That article is absolute junk. There are millions of EV owners who have been doing so happily for years.
Few of the so called âauto expertsâ , look beyond who might offer them the next free drive.
One not so expert real world experience after 5 years of ownership of a Tesla BEV.
After 5 years and nearly 250,000 km the original battery retained 83% of itâs original capacity. Our slightly ancient Toyota after 17 years is about to reach 200,000km, all on unleaded petrol/gasoline. 22kl of fuel or 51,000 kg of CO2. This excludes production, transport and distribution costs associated with the actual volume of fuel consumed.
Oh what a feeling, not!
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If you look after the batteries there is no reason why they wonât last a long time. The same applies to almost all consumer products.
There will be those who try and look after them but donât achieve the same life. This again applies to all other consumer goods.
There would be very few owners of EVs that only ultra-fast charge⊠achieve say 50-70% battery capacity in the timeframes you have nominated. It is known that frequent ultra fast charging, mainly due higher battery temperatures, causes increased degradation of batteries. If one uses slow (many hours) to fast charging (a few hours), the batteries charge cooler and degradation is less.
Ultrafast charging technologies are getting better with systems monitoring battery status and ultrafast charging only occurring when batteries are less than about 70%, there after current is reduced to minimise degradation of the battery.
The discussion about rollout of ultrafast charging stations around the country wonât be possible due to local network limitations. As indicated above, unless there is significant augmentation of transmission and distribution networks in rural area (viz outside urban and some of the east coast), any charging will be significantly limited by the capacity of the network. Augmentation of these networks will be cost prohibitive (example being it could cost 10s millions to 100s millions for line and substation works for a recharging point on a highway where local network is inadequate).
As such one will need to plan their long distance journeys different to ICE vehicles (as indicated above). Swappable batteries could be an alternative solution, but for EV cars the horse has bolted with every manufacturer doing their own thing with inbuilt rechargeable battery systems.
Perhaps if we stay fossilised on to the centralised generation and distribution design of yesterdayâs networks.
Regardless, generating capacity is going to need to increase (50-100%) to replace all the petroleum and natural gas Australia currently consumes. More than 63% (32% oil, 31% gas) of our raw energy comes from gas and petroleum products. Nothing new in any of that, including the need to transition and redesign the grid.
In the interim.
Solar PV plus cheap fixed energy storage would make any site self sufficient. We have half the solution with very cheap PV. For storage the best costs Iâve seen using lithium batteries are around 20c per KWh. For a high capacity charging station where weight of the system is less important other options may become attractive, as well as off peak trickle charging of the local storage capacity from the local network.
Unfortunately, the cost of generating, storage and delivery of electricity to EV cars will be many times that in regional areas.
This was discussed as an option when I worked in the industry as was readily dismissed on capacity limitations (a trickle canât make a flood). There was also discussion of if only the local network was used for EV charging, how to capacity be managed from the consumer side such that there werenât vehicles stranded due to lack of available capacity.
One option I recall which was tabled but never got mileage (sorry for the pun), was energy allocation. The systems could work similar to say airline seats where there is is available capacity at a particular location/route and once filled, there would be no more and one would need to look at alternative times to travel.
Lets say it is 1000kW available (with 100% reliability so actual storage would be maybe 2-3+ times this). Before planning/disembarking on a journey, one pre-purchases a block of energy from the location. Once the 1000kW is allocated, there is no further energy available for purchase. When one arrives at the location, one then adds the pre-purchased energy to the vehicle (say 50kW) and then continues on the journey. This poses challenges as a restricted supply will force up prices and it can significantly restrict vehicle movements (e.g. on one day a vehicle purchases the 1000kW removing the opportunity for others to use the facility). There are also other economic and social impacts.
This wonât change and will remain in the future. Many renewable generation locations are removed from the east coast/demand locations and transmission and distribution will be needed to move electricity from generators to users, no differently to that which exists today. Augmentation will be needed to connect these generators, but the backbones to deliver the energy to the consumer exists and will be utilised.
There is a grass roots campaign indicating that the days of transmission/distribution are numbered and everything will move back to locally generated, local usage grid system (similar to what existed 50+ years ago). It is worth reading why such local systems were disbanded 60 years ago as they were highly inefficient, less reliable and costly. This along with other factors still play today and why an integrated network of transmission and distribution was adopted in Australia (and every other country).
I guess it depends on the reality of that âreal worldâ. Conservative objections to battery powered vehicles are commonly based on a 2,000 km daily commute (or something).
Tesla has been targeting a 500 mile (800 km) range as standard and has hinted at 600 (~1000 km). That gives some indication of commercial reality. Is there a residential/domestic market for the sort of ranges that Conservatives pretend are indispensable? How many of us drive more than a few hundred kilometres in an average day?
Most of us can only afford one vehicle. I live on the land, so I need to be able to handle off-road conditions and to carry loads. Consequently, I take a 4 wheel drive light truck to do the shopping. The thingâs a mongrel in a supermarket carpark. 
If I need to do something unusual (like drive across the Nullarbor, for example), then I rent the appropriate vehicle. Mostly, if I need to go long distances, then I take the train or (rarely) fly.
Does it? That assertion has been confuted already.
Will it? Electric vehicles should be viewed as part(s) of the grid. As such, they contribute to the economics of electricity delivery. Mine sites and remote communities increasingly rely on microgrids. To a growing extent, those microgrids employ renewable generation and storage. Batteries are part of the microgrids. Electric vehicles have large batteries that can contribute to grid services. Vehicle-to-grid - Wikipedia Overall, battery electric vehicles can reduce power costs in the most challenging localities.
Back to that 2,000 km commute. Does it exist? I doubt it. Do people (as distinct from road freight) often need to drive thousands of kilometres? According to the ABS, the median daily commute is less than 20 kilometres. Even in regional areas, itâs unusual to travel more than 250 kilometres. Anyone who needs to regularly travel long distances will probably fly. Very few real-world commutes will be beyond the range of planned electric aircraft.
Outside of road freight, nobody is likely to frequently need to drive thousands of kilometres. That leaves only the infrequent need. Is it rational to buy a vehicle to meet an infrequent need? The sane option is to buy what is most often required. Rare needs can be met by renting or public transport.
So, in 2150 Fred decides that he wants to travel around Australia. He rents a vehicle thatâs fit for purpose. What powers the vehicle?
Coolangatta to Port Douglas is covered.
All 31 charging stations were up and running as of March this year. The longest interval appears to be Townsville to Cardwell, approx 165km.
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By 2150, I imagine the whole nation will be engineered into a coordinated mass of renewable generation, transmission and storage. Australia will be âcoveredâ. The answer to the question therefore is âprobably batteriesâ.
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Not focused on Australia and seems to confuse hydrogen with synfuels, but does raise a point that hadnât occurred to me. Beyond transport, hydrogen infrastructure is of little benefit. Electricity infrastructure is broadly useful, so it will probably be built regardless. Itâs far more rational to leverage infrastructure that will be built anyway than to build specialised infrastructure for a single application. Of course, wires are cheaper to build and operate than pipes as well.
Another article on plummeting prices of electric vehicles:
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Lithium Australia NL (LIT) subsidiary Envirostream, which is 90 per cent owned by Lithium Australia, to recycle end-of-life (EOL) battery packs from electric vehicles.
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I find it somewhat ironic that the mining industry is among the most enthusiastic adopters of renewable energy.
[edit]
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There are several prospective alternative battery technologies including Lithium based solid state batteries and Aluminium Ion alternatives.
Not the only aluminium ion battery research, however Forbes is very upbeat about manufacture. It notes, âLithium has risen from US$1460 a metric tonne in 2005 to US$13,000 a tonne this week, while aluminumâs price has edged up from US$1730 to US$2078 over the same period.â.
Although Australian developed, there is no plan currently to manufacture in Australia, in preference to OS. Should we be surprised?
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This might be the elephant in the room in relation to lithium based battery systems. This particular article provides information on available lithium reserves and its impact by the EV industry. The article doesnât consider lithium for other uses which will place additional pressure on resources and longterm availability.
There are also futuristic articles indicating that depletion of lithium resources wonât be an issue, as it is occurs in seawater and all we need is to develop technologies which can cheaply and efficiently concentrate the 100-200 parts per billion lithium in seawater so that it can provide longterm needs.
Recycling of lithium to almost 100% is also needed, as well as multiple battery use (EV batteries used for energy storage in home/industry rather than single use standalone batteries) to defer the potential crunch. The crunch being where there is inadequate lithium resources to need ongoing needs. Otherwise the crunch timeframes of 2040 to 2100 (depending on scenarios) will be brought forward.
This is potentially why alternatives to lithium batteries need to be developed for long term energy storage. Otherwise, we may have a situation of âpeak lithiumâ no different to âpeak oilâ or âpeak phosphorusâ.
Yep. Similarly one could extract a fortune in gold and other precious substances (silver, lead, tin, zinc, vanadium, nickel, molybdenum, uranium, copper etc) from seawater, there are millions of tons of it just waiting to be claimed, no royalties to pay. Likewise there are vast amounts of oil sitting in deep and difficult strata that only needs to be drilled and pumped.
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Not lithium alone. The world has to come to terms with the simple fact that we need to recycle everything, as close as possible to 100%.
The argument thatâs commonly made is that virgin material is cheaper than recycled. Thatâs a product of narrow economics. It doesnât factor in all costs - only short-term money.
The true delimiters are energy and labour. Australiaâs underemployment rate shows that we have the labour (though it might need training). We also have thousands of times as much energy as weâre likely to need (though we need to harvest it).
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And it is particularly critical lithium batteries, associated electronics and motors are recycled as they contain heavy metals and rare earths which pose environmental challenges if released to the wider environment. There is enough contamination through past and existing poor management practices, and the last we need is more contamination from the EV/solar/renewable energy industry.
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Australia might be âpushedâ out of internal combustion engines.
Given our politiciansâ enthusiasm for hybrids:
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A changing market - is anyone seriously investing in new ICE vehicles. While Musk has been promising a Tesla road haul truck or semi, those who dominate that segment are not about to let Tesla lead.
Curiously Tesla has left the bus market out of the product vision!
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Another development.
'S*** happens"?
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I havenât read all the comments here. Seemed to focus on the political and environmental issues that we all know about so my question may have been discussed.
When I looked at EVâs some time ago I was under the impression that the battery life was way less than the life of the capital and the battery replacement cost was quite substantial. I thought it was about 25-30% of the vehicle replacement. Certainly batteries have improved since then but has cost improved? Any comments?
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