Electric car thread

[old man emu]

Have you ever had a vehicle damage repair quote that was more than the insured value of the vehicle? In that case, the insurer will send you a cheque, minus the "excess' and the vehicle will get scrapped. That's a "write-off".

 

How can I convince you that I am not arguing against the numerous reasons contained in the statement of the Insurance Council? I accept them as fact. What I am trying to make you realise is that I think that the insurers are more concerned about that very rare event in which the collateral damage could run into millions, so much so that the payout for the loss of the insured vehicle is a pittance in comparison, but they don't want to advertise to the public that their exposure to the costs of collateral damage could rip into their profitability. 

 

When you and I buy car insurance, we are contributing to the fund that recompenses someone else for their misfortune, while we go for years on end without even claiming for a cracked windscreen. The actuaries have worked out how much is needed from premium income to cover expected payouts as well as leaving enough to run the business and make a profit. It's the extraordinary the is the stick in the gears of their well-oiled machine. 

[octave]

Just thinking about the insurance differences between EV and IC.   The idea that the EV has higher premiums because of a perceived notion that the EV could burn down a car park seems a little odd. My understanding of my car third-party property insurance is that it covers other people's property is capped at 20 million. The question is does an EV have a higher maximum payout for damage to other peoples property?  Let's say a car park

 

 

 

[willedoo]

I wonder how much money I've saved over a lifetime of never having comprehensive car insurance, only compulsory third party insurance. The most expensive car I've ever had cost me $5,000, so none of them were worth insuring. I've had that $5,000 car for ten years now and the only time it's needed repairs was one time with a blown power steering hose.

Edit: I've replaced the fan belts as well.

Edited June 18 by willedoo

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, octave said:

My understanding of my car third-party property insurance is that it covers other people's property is capped at 20 million

That figure sounds very familiar to me. However, although the maximum possible payout an insurer would have to make is 20 million, think about any car running into a house or a shop. The cost of restoring either would be nowhere near 20 million.  However, imagine an EV having a thermal runaway in the carpark of a shopping centre, or underground carpark of a skyscraper. The very heat generated by such an event could result in the condemning of a structure worth millions. The insurers wouldn't like to have to draw from their reserves to pay for that, so they jack up the premiums for all EVs to cover the single case. According to you such an event has a very low probability, and I think I'll agree with you there. But the insurers don't want to risk losing money. If such an event doesn't happen, then the insurer wins the bet. Remember, the insurance business is commercial gambling.

[octave]

Perhaps someone will know the answer to this but my understanding of the 20 million third party property limit is just that a limit. If you cause more than 20 million then I thinking that anything over than amount becomes your responsibility. It seems to me that an EV does not expose an insurance company to anything more than a petrol driven car.    In recent example there was a fire in the carpark at Lutton airport.  The culprit here was a diesel Land Rover.  Surely if we use the potential to burn down a carpark then wouldn't land rovers cost more to insure? 

 

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/10/15/land-rovers-keep-catching-fire-but-evs-get-blamed-for-luton-carpark-fire/

 

Every source I look at links higher insurance costs for EVs with higher parts prices, more difficult to repair in some cases, and less expertise at this point in time. The Tesla I dented needed either panel repair from a specialist or a new panel sent from the US (not sure which) but either way not as cheap as other cars.

 

For a comparison of EV to similar Pertol or diesel   https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/electric-car-insurance-premiums-compared#why-are-evs-more-expensive-to-insure

 

I can find no evidence that higher insurance for EVs is linked to increased public liability but happy to consider any information.

 

More and more EVs are LFP so not much to worry about there.

 

 

 

[octave]

An article from the Telegraph (UK) says that not all EVs are more expensive to insure and in some cases (or a least one case it mentions) cheaper

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/net-zero/insuring-electric-car-reasons-why-nightmare-costs-cover/

 

For specific models, it turns out some EVs are significantly cheaper to insure. CompareTheMarket compared the average premium on a range of models and found significant variations in costs. An electric Volkswagen, for example, was £353 cheaper to insure than its petrol equivalent. Meanwhile, an electric Jaguar was £301 more expensive than a petrol model.

 

 

[red750]

Tesla owner reveals true charging cost of epic 3000km road trip

 

When JJ told friends he was going to drive his electric car from Melbourne to Magnetic Island, Queensland, they laughed. But he proved them wrong.

 

Read report here.

[kgwilson]

My MG4 cost $47,990.00 plus on roads and is insured for full replacement value. The premium through Youi paid last September when new was $712.26. Some equivalent value ICE cars cost considerably more to insure.

[facthunter]

Aluminium tends to crack and fret in sheet form. There's a lot of plastic in cars today, formed in complex and expensive dies  Nev

[old man emu]

10 hours ago, red750 said:

Tesla owner reveals true charging cost of epic 3000km road trip

 

When JJ told friends he was going to drive his electric car from Melbourne to Magnetic Island, Queensland, they laughed. But he proved them wrong.

 

Read report here.

He obviously covered the distance, but there is no indication of the time he took. Also he took the long way - the 3,136km drive along the coast. I checked a trip from Thomastown Vic - the start of the Hume/Mitchell Highways  to Townsville. Going west of the ranges on the flat country would save between 500 and 600 kms, so his route must have been determined by the availability of charging points, which are located in town far apart west of the Ranges.

[red750]

28 minutes ago, old man emu said:

but there is no indication of the time he took.

"The 60-hour trek began on June 4, JJ told Yahoo News."

[old man emu]

16 minutes ago, red750 said:

"The 60-hour trek began on June 4, JJ told Yahoo News."

Hmmm. According to Google maps, the travel time from Thomastown to Townsville via the inland is 27 hours, giving an average speed while driving of 92 kph. His travel time, which is not specified as driving time only gives a speed of 52 kph. 

 

Anyway, anything I say about EVs that doesn't put them on a pedestal will be howled down by the zealots. Just let me tell you this. The manager of our local Toyota dealership was considering taking an EV demo vehicle to the Annual Show in a town about 100 kms away, on a main highway. He decided against it because he wasn't sur he's have sufficient electrons to get there and back.

 

 

[octave]

14 minutes ago, old man emu said:

The manager of our local Toyota dealership was considering taking an EV demo vehicle to the Annual Show in a town about 100 kms away, on a main highway.

 

That seems hard to believe to me. I cant think of any Toyotya BEV that only has a range of 100km  All-New All-Electric Toyota bZ4X   

 

I have driven around NZ in a Tesla comfortably and yes distances are shorter but hills are much steeper.  I am prepared to acknowledge the disadvantages and advantages of EVs and that the infrastructure is still a work in progress and that we are in the early stages of transitioning from early adopters to the more mainstream buyers.   Reading back through this thread I struggle to find any such balance in your posts.; I suspect your biggest problem with them is change.    If your many negative assertions are correct then the EV industry will shortly die off.  I somehow don't think this is going to happen but perhaps we can see what the situation is this time next year.

 

Getting back to insurance and the idea that insurance companies have to charge more for EVs because of exploding carparks etc. Why is @kgwilson insurance only around the $700 mark?   I have verified this by using an online quote.

 

[red750]

Purely as a planning exercise, I looked at a trip from Vermont to Deniliquin. According to Google, it is almost 400 km. There are charging stations at Heathcote and Echuca. While it may require a short wait at these locations, probably an opportunity to grab a bite, stretch the legs and water the horses, EV range does not appear to be a problem. There are at least 4 charging locations in Deni, so a trip up, overnight stay to have a look around the old stamping ground, and back home, top up recharging at Heathcote both ways, seems easily doable.

 

In Deni, there are stations in the main street and at the camping ground, a motel and the RSL Club.

[red750]

I went back to the maps. On the return trip I could divert Echuca to Shepparton (charging point), Benalla to visit my sister and my parents gravesite (surprisingly no charging point yet in Benalla), then back home, with a top-up stop at Avenel, near Mangalore. 

[old man emu]

33 minutes ago, octave said:

If your many negative assertions are correct then the EV industry will shortly die off.  I somehow don't think this is going to happen but perhaps we can see what the situation is this time next year

No, I don't think that EVs are heading for elimination. It's a horses for courses sort of thing. If the government would get out of the marketplace, I see the mix of power types reaching equilibrium with, maybe most EVs in urban areas and most ICEs in rural and remote areas. 

 

The problem I see is that while the vehicle itself seems to have been sorted out, the infrastructure to operate them cannot, at the moment, handle an explosion in demand for what it delivers. Then there is the economics of it. Not the purchase, maintenance, repair, disposal and insurance, but the massive loss of revenue the government will lose from reduced excise income from petroleum fuels.

 

I think that someone in government has stumbled on a solution to making the use of EVs equitable with the use of ICEs. I believe that when you get your annual roadworthiness inspection, the mileage is now kept. This originally was to detect odometer tampering, and the information is available to the public to see if a person wanted to buy a particular vehicle. It would be a simple matter for the authorities to calculate how far the vehicle has been driven during the year and to charge for that usage. However, because some States don't issue rego stickers anymore, that process might have to be reinstated so that enforcement bodies can quickly check to see if such a "road tax" had been paid. 

 

We should look at the operation of the New Zealand system for pricing road usage for EVs and see if it is adaptable here.

[old man emu]

36 minutes ago, octave said:

I cant think of any Toyotya BEV that only has a range of 100km

I don't know if there is a charging point in that town 100 kms away, and there is only one small town halfway that only has a self-serve petroleum outlet. 

 

The round trip would have been 200 kms, and there may have been some demo drives. Anyway, that's the reason he gave me for not taking the vehicle there.

 

This from the spec, any idea what [G66] means? 

Up to 436km^[G66]

WLTP Range

[Marty_d]

1 hour ago, old man emu said:

The manager of our local Toyota dealership was considering taking an EV demo vehicle to the Annual Show in a town about 100 kms away, on a main highway. He decided against it because he wasn't sur he's have sufficient electrons to get there and back.

 

 

I think that says more about Toyota EV's than EV's in general.  No one with a fully charged Tesla/BYD/MG would blink at a 200km round trip.

 

[old man emu]

18 minutes ago, Marty_d said:

that says more about Toyota EV's than EV's in general.

Nah. I reckon it says more that he's a country boy and his best sellers are the 4WD work vehicles.

[willedoo]

4 hours ago, old man emu said:

He obviously covered the distance, but there is no indication of the time he took.

60 hours as quoted in the article - 'The 60-hour trek began on June 4, JJ told Yahoo News, when he packed up his 2023 M3 RWD and moved from Melbourne to Magnetic Island in Queensland with his friend Siouxsie joining to help break up the drive.'.

 

That's 2.5 days, not too bad really.

Edited June 19 by willedoo

[red750]

60 hours - he doesn't say whether that's on road time or total time go to whoa. Would you drive Melbourne Townsville without a sleepover?  I've driven Melbourne-Wagga-West Wyalong-Dubbo-Moree-  Caloundra with my son as relief driver, and we still stopped for a sleepover in Dubbo. That was tiring enough.

[old man emu]

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he took good overnight breaks, so the 60 hours must be on-road time, but it must have included stops during the day for charging, and they get counted in as driving time.

[kgwilson]

Toyota only has one full EV the bZ4X & by all accounts it is not a bad vehicle but it has pretty poor range for the cost starting at 66k + on roads. Toyota has been bad mouthing EVs since inception and pushing hydrogen (now almost dead) and their mythical solid state battery (now apparently due in 2027 after the release date has slipped several times from 23 to 25). They are promising 745km range which has already easily been surpassed by CATLs 1000km range LFP battery in 2023.

 

They are so far behind the 8 ball that they are now relying on BYD technology. Last year Toyotas global dominance faltered when the Tesla model Y became the biggest selling car on the planet, taking the crown held by the Corolla for many years and their worldwide market shrank for the first time in history.

 

I am more than happy with my MG4. I get 400km at 100 - 110 kmh (WLTP range is quoted at 450km) & my bladder & concentration don't last that long anyway so a supercharge for 20 minutes (while I have a cuppa & tucka)  is all I need for another 300 - 350km. It takes me the same time from Corindi to my place at Noosa as it used to in my ICE car but I arrive far more relaxed.

 

That said the charging network is poor especially off major routes. NZ has chargers everywhere even in small towns. Of course distances are not as great. It is improving here but there is still a long way to go.

 

The thing is that sceptical people look at the range and that is what they concentrate on & decide EVs are no good. 1000km range vehicles are here and will become common place in the next couple of years. How many ICE cars have 1000km range?  Smart people look at their lifestyle & usually realise that long trips are few and far between as mostly they will be commuting to work and then going to sports or a few hundred km in weekends. Plus if you have solar panels you can travel locally for free like I do.

 

Price is the big one for many but that is rapidly becoming invalid with the lower end of the market closing in rapidly on the cost of all but the most basic bottom of the barrel ICE car.

 

You will never get me buying another ICE car. Even with the price I paid the total cost of ownership over 7 years is less than for an equivalent ICE car.

[facthunter]

IF they were no good the price of them second hand would be LOW and it isn't but any car out of warrantee these days can cost a bit to fix, so I'd go for new and you know what you're getting. I reckon the going prices for second hand stuff is above it's real value. A lot are parked in the street and only detailed when they are sold.  Nev

[old man emu]

29 minutes ago, kgwilson said:

I arrive far more relaxed

That I don't understand. Maybe it's a difference in our driving styles. I take it you do the Corindi to Noosa trip regularly enough to know the road and to have your pit stops almost set in stone. I drive from Gilgandra to Camden reasonably regularly. I now the road -meaning the road surface- pretty well and with cruise control I don't have to do much more than move the steering wheel a tad. My times between localities are usually the same, trip after trip, and I have my set stopping places for a coffee, a pee or a sandwich. I arrive at Camden after 5-1/2 hours driving and about 6-1/2 with stops, and if I've had a smooth run from Katoomba to the Nepean River at the start of the M4, I arrive at Camden with a sore bum, but otherwise OK. 

 

So how is your trip so much more relaxing simply because the power generation of your vehicle is different from mine?