Cont: Electric Vehicles II

[The Don]

I have an export tariff which means that it's more beneficial to me to export the solar generation during the day and only charge the car at the overnight cheap rate. But before the paperwork for that came through I was able to run the car (and the house of course) exclusively on solar and I was still exporting (for nothing) a lot that I couldn't use.

It was midsummer at the time, but it was also Scotland.

We've only got a 4kw array and about 20kwh is about the most we ever generate in a day so it's only at the height of summer that we're in that happy position - unless of course we have our inflatable hot tub running in which case we hardly ever cover our usage completely.

In the winter, we rarely get more than 5kwh and Don Towers uses about 6-10 kwh per day depending on how long the heating is on (the pump uses a surprising amount of power) and how, and how long we're cooking.

 

[Rolfe]

I have 18 panels and I think on a really good day at midsummer they might do 45 kwh. Right now I'm getting very little - the home battery often doesn't get back to 100% during the day even though it's full at 5.30 am. There have been several days with less than 500 watt-hours. The battery is 9.5 kwh though, and does me all day. I think I may use some peak-time mains electricity on Ne'erday but that's more because I'll exceed the battery's maximum discharged speed with all the cooking, than that I'd actually run out of battery. I think.

 

[a_unique_person]

Ironic that Qld just elected a Liberal government, whose Energy minister is very antirenewables...

It's kind of a technology and science pick

Maybe I've got the wrong impression, or maybe the sparsely-served areas I've seen the Aussies talking about are unrepresentative.

There's a lot of area. If the sign says 500k till the next petrol, believe it. People get petrol anxiety too.

 

[Dabop]

Maybe I've got the wrong impression, or maybe the sparsely-served areas I've seen the Aussies talking about are unrepresentative.

Oh sure there ARE areas that currently have few public chargers, but I am in a TINY country town (well about 10km out from it lol) and even we have a charge point here!!!
Have a look around at the 'EVshare' map, there's that many that they literally cover each others symbols up along the east coast (where most of the Australian population lives)
https://www.evchargingmap.com.au/ (click on the link and start zooming in- and more and more keep popping up lol)
eg

I can see my local charger in there lol, and look at the mileage scale bottom right...

This is my block of land... its literally in the middle of that last map...


EV- no wuckas LOL, I'm getting one, that will be the sixth in my town!!!

 

[Dabop]

I have 18 panels and I think on a really good day at midsummer they might do 45 kwh. Right now I'm getting very little - the home battery often doesn't get back to 100% during the day even though it's full at 5.30 am. There have been several days with less than 500 watt-hours. The battery is 9.5 kwh though, and does me all day. I think I may use some peak-time mains electricity on Ne'erday but that's more because I'll exceed the battery's maximum discharged speed with all the cooking, than that I'd actually run out of battery. I think.

My offgrid system has (some) of my 18kw of panels (72x 250w ex gridtie panels) already up feeding a LYP (LiFeYPO4) 20kwh battery bank... (most of the panels are still sitting in the shed lol)
Even on my 'temporary' little 1.5kw array (6 panels- 3 facing north, 3 facing west) they are happy running the caravan...

The rest are sitting waiting to go on the roof of the house (once it has a roof to go on lol)

Feeds the 20kwh battery bank...


Totally offgrid (like the Atto3 owner I got to test drive in) except I got nearly double his 10kw array...
(picked upthe entire 18kw of panels for less than $2000 Au!!! secondhand from a gridtie installer...)

Took out $2k in cash, put $40 of diesel in the tilt-tray, and the rest went to him...

 

[Rolfe]

I'm currently sitting in a well organised queue at the northbound Tebay services. There are 12 charges and apparently I was 8th in the queue when I joined so hopefully not too long. The place is just mobbed, ICE cars parking on the grass, but they have an excellent queuing system and I'll be called when it's my turn. Ironically I saw from Google maps as I passed Penrith that the 50 kw chargers I was scrambling for this time last year were actually free, probably every EV driver on the M6 has made a beeline here. But this is actually a lot more civilised and it's no hardship to sit in the car with the heating on. I currently have 8% battery so plenty in hand to stay cosy.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

Didn't the queues happen last Christmas too? I guess people have to move long distances at this time of year

 

[8enotto]

Met a guy with a new MG EV , quite a nice looking car. He really liked it. But it looks like a BYD or similar, put two unbadged side by side, I couldn't say which is which.
Oddly he still thinks the brand or car have anything to do with the British MG brand of old.

 

[Rolfe]

Didn't the queues happen last Christmas too? I guess people have to move long distances at this time of year

These chargers weren't there last Christmas. I was scratching around Penrith for a 50 kw unit. Ironically I could have had one of these for the asking today, as everyone made a beeline for Tebay.

Tebay was the site of the infamous queueing Teslas incident at New Year two years ago. I suspect they're trying to avoid a repeat performance.

 

[Rolfe]

Met a guy with a new MG EV , quite a nice looking car. He really liked it. But it looks like a BYD or similar, put two unbadged side by side, I couldn't say which is which.
Oddly he still thinks the brand or car have anything to do with the British MG brand of old.

I knew perfectly well it was a Chinese car, that SAIC had bought the brand. The badge still did it for me! (That and the price.)

 

[8enotto]

I knew perfectly well it was a Chinese car, that SAIC had bought the brand. The badge still did it for me! (That and the price.)

Not saying anything is bad about the car itself, I have no data either way.
I liked how it looked too. It always catches me a bit when someone has no idea thier ítem has little to do with the legacy of the name on it.
My wife bought a Kodak TV. She didn't think it odd for a camera company. I did.
I use Chinese stuff daily but not a car, maybe one day?

BYD is supposedly building a factory in Mexico as I type this. Maybe soon we will have domestic/Chinese ev cars here.

 

[acbytesla]

Not saying anything is bad about the car itself, I have no data either way.
I liked how it looked too. It always catches me a bit when someone has no idea thier ítem has little to do with the legacy of the name on it.
My wife bought a Kodak TV. She didn't think it odd for a camera company. I did.
I use Chinese stuff daily but not a car, maybe one day?

BYD is supposedly building a factory in Mexico as I type this. Maybe soon we will have domestic/Chinese ev cars here.

I owned an MG in the early 80s. Sorry to say it was disappointing. I had a lot of mechanical problems. But it was fun to drive.

 

[Rolfe]

No mechanical problems on my MG4. Just the "fun to drive" part.

 

[Dabop]

Not saying anything is bad about the car itself, I have no data either way.
I liked how it looked too. It always catches me a bit when someone has no idea thier ítem has little to do with the legacy of the name on it.
My wife bought a Kodak TV. She didn't think it odd for a camera company. I did.
I use Chinese stuff daily but not a car, maybe one day?

BYD is supposedly building a factory in Mexico as I type this. Maybe soon we will have domestic/Chinese ev cars here.

The MG has quite a good rep here in Australia (although BYD is outselling them by a huge margin- hell they are outselling Teslas even lol) the only reason they weren't on my list was atm, they have no tow package, and as I rent out trailers, thats a 'no-deal' for me, the ones I am looking at must have a legal tow package available (the Atto can tow up to 1200kg on a braked trailer here, which means it can handle any of my trailers if I need to pick up/drop off one lol)

Funnily enough, the Teslas have taken a huge hit since Musk outed himself lol- who'd a thunk that being a far right trumper would have consequences when the majority of your buyers detest him??? (plus Teslas don't exactly have the best reputation for damage repair etc, here it can take months if not a year or more to get parts to fix one if it get crash damaged!!!) where one of the Attos here hit a roo, it was fixed within two weeks (quicker than a mates Hilux lol)

The Chinese actually build quite good kit- sure, there's cheap crap, but but cheap, get cheap- buy the better quality stuff (which they make a LOT of) and its as good as anything made anywhere else...

 

[acbytesla]

Delete

 

[acbytesla]

Mine was a 1978 MGB. A two seater convertible. One hell of a lot of fun. I have some great memories of that car. I don't think MGs havet been sold in the US (at least in any numbers) since the early 1980s. Hard to get parts. And they were overpriced if you could get them.

 

[Rolfe]

I believe the MG4 is only rated to tow 500 kg, so that's probably not going to be enough for some people.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm currently sitting in a well organised queue at the northbound Tebay services. There are 12 charges and apparently I was 8th in the queue when I joined so hopefully not too long. The place is just mobbed, ICE cars parking on the grass, but they have an excellent queuing system and I'll be called when it's my turn. Ironically I saw from Google maps as I passed Penrith that the 50 kw chargers I was scrambling for this time last year were actually free, probably every EV driver on the M6 has made a beeline here. But this is actually a lot more civilised and it's no hardship to sit in the car with the heating on. I currently have 8% battery so plenty in hand to stay cosy.

I actually spoke a bit too soon about this charging stop. I probably waited about 45 minutes, which was longer than I expected, then I was told that one of the chargers had just been repaired and carry on with that one. I got connected and the charge started no trouble, and went to the restaurant for coffee and a scone. I checked my app and the car didn't seem to be filling up as fast as I expected but I just went on eating. Then, when it was at 51%, I realised the charge had stopped. Leaving my jacket on the chair to guard my half-eaten scone, I ran back to the charger to try to get it going again, but it wouldn't accept my card. I was faffing around trying to pay online but that wasn't working either, when the charger suddenly posted an out of order sign.

One of the marshals immediately directed me to another charger - the queue seemed to have more or less caught up by then - and I again managed to connect and get the charge started immediately. Coincidentally, I was sharing the unit with an identical car (except, when I talked to the driver it turned out it was the longer range model that charges nearly twice as fast.)



I went back to the restaurant to find that a waitress had moved my jacket for safe-keeping as I had been away for so long, but she promptly brought it back and gave me a free refill of fresh coffee. I realised the car was now charging at its usual speed, and it was at 80% before I knew it. 85% by the time I got back to the charger. Of course the other blue MG4 was long gone, he probably only needed 20 minutes tops for a full charge, on a normally-working machine.

So all in all my half-hour stop at Tebay turned into two hours, which I wasn't really expecting. I got to my destination at 6.15 in plenty of time for dinner though, so it wasn't really a problem. But, the best-laid plans and all that.

 

[8enotto]

I do use battery garden tools. Depending on the job run times and charge times have become a real issue.

I understand the dilemma of battery management. Since those jobs I have more than doubled our stock of batteries to "fix" the problems.
It's not cheap in mid/low end yard tools, I can only imagine the numbers car owners face to get that range.

 

[Darat]

I travelled on the M6 Toll on Sunday and Monday. I usually stop at the toll road services as there is a "country walk" for the dog there - we also get a McDonalds each - our guilty pleasure. I turned off for the services and on both days there was a standstill queue on the slip road into it. On Monday at the roundabout there was a couple of employees and I asked them what was the matter - they said the whole place was log jammed as people tried to use the electric car charging points, been like it for almost a week. I went around the roundabout and straight back onto the motorway both days. The dog was most upset. Plan your M6 excursions carefully. Had to look the name up - it's called Norton Canes.