octave

Another method of charging.

I agree, it will be some time before the price drops or that all cars are autonomous. I don't think autonomous driving is only for the elderly or disabled. We moved from inner Melbourne to Geelong 6 years ago to retire although we had to commute into inner Melbourne for the first 18 months. The drive in and out at rush hour was harrowing. We used to work west of the city and when we would leave the western freeway we could see the 4 lanes of traffic crawling into the city and we wondered how people could do this day after day, year after year. A couple of years ago I had a chat with a Geelong man who had recently bought a Tesla. He worked in Melbourne. His commute had become much less stressful because although he still had to monitor the car it would take care of staying in its lane or lane changing where necessary and not running into the back of the car in front. To be clear I am not saying that we are ready for mass adoption yet but unless you take the view that we have reached the end of technological advances or that we should just stop technological progress then it will happen if enough people want to adopt it. If it was available now and I could afford it and it proved to be safe I would be up for it. About 4 times a year we have to travel to Adelaide. There are a couple of ways we get to the airport. Mostly we take the train into Melbourne (1 hour) and then Skybus (30 minutes and $19 each) We usually work out depending on how long we will be away for and work out the price of public transport Vs driving and paying for long-term parking. If in the future my car could drop me off and then return home and pick me up when I get back, I would be all for it. I don't believe this will happen at a reasonable price in my lifetime but I think it would be a bold call to say never.

It is a problem for many people. My parents bought a house in a retirement village about 5 km from town. This proved to be a bad move with respect to transport once they ceased driving. There was no public transport and taxis often took ages to turn up and often didn't turn up all. This did feed into decisions around going into aged care. There is a sliding scale of driver automation from nothing through cruise control to adaptive cruise control to lane keeping to automatic emergency braking to full self-driving. All of these steps have the potential to make driving safer and to perhaps allow people to keep their licences just a little longer as they age. I think we are some time away from mass fully autonomous driving.

I guess we could ask that question about many areas of human endeavour. The question presupposes that the car companies developing these technologies would spend their time and effort in some other area if they ceased working on autonomous vehicles. Tesla and Volvo and all the others are working on a technology that they believe they will have a market for. There are humans working on advancements in many many areas, we can do more than one thing at once. I think the benefits of autonomous cars when sufficiently developed are great. As I mentioned before there is an obvious benefit to the elderly and disabled. Autonomous vehicles will only succeed once they are safer than human drivers, indeed I suspect that they would have to be many times safer. So there is a benefit, less carnage on the road In the more distant future autonomous vehicles that can communicate with each other greatly reducing traffic jams and even the need for traffic lights. OME if you for some medical reason you had your licence revoked would you be able to survive with public transport or friends and relatives driving you everywhere? We can disagree about priorities however I don't think we can write off autonomous vehicles as not improving people's lives. A disabled person being able to use their own private transport rather than perhaps unreliable taxis and Uber and public transport. As I said earlier autonomous vehicles will only be accepted if they are many times safer than human drivers. If they are not safer then they will fail if they are safer then the benefit to humans can be measured in lives saved and injuries avoided.

Yep, having poked around the net I might suggest that planning may be more advanced than you think. There are robot taxis operating in the US so I imagine the issues are being addressed as they occur just like in aviation. Planning is underway in this country. https://www.ntc.gov.au/transport-reform/ntc-projects/av-safety-reform I imagine that the adoption of autonomous cars will be similar to the adoption of EVs. You wont be forced to buy one. At some point in time when autonomous cars have a lower accident rate they will be cheaper to insure. At first, I imagine that many of us won't be able to afford one until the price comes down. It is not just a case of outright bad drivers. My father drove for well over 60 years and did not have one accident, not even a fender bender. When he was 80 I don't believe he still had the ability to drive safely. Sometime later the doctor pulled his licence but because of where he lived I think the doc felt sorry for him and gave it back. All of us will most likely get to this stage. Yes, that is true. I would agree that landing a plane with sensors and logic is probably easier but it is only a matter of time before this technology is safer than a human. We have not reached the limits of technology. Autonomous cars are already operating in some places so it is not impossible.

OME I think that using the current law in relation to self-driving cars of course presents some problems. The thing is that self-driving cars are not yet legal in this country The legal framework is being developed. NTC Policy Paper - regulatory framework for automated vehicles in Australia I have not read this document yet but I will. There have been many times in history when new technologies have presented us with legal and other conundrums. I guess in the earliest days of aviation it would have been hard to imagine the legal framework we now have. I certainly don't think we are ready to put autonomous cars on the road in a widespread way however it will come. Of course, old laws (in all sorts of areas) have to change as technology changes. With the advent of the internet new laws were created and this continues. My understanding is that it is expected that car companies will assume liability. I believe Volvo amongst other companies have stated that it will take responsibility. I am all for autonomous driving although as with any technology, there will be pros and cons. If autonomous vehicles can be built that can operate as safe or safer than a human driver then we surely are smart enough to draw up the rules and regulations to allow it to happen. It is too important not to do. Many people will say that they"like driving" and they don't see the point however many people can't drive perhaps due to disability or age. Many older people should not be driving but have little choice.

According to this video, if true, this guy was a registered Republican and gun rights nut.

Yes, early days, my fear is that this will be to the orange man's advantage.

https://6abc.com/post/donald-trump-escorted-off-stage-secret-service-during/15056992/

I would disagree. There are 2 challenges in Norway, cold and hills. I don't really think for the most part range is a problem here. People even in the country are diving EVs Regional Queenslanders say electric vehicles worth it for fuel savings but challenges remain The point I am trying to make with Norway is that yes it is smaller in size and has a smaller population it is able to provide a comprehensive charging network without the grid melting and without cars bursting into flames all over the place. Obviously, we face different challenges here however I fear we are not good at preparing for the future. Why should we keep importing oil when we have the natural resources to produce electricity? We also have nearly all of the minerals to produce our own batteries. If nothing else simple self-sufficiency is a good reason not to rely on oil from the Middle East. Yes I think the figure as of 2020 was 98% https://www.iea.org/reports/norway-2022/executive-summaryF Anyway bottom line.... don't buy one if you don't want to

Nope

If batteries are so dangerous you would expect this to show up in the statistics of a country like Norway. It is a fact that EV battery fires are much rarer than petrol car fires. It is true that a Lithium Ion battery fire is more tricky to put out it is not a common problem. Many new EVs now use LFP and some are now using Sodium- ion both exceedingly fire-safe.

I am pretty sure that is sales of new fossil fuel cars, not existing cars. Norway has 100% renewable power from hydro and wind, It has built great charging infrastructure so it is a bit of a no brainer really

The fact that KGW gets 2 hours of free power to charge his car is not because the power company are being nice. Keeping the grid going is about matching use with supply. There are various dips during the day and overnight. It is advantageous to the power generators not to curtail production too much because it can be inefficient. The example often given by the EV doubters is that "everyone will get home from work and plug their car in and this will bring down the grid" With variable pricing charging this way will cost more. My son's Tesla is plugged in a couple of times a week (normally). When he gets home from work he plugs it in but it does not charge straight away. in the early hours, it starts charging automatically and he only pays a few cents a KWh Just going back to the grid. I think there is a lack of imagination of future (and even present-day) tech. Think back to the late 80s. I remember getting into computing. I had bought an early modem and used to connect to bulletin boards at some ridiculously slow rate. If someone had told me that in my lifetime we would be downloading gigs of data, watching our television over the net and video calling our friends and relatives I might have been sceptical. If I had been told that almost every house would be connected by cable or fibre or wirelessly I would have said "ya dreaming" If our communications "grid" for want of a better word has developed this much I am pretty certain that our power grid has plenty of potential.

Onetrack, I think I am suggesting that electricity supplied by the grid and power generators and retailers will be in competition with electricity supplied from my roof. If I had an EV I would look for a source of electricity that is a reasonable price. I am not necessarily talking about competion between retailers

I guess one advantage of electricity is that it is possible to provide it yourself either with your grid supply or solar. Charging networks will be in competition with grid-supplied to the house and home-generated electricity. Oil companies have a bit of a monopoly on the product they sell.

ICing (the act of parking an iC car in a charging spot to prevent an EV charging) is very much a thing. Here is an extreme case. EV Charging Station ICE’d By Ford Ranger Raptor Is Oh So Childish I simply don't understand why people are so passionately against EVs. Whilst there can be well-presented arguments highlighting the cons of EVs there seems to be so much hysteria. I once received this video from an anti EV type which was supposed to illustrate that an EV is a bomb on wheels....................however A Tesla burst into flames during a crash test. The organizer admitted it was staged The thing is there are a few cases of EVs burning that are real examples but these people don't want to talk about statistics or even different battery chemistries. They just want to present a headline or spectacular video. Dont like EVs don't buy one. If the conversion to EVs is so flawed and grids will start to collapse then the conversion will cease. The notion that we will be sitting in the dark because of electrification is too much for it and that no one has foreseen this or done anything about this seems a little hard to believe. The growth of EVs will continue along and the grid will either adapt or we will have slow the rate at which we change or perhaps look for some alternate technology

I think I have made this point many times. I have often made to point that no one here will be forced to go EV because it would be impossible to make that huge change in a short time. Throwing away every IC car that still has a few years left in it is not desirable from an energy-to-build perspective. Again using Norway as an example they are aggressively EV and have been for a few years and have got to around 25%. We are a lot less aggressive in this country so it will take years and years before we are anywhere near Norway's figures. Again I don't have strong feelings about whether an individual is for or against buying an EV. I am interested in factual arguments. For now and for quite a few years into the future we will all have the choice to buy an EV or an IC. I do believe that it will not be bans on IC that be the major factor in the mass uptake of EVs but it will simply be the cheaper more convenient choice. Many of the criticisms of EVs are a little old hat. For example, cartoons showing someone pitching a tent whilst waiting for their car to charge are based on bygone days. Likewise cartoons that show an EV plug ultimately into a coal-fired power station are also out of date. I am not suggesting you post this kind of stuff but it is a constant in my mail/social media. Again I think there is plenty of expertise from adequately qualified people. I guess as a counter-argument I could suggest that the anti-side is often guilty of "pushing an agenda without knowledge of recent developments in new technology. In terms of pushing an agenda, I rarely start these conversations I usually read something and think, "Well hang on that doesn't seem correct" and I feel the need to toss a few facts in. As a blatant example, someone here (not you OME) suggested that to blow the horn on a Tesla you have to use the screen. This is false. We discussed tyres being horrendously expensive. I asked my son (who has read some of this thread) about tyres and he sends me a link to the tyres he uses which are pretty much the same price as for IC. If I am a zealot then I am a zealot for well-researched opinions backed with evidence. Whilst I would acknowledge that there are EV zealots I would suggest that there are as many if not more anti EV zealots. I find it hard to understand the passion that some people have. There is a thread on this forum about motorcycles. I am not a fan of motor cycles and I don't have any ambition to ride one however I have no interest in going on that thread and arguing about whether motorcycles are too dangerous or noisy.

The present electrical system certainly would not sustain 100% EV adoption. The present system will never be sufficient for the future. As an example it is often said that Australia should do more manufacturing rather than just shipping raw minerals overseas. One could say that we don't have the power system to support that so lets not do it. Th point is that history is not over. The grid has always grown to meet our needs. Although Norway is blessed with hydro I don't believe it has had to rebuild its poles and wires. The neighsayers seem to think that those in favour of the transition to EV have not even given a thought to how ERVs will be charged in the future. There are plenty of scientific papers on the subject and experts even here in Australia such as Blorn Sturmberg at ANU School of Engineering. Norway? I guess if you are just sitting back and scratching your head and saying but how they...........? There is a wealth of good quality information out there. It is actually intellectually stimulating to take on new knowledge and not just dwell in the past. Here is a video that you might find interesting. Yes, Norway has enormous supplies of hydro and other renewables but they have not totally rebuilt their grid. Two cars and many more can be charged simultaneously.

OME maybe if you are genuinely curious you should do a search for bi-directional charging and V2G (vehicle to grid). The old model of the grid is like the water system. The water flows one way from the reservoir to the tap in the house i.e. electricity flows from the power station to the house. The modern smart grid is more like the internet, electricity flows both ways. This gives the individual the opportunity to buy electricity and sell electricity. The neighsayers seem to present a situation where EVs are only a draw on the grid. Renewables need storage. This is where grid batteries come in. Imagine when most cars are EV. A 70 to 100KWh battery at almost every house. These things are not just stupid ideas but they are being put into practice mostly overseas at this stage. It is true that 20% to 80% is optimal however in if my son is going on a road trip you do charge perhaps the night before to 100%, It is not my practice to fill my petrol-driven car to its full fuel capacity because it does not make sense to drag around all that extra weight. At the other end of the scale, I usually don't run it down to near-empty.

I would think by now that real-world experience and statistics would be interesting. I believe in Nowray around 25% of the car fleet is EV. I would imagine that the accident rate would be similar to other comparable countries. The question I would ask is are there significant numbers of first untrained first responders being injured? Indeed there should be statistics about how many accidents result in significant battery damage or fires. Anyone helping out after an accident in any vehicle should be cautious. I had a van I was driving catch fire. The engine was under the seat so the cabin quickly filled with smoke. There was little I could do about it. The fire brigade arrived and they all had breathing equipment not available to me or any other bystanders. The idea that educating the public about EVs obviously good. I am sure in the early days of petrol-engined cars the public had to learn the dangers of flammable liquids.

I dont know about IC cars and fuel during crash tests but EVs do have batteries during test. The tests can evaluate fire hazard either caused by thermal runaway – when lithium-ion batteries experience rapid uncontrollable heating – in ruptured EV batteries or gas tank leaks of internal combustion vehicles. None of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash tests of EVs have sparked any fires. New Car Assessment Program crash test reports yield comparable findings. While real-world data analysis on vehicle fires involving EVs is limited, it appears that media and social media scrutiny of EV fire hazard is Electrified vehicles (including battery electric, fuel cell and hybrid-electric vehicles) are subjected to the same ANCAP crash protection and crash avoidance tests as any other vehicle rated by ANCAP. Some additional elements are monitored by ANCAP as part of the testing process: • The output of the high-voltage battery is monitored. High voltage batteries are fitted with a ‘safety cut-out’ that will rapidly disconnect the battery in the event of a crash. We monitor the output to record if and when this cut-out operates. • The vehicle body is checked safely for any highvoltage immediately after the crash. If the safety cut-out were to fail and a damaged high-voltage wire was to be in contact with the vehicle body, then a person touching the vehicle could be injured. Test technicians use insulated gloves and stand on a rubber mat to ensure that the vehicle has no high voltages and is safe to touch. • The battery is examined for any sign of damage, such as intrusion into the battery unit, leakage of fluids, fire or abnormal heat. We can all play our part to ensure the future of the Australian vehicle fleet is both safe and green. Safety and environmental performance are top-of-mind considerations for new car buyers today, and ANCAP encourages all consumers and fleet buyers to consider the safest green vehicle they can afford. Safe and green: Environmental outcomes should not come at the cost of safety.

Yes, they do, why wouldn't they?

No that is not right.