bet there are a lot of sad stories like that out there.
Of the under one per cent of all vehicles sold that are EV most of the EV are leased by companies for employees.
The Turnbull Government granted leasing firms a total of A$300 million to promote EV to fleet operators.
So the EV for some is their “company car”, and many married or with partners not married would have a second owned vehicle and most would be affordable ICEV
Good luck with that.
The consumer car market already shifted
Victorians no longer buy Australian made petrol sedans, the car market is now dominated by Thai made diesel utes. We just don’t want little cars with short range and no load capacity.
“Waza
May 1, 2021 11:16 pm
Good luck with that.
The consumer car market already shifted
Victorians no longer buy Australian made petrol sedans,…”
Because none exists. That industry was sold to GM in 1935 (IIRC) and then shutdown in 2016 IIRC.
Additionally, the Victorian factory that converts petrol v8 Dodge Rams & Chevrolet Silverados is selling more vehicles than Tesla.
For goodness sake, even the biggest gas guzzler of all, the petrol V8 Nissan Patrol is currently selling more than Tesla.
Due to Covid you can’t spend your $$$ on CO2 emitting overseas air travel, so why not spend them on a 4X4 and a caravan.
THe government is actually promoting we take holidays in Australia. Do the idiots think you can tow a boat with a Nissan Leaf.
We love utes!
In the immortal words of Judge Chamberlain Haller in “My Cousin Vinnie”, “What’s a ‘ute’?”
Answer: A Ut is an American Indian from Utah.
wink!
Ute Indian
I knew someone who, formerly, worked for Holden in South Australia. Then joined HP. He was wholly responsible for the CBA IT “disaster” of July 26th 2012. A “junior’s mistake”. Destroyed my life as it was at that time.
Yes, one of my family members just placed an order for a 4WD crew cab utility diesel to replace a small petrol sedan.
The wait is two months before delivery because of demand for them and a shipping delay.
The new Nissan Leaf e+ comes in under the limit probably around AUD63k on road. It has a claimed range of 325km. At least two charges to get between major capital cities. Don’t even think of trip into the bush!
A Camry Hybrid can be on road for AUD34k. Leave the difference in a term deposit and it will pay for a few months fuel at least every year. No need to upgrade your power supply.
Anyone taking up the subsidy is simply confirming they are a moron.
has a claimed range of 325km
==========
When equipped with the 300km extension cord.
You could tow a diesel generator on a box trailer.
lol
It is annoying that EV promotion always quotes the theoretical maximum range and ignores many variable energy factors such as air conditioning on/off, number of people on board and luggage, how many hills, what average speed like highway road limits, headwinds, and more.
Also that the battery management system cuts off with 10 per cent charge remaining in the batteries to avoid damage and recommended for fast (30-40 minutes recharging time) charging is 80 per cent recharge. To obtain 100 per cent add many hours.
And consider the drive away price difference between any EV and equivalent ICEV, that would buy a lot of fuel and services before break even point was reached.
Dennis:
Exactly.
Here’s a review article from MIT [ Nov. 2019 ] mainly comparing BEV to ICE sedans regarding costs and total CO2 produced
https://energy.mit.edu/insightsintofuturemobility
And here in Arizona we enjoyed another beautiful Spring day that is completely consistent with ‘climate change’.
Victorian government agencies have been trialling Evs for nearly tens years.
Government fleets such as royal district nursing services RDNS which runs 100s of small cars don’t even want them.
When will road mileage tax on EVs be introduced and how much will it be?
Victoria have already legislated a tax of 2.5c / km for EVs, starting in July.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/motoring/on-the-road/victorian-government-under-fire-over-proposed-electric-vehicle-tax/news-story/53e7b85b99b0b136010ee69359149f4c
What’s the tax on a litre of diesel?
The Victorian Govn’t is headed by Chairman Dan, the architect of the Australian COVID-19 lockdowns that shut the state down and, directly, killed ~800 people.
As Eric writes, I note that Melbourne is not as sunny as most Australian locations with ‘only’ 2200 hours of sun.
Here in the South West of England I live in just about the sunniest places in the UK.
Our average sun hours is around 1750 or so.
It is lack of sun AND wind in the winter that will cause the problems if we go too far down the renewables road.
Long cold nights and no energy from solar and often none from wind, is not a good equation
tonyb
Already National Grid has a project for a large increase in transmission capacity in and from the SW to cope with solar summer peaks on top of output from Hinkley Point nuclear. Now they are working on including solar in the Balancing Mechanism so it can get paid to be constrained off instead.
I live in Melbourne and run a daily load that runs around 2.5kWh off solar panels and batteries. There are 3kW of solar panels and 5kWh of batteries. Over 12 years now, they have provided 99.9% reliability in terms of sufficient sunlight with storage. So reliable capacity factor with this combination is 2.5/3/24= 3.3%. Average cost of power over 12 years so far for $6000 installation is 55c/kWh excluding the cost of financing – reputable ADI lenders in Australia are now giving 0.8% on term deposits but it was higher 12 years ago.
Actual average sunlight is only 3.3hrs due to some morning shade. The location data from BoM gives 4 hours average; so nothing like 2200 hours in terms of “full” sunlight. The worst day has been 20 minutes of effective sunlight. The worst sequence of days so far was 3 days with 2 hours of sunshine.
Wind power…
Better eat up those beans…
You could not come up with a better plan to destroy a Nation’s economy if you tried. First mandate the end of ICE vehicles, then mandate only the sale of EVs, finally decommission all the reliable energy generation and allow the grid to destabilize. We can see the stupidity of these plans so why is it so hard for governments to get it? Are these elected officials really this dim? It will be so jolly to regress back to the times when our primary form of transportation was shanks mare or a proper horse or mule.
“destroy the nation’s economy”…. that is the plan.
Mandate end of ICEV, resale value scrap value resulting in a significant loss for the owners.
If you were in the dark, how much would you pay for light? Nationalization of energy production requires that heat, light, power, transportation be kept in short supply, from a single supplier, so that everyone will utterly depend upon a “government” to supply them.
Nationalization of utilities was the norm in the UK from the year dot.
It was Thatcher who championed privatization of gas, electric, water, telecoms and railways.
The railways and telecoms were bad under nationalization. Telecoms is better under privatization.
Specifically electricity: the generation and distribution of was really good. The company/organization was called the Central Electricity Generating Board. Its remit was to provide cheap and reliable electricity. Which is exactly what it did.
Not sure how you think you can insert competition into a system where you have multiple suppliers selling you something down the same wire/pipe/sewer/track etc.
If you have a strong central body controlling things then you can afford to allow private companies to supply parts of the functionality.
If you have a weak or missing central body, Texas style, then you no excuse when it falls around your ears while under stress.
When growing up during the 50’s 60’s, power cuts were unheard of in the UK, at least, by me!
The leadership of Walter Marshall was key. He understood the engineering including the nuclear side and he understood the business.
If there was competition for the grid, and free market penalties to the owner/operators driven by market, and not the government control board, then there would be fewer blackouts and quicker restoration when those did occur. Texas’ problem is based on a “single,” licensed, decaying grid that has been extended without redundancy to support rapid population growth and unreliable, fake renewable generation.
A “strong body” control is the problem — Texas has a strong, government-appointed board for power production and distribution that doesn’t direct the expenditure of funds, just controls prices and licensing fees for production and distribution facilities. Like all governments, the board is responsible to no one, nor for failures of the system. When a problem occurs, the board lets the suppliers’ consortium explain the issue, but limits the blame that can be attributed to any one supplier.
The “grid” is the problem, with distributed ownership, heavy regulation on growth and distribution, and no performance incentives or penalties. While a great deal has been done to expand sensors and automate load balancing ( with an eye to increasing size and not reliability), it rots from the middle, requiring increased maintenance and not getting redundancy. But happy owners and happy administrators, no one suffers for failure except the customers.
when our power WAS /stste it wasia AND cheaper!!
allowing multiple energy cos from OS into Aus has screwed us well n truly
Thing is, that the power companies will soon be the sole suppliers for transportation, as well as for home heating, light and industrial power. Governments are already the sole proprietors of the road network, and of most of the utility distribution networks (especially water). The problems with private ownership are government directorship and local monopolies, tantamount to fascism. You won’t get competition, by law, so the owners are under no obligation to increase efficiency or quality in any dimension. Multiple complanies are operated as a consortium under an appointed government overseer — usually a board under the currently dominant political party. The government collects licensing fees from the utility and taxes the carriers, and adds taxes and surcharges to the customer fees.
I think we should be getting rebates for Dark.
The “Oz Electro-Trabant” coming up?
Made from bullshit?
And only vapourised BS from the exhaust
A complete and total lack of intellectual ability.
and get off my lawn, too.
What a moron. Yeah, that’s why you have to bribe people to buy them, and even then, they won’t.
Are there enough camels to take up the slack?
Could be, the Australian feral Camel population is the largest of all countries and many are captured and exported because of the high quality of herds here.
Interesting to make a surprise arrival while a herd is eating with the angry Bull nearby along a dusty track in a remote area, be prepared for a high speed exit before the Bull gets close.
I don’t follow the discrepancy here. From the lead paragraph:
then from the intreped “state political reporter…”
At any rate, spend $69,000 for a vehicle which has exactly the utility of a $29,000 vehicle and begin saving money! Nice!
The taxeaters are dreaming and handing out pork to Tesla buyers. What about struggletown and working families the latter who could use a shopping trolley EV as a second car? Well they could buy the cheapest EV available in the Chinese MG ZSEV at $44k drive away (that’s a special intro price and due to jump $4k after the tempter runout). OTOH they can buy the ICE version MG ZS for $22k drive away.
Ah but think of the fuel savings folks. Well the EV version is rated to use 18.6kWhrs to go 100kms whilst the petrol is rated at 7.1L/100 and in South Oz you could pay 33c/kWhr or say $1.50/litre and travelling an average 15,000kms a year that’s $921 for the electrons and $2250 for the petrol for the year a difference around $1330.
That’s still 16.5 years to pay back the difference in cost but we forgot that 22 out of 25 purchasers buying from dealers do so on finance around half dealer finance and half BYO finance. At 5% that’s $1100 a year before we get into higher depreciation and that’s as cheap as EVs get at present.
Not sure how realistic that EV mileage is in practice. Chart of some real world EV performance here
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/e1ofS/1/
Or to put it another way our budding young family want to borrow $12k on top of the missus trade-in worth $10k to get into the MG ZS shopping trolley when they suddenly think about saving the planet. Howsabout tacking on another $19k to the loan so we can get the Gummint $3k to save the planet for little Greta and one on the way here?
I currently drive a 2017 Honda Accord. On a full tank with highway driving, I can get around 800km; about 725 km in the city. It takes about 5 minutes to fill the tank and costs about $70 (Cdn). In the middle of winter the temps are -35C and the car performs great including with enough heat when it is cold outside to warm the inside of the care; starts easily. In summer with the temps are +35C same operation except that the A/C works great. Total cost of the car was under $40K (again Canadian dollars). Given the track record of my previous Hondas I expect to have this car for at least 10 years, probably 15. When EVs can match that performance and cost I might bite – until then, not a chance.
You missed the part where the greentards won’t let you license your car … you are thinking they are going to give you a choice.
Well it is an emergency after all, only a criminal would intentionally destroy the planet. How can we give you the choice to destroy the planet?
The emergency is only in your head!No emergency! No crisis! The world is not going to end in 10 years! We are not going destroy the planet!
ha ha Robert, that’s me the greentard.
Sorry but my policy is that if you don’t get that it’s sarcasm, it’s no point in telling you.
But isn’t the world ending in 9 years?
There is no such thing as a zero emission vehicle. No matter the source, generation of electricity involves CO2 production (oil, gas, mining of materials for wind turbines and solar panels, etc.). The blinded greenies don’t believe most people can engage past first order thinking, and therefore are unaware of the enormous environmental cost of “green vehicles”.
These are the same people who call for the closure of abattoirs because “you can buy all the meat you need at the supermarket, so there’s no need to kill animals”. They are totally unaware of the concepts of thinking or consequences.
A good friend told me the other day that EV’s would solve the grid scale battery storage problem. He was quite surprised when after factoring in the cost of the battery and the limited lifetime, that he would be losing money each time he supplied power to the grid.
Now my friend is a smart guy, runs a successful business with 15 employees, and has heard the same story over and over about EV’s. he just assumed that the news reports were correct.
Trust but verify only works when you have a lot of time on your hands.
You can buy fuel for many years on rhe price difference between gas and electric.
A $30k price difference will buy 10k gallons which will take you 250k miles, which is the design lifetime of the IC car and 1k charge cycles for the EV.
Over 250k miles your EV will use about $10k worth of electricity, assuming there is no road tax.
However, since various road taxes are roughly 2/3 the pump price of gas, the $10k price of electricity is not likely to last. When taxes are factored in, EV fuel prices will likely jump to match gas prices.
Meaning the RV buyer will ultimately eat the $30k price premium.
Ps: the design lifetime of cars is built into all the parts, not just the engines. To save weight and cost no part is typically built to last longer than the car. Many parts are built to last less, like tires and brakes.
The entire west seems to want to start a transition to EVs in 2030. It takes 4 times as much copper to produce an EV than it does an ICE vehicle. Not to mention lithium etc.
Where do they think all these materials are going to come from and at what price do they think they’ll be available for when everyone needs them for EVs?
It’s simply impossible to supply the raw materials in the time period required.
It’s quite simple. 2030 is well after the next election. You can promise multicolored unicorns with golden saddles to ride as long as you don’t need to deliver any until after your next election.
After the next election you quietly adjust the timeline until after the subsequent election, and blame the delay on your opponent’s delaying tactics.
Why would anyone worry about such minor details as the critical raw materials required to make unicorn-powered vehicles?
That’s an easy problem to deal with: just legislate that the raw materials must exist. Isn’t that the way it works?
AEMO data – 202105030430. Victoria exporting 394 MW to Tasmania, and a further 472 MW to South Australia, not quite half of SA’s “Demand”.
Soon enough there won’t be an excess that can be sold out of state for a profit. I guess the Victorians will just have to make up the cash flow difference themselves.
Brown coal will generally remain basically level.. Low demand on Sunday means Victoria has spare capacity and have to essentially give the excess away.
So Tassie will take it, save their hydro for when they can get a much higher price sending electricity to Victoria.
ps.. note how much Queensland is sending to NSW !!
G’Day Fred,
I wasn’t aware until a couple of minutes ago when I did a ‘search’, that the City of Yallorn had been removed, the open-cut was expanding. I was under the impression the the brown coal plants would be the first to be shut down. OLD is noted for black coal – home in the 1960’s was about a 1,000 yards downwind from the Tennyson power house. Gone now. That link under Bass Strait gets pretty heavy usage – both directions If it’s windy in South Australia – export to Victoria – at a negative price. NSW is talking about significant upcountry solar installations. We’ll see.
But adding EV’s to the mix? Could pose a problem?
Powering Victoria – in April, average electricity generation: solar 8%, wind 14%, hydro 6%, gas 1%, coal 70%.
And last week for evening peak demand, solar 0%, wind 2.6%, hydro 24%, gas 8%, coal 65%.
Yet miraculously, Victorian Government-run operations such as schools, hospitals, police stations and metro trains will be powered with 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2025. Victoria has a 50 per cent renewable target by 2030 and also aims to be net zero emissions by 2050. Will someone tell them they’re dreaming?
“Will someone tell them they’re dreaming?”
Plenty of telling – no listening is the problem
As our Ben Franklin said “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that.”
It is more than obvious that until the grid crashes on a regular basis and takes days to restart at some very inconvenient times, these moonbats will not be learning or listening to any reality.