Electric Vehicles etc

LPG said:
Seemed close but it was hard to judge, the roads and distances in Tassie are different from NSW where I will normally sit on freeway speeds pretty much all the way to the destination. The car said 440km at full charge and seemed close enough in practice. I didn't do any calculations but may tomorrow.
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Thanks would be good to know. Range on country roads away from urban areas is the main question for us.
 
LPG said:
I've been renting a polestar 2 in Tassie for nearly a week now.
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My missus was offered an EV by Hertz on arrival at Hobart, absolutely no way was her answer. They gave her a Rav4 Hybrid instead. She phoned me straight away and told me about it as it was my employers corporate account that got the discount on it. Yes we are allowed to use it for direct family ;)

She drives an EV here at home and knows the headfuck of having to find a charge point to get it up and ready for the next day. Is the charging station damaged ? its it being used by someone else ? is it a DC fast charger or a 7kw council jobbie ? She was happy to pay for fuel knowing there was a zero hassle choice of petrol stations in every town and along every stretch of road.

IMO they are not suited to Australia and touring. A excellent choice as a second car for the missus to run around in, trickle charging from home 3 nights a week as the car is completely out of use for the duration of charge required for the next day.
 
Sky_Collapsed said:
As long as it's long enough to be converted into an alright camper and isn't like 90k+ like the E-transit, I'll creampie myself for one.
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That's my primary driver; my daily driver is a 35k VW T6 Transporter that gets 6.5 Ltr/100 on highway cycle, so its a big call spending 100k+ on an EV. But the spatial aspects of the EV van are pretty good; really good cargo space.

Scotty T said:
So you are expecting this to cost the same as a base diesel VW Multivan? It doesn't work that way with EV's. Until they tax the fuck out of all ICE vehicles for the pollution they cause, the 10k you save in fuel over the years on the EV will always be included up front.
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I calculate a fuel saving of about 40k / 7 years ownership. Which is significant, except for the point i made above; efficient ICE vans are still much cheaper even after the fuel, maintenance, etc saving. Small cheap EV's on the other hand make extremely good sense.
 
ozzybmx said:
My missus was offered an EV by Hertz on arrival at Hobart, absolutely no way was her answer. They gave her a Rav4 Hybrid instead.
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My wife's last work car was one of these, the lease expired and they couldn't wait for stock so went with a Subaru forester e-boxer hybrid as her companys vehicle policy is hybrid only. Chalk and cheese, the Rav was seriously fuel efficient for a ICE car and went pretty well when the rear electric motor was engaged. The Subaru on the other hand is a greenwashed Clayton's hybrid, gutless with a clunky jerky hybrid transition and piss poor battery size, range, capacity to boot.
 
Tubbsy said:
Thanks would be good to know. Range on country roads away from urban areas is the main question for us.
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We have had the base model polestar 2 for just under a year now. Live just outside of metro Melbourne and found the 380km range showing on the dashboard reasonably accurate. We could do a return trip of around 280km for riding comfortably, starting with 100% and end up with 20% left. Minimal city trafic. Just long stretches of high way and a fair bit of mountain roads to get to and from the highway.
And the car can fit 2 MTBs comfortably inside, so it ticks all the boxes thus far.

If you want run a bike rack, I would not go roof rack. That will chew into your battery very quickly. We don't use any rack, but saw a lady at a charging station one day with a hitch rack (with mtb loaded on it). She said the range does go down, but not by much at all.

The polestar has been flawless so far. Meanwhile, we have 3.5 years old hyundai ioniq. Due for 60,000km service and i was quoted $760 yesterday. They said they need to change the coolant for the main battery and it's labour intensive. FML...
 
Ben-e said:
That's my primary driver; my daily driver is a 35k VW T6 Transporter that gets 6.5 Ltr/100 on highway cycle, so its a big call spending 100k+ on an EV. But the spatial aspects of the EV van are pretty good; really good cargo space.
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I would hope the space in an ev van to be good considering no engine.

But that picture makes it look like a small to barely medium sized van so anything more than 80k is too much.

I would consider it at 80k, at 65-75k I would strongly consider it, at 50-70k i'll just immediately buy it.

I don't actually want to buy a Landcruiser ute or similar, i'd much rather an EV van.

Biggest issue with an EV van is going to be smashing wallabies. A bullbar will probably kill its range.
 
Tubbsy said:
Thanks would be good to know. Range on country roads away from urban areas is the main question for us.
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So I just drove from Penguin to Launceston with a stop in Devonport so the wife could use the gym. Was driving at ~125km/hr unless I was slowed down by roadworks, slower cars etc (prob 50%). Air con was running in auto on a med-hot for tassy day. Based on the km on the odometer and the percentage of battery difference between start and finish it lines up with 408km range.
 
Tubbsy said:
Thanks would be good to know. Range on country roads away from urban areas is the main question for us.
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We took out an Atto 3 as a rental for the weekend and drove from Sydney to Southern Highlands, found some Evie chargers in Mittagong that could charge 10% battery in about 4 minutes which seemed pretty reasonable.

Edit: first experience driving / charging an EV so don't have a benchmark to compare.
 
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Asininedrivel said:
We took out an Atto 3 as a rental for the weekend and drove from Sydney to Southern Highlands, found some Evie chargers in Mittagong that could charge 10% battery in about 4 minutes which seemed pretty reasonable.

Edit: first experience driving / charging an EV so don't have a benchmark to compare.
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that route was my main concern, just under 300km round trip to a client site and at the time the only charger was an nrma one at the mittagong RSL. Ive done it a few times sand get home with 30% left, but there's a couple of chargers at the sutton forrest services and pheasants nest is either on line or coming shortly. Read there was a queue at sutton forrest last friday, I suspect people filling up rather than adding 10% to get them home then fully charging on cheaper off peak. I admit i do like to go to 100% when i'm not heading home for the next charge.
 
ozzybmx said:
IMO they are not suited to Australia and touring. A excellent choice as a second car for the missus to run around in, trickle charging from home 3 nights a week as the car is completely out of use for the duration of charge required for the next day.
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Right, so the Mrs was planning to do the entire range of the car every single day without a half hour stop, and not staying somewhere with a power point?

IMO Australian people are not suited to compromise, which unless the Mrs was actually meeting the above criteria, there would not have been any major compromise taking the EV. Tasmania isn't the best place in Oz for charging infrastructure either.

Sky_Collapsed said:
I would consider it at 80k, at 65-75k I would strongly consider it, at 50-70k i'll just immediately buy it.
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I reckon when EV trickles down to the basic Transporter bare bones model it should be around $60-70k ($46k for 2024 ICE SWB manual).
 
gippyz said:
If you want run a bike rack, I would not go roof rack. That will chew into your battery very quickly. We don't use any rack, but saw a lady at a charging station one day with a hitch rack (with mtb loaded on it). She said the range does go down, but not by much at all.
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Yeah we use a rear mounted bike rack its fine, range maybe down 5% due to turbulent flow at the back.
 
My plan was to replace the Maxda2 with an ev for the same sort of short trip/town duties. Probably still will but after rebuilding the 4wd engine and playing suck it and see with that I will hold off. Don't want to replace both in a short timeframe.
 
Scotty T said:
Right, so the Mrs was planning to do the entire range of the car every single day without a half hour stop, and not staying somewhere with a power point?

IMO Australian people are not suited to compromise, which unless the Mrs was actually meeting the above criteria, there would not have been any major compromise taking the EV. Tasmania isn't the best place in Oz for charging infrastructure either.
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2 x hotels and 2 x AirBnB's. Her longest drive was Hobart to Cradle through the Lakes then on to Launceston. So 450km that day with sea level to 1000m elevation at the Lakes lookout, then down to Deloraine at 250m and back to 1000m at Cradle, that was a 12hr day. The next biggest was Launceston, Bicheno, St Helens, Launceston at around 400km.

My missus suffered range anxiety in a 150L Prado when the fuel got to half. She'll let her EV get to 30-40% but that's about it.

She did 2600km in 9 days.

I would be bothered with an EV either if touring.
 
Scotty T said:
I reckon when EV trickles down to the basic Transporter bare bones model it should be around $60-70k ($46k for 2024 ICE SWB manual).
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I wish companies would allow us to completely customize and choose what actually came in the vehicle.

There's so many useless fluff items they add like lane assist that would easily save 500 bucks, or more, than there's heated/cooled seats, not warranted.
 
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