Electric Cars - the discussion continues.

[Jerry_Atrick]

2 hours ago, old man emu said:

I'd like to drive one simply to find out if they react differently when you take your foot of the power control lever (accelerator). In normal driving, I use engine compression braking, airflow drag and tyre/road friction to slow down to about 40 kph, then I'll tease the brakes on if I need to actually stop. Since the only difference between an EV and ICE is the method of torque generation, does an EV slow in some way that is similar to an ICE's compression braking?

I believe regenerative braking is analogous and the driver is in more control of its effects

https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/magic-tesla-roadster-regenerative-braking

[octave]

Having driven 2 EVs for 2 weeks each (BMWI3 and a Tesla 3)   I can say I absolutely love the regen braking.  It is a little strange at first but with a bit of practice you can almost avoid using the brake at all. It became a bit of a game to see if I could stop at the lights without either adding power or braking.  One slightly disconcerting thing was that on the one occasion I drove the Tesla after charging it to 100% I found that the regen does not work whilst the battery was totally full .   

[facthunter]

That's logical IF it's fully charged. There's not a lot of talk about making hybrids of van s etc About 8 years ago there was.. Nev

[pmccarthy]

My son has a Tesla and says it should normally be charged only to 90% or so, I think to extend battery life.

[octave]

8 minutes ago, pmccarthy said:

My son has a Tesla and says it should normally be charged only to 90% or so, I think to extend battery life.

 When going on a road trip you ideally charge it 100% just before you go. It is about how long the battery sits at 100%. I use this regime with my electric bike.  If I am going on a long ride the night before I charge it to approximately  80% and then in the morning top it up tp 100%.  This is the recommended procedure to ensure long battery life. 

[old man emu]

There will be a change in vehicle operation best practice. No longer will it be, "Check the oil and water daily", but "don't leave the thing on charge all night".

 

As for operating the vehicle, it will simply be a matter learning the idiosyncrasies of each car, the same as we do now with ICEs.

[kgwilson]

About 80%of the batteries made for EVs come from just 4 manufacturers. CATL is the largest followed by LG, Panasonic & BYD. Tesla gets its batteries from the top 3 & Panasonic is to make its new 4680 batteries. Development is expanding at an exponential rate with the cost decreasing per KW as capacity and quantity increases. Battery life is also increasing dramatically with latest offerings providing up to 1 million km & even after that they are still good for installing in your home. Tesla has its own battery recycling plant but it has recycled virtually none of the batteries from old vehicles as they get used for other purposes so is only recycling damaged or defective batteries at this stage.

 

So as a potential EV purchaser what do I do. Prices are decreasing. The cheapest now come from Chinese manufacturer BYD. The Atto 3 is now available in Australia for under $45k & the  Dolphin is likely to be around the $35k mark. Reviews from motoring experts are heaping praise on both vehicles with the only complaints being the crappy Chinese tyres. The only problem is supply. All of the production for Australia so far is pre sold. With demand outstripping supply by miles there won't be any discounts till new models start appearing with longer range batteries & current owners start trading in their existing EVs. It looks like I may have to wait a while yet.

[onetrack]

Ford have just poured $300M into a smaller West Australian mining company (Liontown Resources) that plans to start up a new Lithium (Spodumene) mine at Kathleen Valley, N of Leinster, W.A.

The mine is going to cost AU$545M to set up, and this new mine is rapidly placing W.A. in a leading position as a supplier of Spodumene to the worlds EV battery manufacturers.

The Lithium resource at Kathleen Valley is reported as having a 23 year mine life just on current reserves.

It is going to be a predominantly underground mining operation, with an initial open pit giving access to the deeper and largest ore reserves, via a portal in the bottom of the pit.

 

https://smallcaps.com.au/liontown-resources-offtake-deal-ford-kathleen-valley-lithium-development/

 

https://www.ltresources.com.au/projects/kathleen-valley

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by onetrack

[old man emu]

$300M invested by a foreign national. Too bad the Australian Government doesn't have the brains to invest in the substance of our country and have its citizens own the land they stand on, and profit from digging it up.

 

The latest census found that the people of Australia are abandoning the traditional religions and becoming more secular. Luckily foreign nationals are making it the holeyest country in the World.

 

 

[spacesailor]

That same cencus has found more than half of Austalians ARE NOT Australian.

Like Me.

BUT

Forteen of my fifteen grandkids ARE Auussie born !.

spacesailor

[onetrack]

I guess, better Ford, than another Chinese company pouring vast sums into Australia, so China and the Chinese can get the benefit.

[old man emu]

I don't see why our Government is getting all worked up about defending the country against Chinese military invasion and if the USA  and NATO would come to our aid.  They would only be fighting over who owns what, while a diminishing number of descendants of those who built up the country try to eke out an existence on the loose change that falls from the pockets of these absentee landlords. 

[onetrack]

The countries who win wars, only do so, because of the number of allies they can get on side to help them.

In WW1, the British could never have won if it wasn't for the massive support from the colonies - which was pretty much limited to manpower - which is the reason the British didn't win a decisive win in WW1.

 

In WW2, Britain could never have won without America - and America could not have won without massive help from the Allied nations. Americas massive industrial ability was also a huge factor in the win.

Russia only won over the Nazis in WW2, only because of the massive industrial support of the Americans. The Americans gave the Russians 400,000 trucks alone, let alone the additional 1000's of aircraft, hundreds of locomotives, rolling stock, armaments galore from multiple millions of rifles through to artillery pieces, plant and equipment, and they even delivered over 3700 ships to the Russians.

 

In the Korean War, America didn't round up enough Allies, and the Korean War ground to a stalemate - greatly helped by NK getting China onside as a major ally.

In Vietnam - a repeat of the Korean War,

 

This is where Putin has fallen flat on his arse in the Ukraine, he's isolated Russia, and virtually no-one is coming to help them.

But Ukraine is managing to get lots of assistance in the form of armaments from both Western and European Allies.

If the Ukraine could get manpower help from those Allies, it'd be all over in a month for the Russians. But the European and Western nations are too frightened to offer manpower, fearing a wider escalation of the Ukraine War.

Russia's ability to win in the Ukraine will also be hampered by its industrial capacity, which is not even at the level of Italian industry.

 

Here in Australia, any invader will be defeated by the terrain, the vast distances across Australia, by the logistics of trying to keep up supply lines multiple thousands of kms long - and by the number of Allies Australia can round up. Any invader might be able to secure a major city region or two, but it would be a tenuous hold.

At the end of the day, we live on a geographically-isolated island fort, and that makes me feel quite satisfied, that I live where I do.

[spacesailor]

An enimy would only have to control the transportation of goods into the cities to bring Australia to it,s knees. Outside the cities not much of a force could be found to defend US. ( city folk  )

spacesailor

[facthunter]

The Russians suffered the greatest number of casualties so they could claim to have won it.   Nev

[kgwilson]

The Russians, well it was the Soviets then, won by the overwhelming supply of man/women power. In Stalingrad many were sent in without arms & were told to pick up the rifles from their fallen comrades. They lost over 20 million people in WW2. They killed more of their own people than the US lost during the entire war. They also built factories so remote from the war that the Germans had no way of combatting their war machine. They got a lot of stuff from the US & Britain during the time they were ramping up their own production. For example they built over 57,000 T34 tanks during WW2. They built between 31,000 & 36,000 Ilyushin II-2s more than any other combat aircraft of WW2.

[onetrack]

That certainly is true, the Soviets just kept throwing men and women into the front until they either stalled the Germans, and they retreated, or the Soviets simply overwhelmed them.

The staggering part is that Hitler insisted there was to be no retreat from Soviet attacks, and in the largest percentage of Nazi-Soviet battles, the Germans did not retreat, and simply fought to the death or until they were completely over-run.

I hate to think how many more Germans died in Siberia after capture, the Russians hatred of the Germans knew no bounds, and they didn't care how many German captives died, no Western organisation was ever able to record correct numbers of German POW deaths in Russia.

 

But overall, the part that American-supplied equipment played in the Nazi-Soviet battles was a huge factor in the Soviets winning. Interestingly, the Americans refused to give the Soviets heavy bombers.

Even though the Americans produced 30,000 heavy bombers, they kept them largely for their own use. They obviously understood the ramifications of giving the Soviets heavy bombers, they would have then become a real threat to the Allied nations.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#:~:text=In total%2C the U.S. deliveries,and 1.75 million tons of

[spacesailor]

There was a ' squadron of Australian pilots ' that flew old bombers to Russia,  then had to teach  those new pilots how to use them, also had to stay untill the end of the war !.

My instructor at ' the oaks ' his father was one of those pilots  & wrote a book about it.

spacesailor

[Old Koreelah]

4 hours ago, onetrack said:

…I hate to think how many more Germans died in Siberia after capture, the Russians hatred of the Germans knew no bounds, and they didn't care how many German captives died...

Germany committed almost half a million soldiers to take Stalingrad. Many years after war, about 5,000 German POWs were released from captivity in Siberia. That means a German soldier had one chance in a thousand of surviving. 
Correction: One chance in a hundred.

 

During The Great War, Australia’s diggers are reported to have had the worst casualty rate; 300,000 went, 60,000 died.

About four out of five went home.

 

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, spacesailor said:

There was a ' squadron of Australian pilots ' that flew old bombers to Russia,  then had to teach  those new pilots how to use them, also had to stay untill the end of the war !.

My instructor at ' the oaks ' his father was one of those pilots  & wrote a book about it.

spacesailor

I think that would be Geoffrey Raebel  - 'The RAAF in Russia, 455 Squadron - 1942'. I've been wanting to read that book; I recon it would be interesting.

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, onetrack said:

But overall, the part that American-supplied equipment played in the Nazi-Soviet battles was a huge factor in the Soviets winning. Interestingly, the Americans refused to give the Soviets heavy bombers.

Some say that the biggest thing that helped the Soviets was transport, in the form of trucks and jeeps. Hitler also had a lack of trucks. In the invasion of the USSR, he had some captured French trucks, but had to rely heavily on horses to haul artillery. The lack of trucks caused a lot of logistic supply line problems for the Germans.

Edited July 2, 2022 by willedoo

[onetrack]

Getting back to the electric vehicle discussion - this begs discussion of the interesting angle of electric vehicle use by the military. I have not seen anyone, anywhere, discussing proposals or projects such as electric motive power for the military.

 

All wars are fought over oil supplies, because no military force can move without oil. But if the military decide electric motive power has some major potential, can you imagine how that would change things enormously, as regards the prosecution of a war?

 

Even just cracking the military market for an electric motive power product, must be a big target for the EV people.

 

 

[octave]

I think the military is looking at EVs, probably still early days though. 

 

 

The Army's path to an electric vehicle

 

 

[red750]

[facthunter]

I don't see great potential in that arrangement. It will soon earth out. and you'll probably end up on some charge or other for creating a hazard. Nev