Quote:

Chaos in California as Tesla drivers are stranded for hours in a half-a-mile-long line to charge their cars on Black Friday

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7755753/amp/Chaos-California-Tesla-drivers-stranded-hours-half-mile-long-line-charge.html?ito=amp_twitter_share-top&__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR3Z6ufOA1ZiLGsDuBJ_cAADyhUhmuiu9K08KFN29ncr8vsi_W__Et2_t_Q

Well anyone could see this coming when a few more of these useless electric toy cars get about and take at least half an hour to recharge. Queues lasting up to 3 hours will be commonplace.

And free charging will end and an equivalent road tax based on distance traveled will come in.

And after a few more crashes and fires the insurance for a toy electric car will skyrocket.

A Tesla lastnail could afford to own


Quote:

You Can Create Your Very Own Paper Tesla Cybertruck A paper engineer and graphic designer has shared their foldable paper truck instructions for those who can't wait to get their own Cybertruck. It seems like Tesla's Cybertruck bonanza will never end. Today, we're grateful for it as graphic designer and paper engineer, Alex Gwynne, recently shared their paper Cybertruck instructions on their website. It's stylish, looks cool, and is a little bit more affordable than the actual Cybertruck. Ok, so it's in fact free. https://interestingengineering.com/you-can-create-your-very-own-paper-tesla-cybertruck?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Article&utm_campaign=organic&utm_content=Dec13&fbclid=IwAR1IBQxyJPeo8QpykQ_-2kSEDOtKbz9rZub9ctkyi0Fti2ZHJ4VxSKHTUl8

Beats taking it up the arse at the fool bowser ;)

https://previews.123rf.com/images/rjmiz/rjmiz0805/rjmiz080500026/3032147-concept-images-depicting-high-fuel-prices.jpg

juliar wrote on Dec 9^th, 2019 at 10:15am:

Well anyone could see this coming.....

.....half a mile away!  ;D


Sir lastnail wrote on Dec 19^th, 2019 at 10:30am:

Beats taking it up the arse at the fool bowser ;)

Who's the fool - the person who fills up a gas guzzler for $80 and spends no more than 10 minutes at the petrol station or the person who recharges their EV for $20 but spends more than 3 hours at a "super" charging station doing so? If your time is worth how much you earn in net pay per hour, then the Tesla driver is the fool. If a Tesla driver has a job earning $50 per hour net then he's just wasted more than $150 waiting for his vehicle to be fully recharged. In addition:

-  the Tesla will go half the distance as the gas guzzler of equivalent size.
- you're a fool going out to Black Friday sales in the first place, regardless of what you drive.

And the cost of Tesla toy cars will rise soon with road tax being applied on distance traveled and electricity charges will rise dramatically.  And insurance cost will rise dramatically as so many of these unsafe heaps crash.

And the callous brutes who drive these heaps support Child Slavery in the cobalt mines in the Congo.

Sir lastnail wrote on Dec 19^th, 2019 at 10:30am:

Beats taking it up the arse at the fool bowser

Not really.  A Tesla costs about $90,000.00 more than a comparable petrol engined car.  It would take at least ten years of driving before you came close to spending that much on fuel.  And that's after 10 years of depreciation on your Tesla

And waiting 10 days in queues at the electric charger.

In the bushfire areas areas still without power wouldn't it be hysterical waiting to get the electric pile of junk recharged ?


And there is nothing quite like cruising along in your range anxiety Tesla toy car when the suspension breaks and a wheel falls off. Especially if you are hurtling along in busy traffic on the freeway and you have a spectacular CRASH!!!!


https://i.postimg.cc/tJk0kQv0/22093070333-bbb7b3cf01-o.jpg
Tesla goes wobble wobble whomp whomp snap thud screech CRASH!!!!!

yeah ... cause there are never queues at petrol stations ... and petrol cars never run out of gas :D :D :D

juliar wrote on Feb 14^th, 2020 at 8:30am:

And there is nothing quite like cruising along in your range anxiety Tesla toy car when the suspension breaks and a wheel falls off. Especially if you are hurtling along in busy traffic on the freeway and you have a spectacular CRASH!!!!

To be fair though, petrol engined cars can also fail in this manner,, on occasions.

John Smith wrote on Feb 14^th, 2020 at 6:00pm:

yeah ... cause there are never queues at petrol stations ... and petrol cars never run out of gas

I only ever see queues at petrol stations that sell petrol at greatly discounted rates.

I had to fill up my tank at Eaglehawk, on the Federal Highway after I left Canberra on the way back to Sydney this afternoon, and there was no queue at all.  The last time I recall queueing up for petrol was years ago, when there was a petrol strike on (and how many years ago was that?).

Wolseley wrote on Feb 16^th, 2020 at 9:58pm:

I only ever see queues at petrol stations that sell petrol at greatly discounted rates.

so there are queues at petrol stations, and there are usually a dozen petrol stations within a couple of city blocks. How many chatge stations by comparison? any wonder there are queues.


Wolseley wrote on Feb 16^th, 2020 at 9:58pm:

The last time I recall queueing up for petrol was years ago, when there was a petrol strike on (and how many years ago was that?).

i queue up almost every time i go to fill up.  ::)

John Smith wrote on Feb 16^th, 2020 at 11:27pm:

Wolseley wrote on Feb 16th, 2020 at 9:58pm: [quote author=Wolseley link=1575595584/10#10 date=1581854280] The last time I recall queueing up for petrol was years ago, when there was a petrol strike on (and how many years ago was that?). i queue up almost every time i go to fill up.

You must be doing something wrong then.

The thing is it takes a LOT LONGER (at least half an hour) to recharge an electric heap of junk than it does to refuel a petrol or diesel vehicle.

Now there are only a tiny number of these electric piles of junk and they ALREADY have waiting times at recharge points.

There are thousands more petrol and diesel vehicles running around which can refuel in 10 minutes and while there are some queues at busy stations generally the wait is quite short.


And Woolys your knowledge of Teslas is very little otherwise you would know that Tesla have a DESIGN FAULT where the suspension breaks after a while and a wheel falls off.

juliar wrote on Feb 17^th, 2020 at 3:41pm:

And Woolys your knowledge of Teslas is very little otherwise you would know that Tesla have a DESIGN FAULT where the suspension breaks after a while and a wheel falls off.

You jumped in to attack without thinking as usual.  I have heard of the problems Teslas are having with suspension (often referred to using the ridiculously childish description of "whompy wheels"). There are plenty of instances of design or manufacturing flaws in petrol engined cars as well (which was the point I was trying to make), some of which the manufacturers have tried to cover up rather than admitting that anything is wrong (the Ford Pinto debacle in the US is probably the worst example in recent times).

Tesla's business practices when dealing with complaints do, however, mark the company out as being pretty much the worst of a bad bunch.  Why anyone would buy any car made by a company like this and sold at inflated prices is beyond me.

Wooly, I am glad I have alerted you to how dangerous these pollution spewing very inconvenient Tesla electric heaps really are.

Another very dangerous aspect of these Tesla death traps is the Lithium ion fire bomb battery.

A lithium ion battery is prone to exploding as a fire bomb if it suffers a large impact in a crash.

As these lithium ion batteries are made up of many many individual cells then if just one cell develops a fault and become hot then this can lead to the whole battery going into a thermal runaway with the whole vehicle going up in flames.

Even just charging a Tesla can result in a fault developing in the lithium ion battery and the car catching fire. This has already happened in various places around the world.

https://cdn.abcotvs.com/dip/images/4926905_121818-kgo-tesla-reignite-img_Image_23-01-52,19.jpg
Tesla S - up she goes whoosh!!!!!

What does the average Joe Blow reckon about these range anxiety electric toy cars ?


DT 20/02/2020, 7:49 am
Easy as that?

Who will pay the cost of demolishing liquid fuel distribution and service station tanks and pumps and replacing them with enough recharging points to cope with holiday demand, for example?

Even if an equivalent EV was available for comparable pricing to ICEV what would the trade-in value be for used ICEV?

How would the electricity grid cope with the new demand for energy given all the problems happening now with renewable energy?

Who would pay the cost of upgrading the electricity transmission lines, providing additional or larger sub-stations to service the EV energy demand, and for the power points (415V 3-phase) for recharging EV quickly in homes and workplaces?

And that range issue, a very expensive EV today might offer 500 Km fully charged but manufacturers recommend regular charging to 80% battery capacity to avoid early battery failure, so the real range is 400 Km.

But then energy usage increases with speed, driver and passenger load, luggage, accessories such as air conditioner on, hills, headwind and speed. There are also issues in very hot or very cold weather. I have read from US sources that a cautious EV user must discount the 400 Km range with 80% battery charge by 25-30% to account for variable factors. So minus 25% and real range becomes 300 Km.

Add a heavy trailer boat or caravan and deduct 50% to 150 Km.

As for the cost of energy too often journalists and sales people claim that electricity is far cheaper than petrol-diesel liquid fuels. Liquid fuels are taxed so to correctly compare either deduct the fuel tax or add an equivalent tax to EV recharging or road use, because governments will not lose fuel tax revenue.

And then consider replacement of battery pack, we don’t normally replace fuel tanks.

Finally, maybe, consider Lithium ion batteries and exothermic reaction, a potentially almost instant fireball in a collision, even from bumping the under floor batteries hard. And the only way to extinguish the fire is lots of cooling water to lower the temperature to the point where the flames can be extinguished. Even after that is achieved EVs in wrecking yards have reignited some time after the first fire. I do realise that liquid fuel fires happen but Lithium ion is a much different threat, and there are too few EVs on the roads globally to assess the situation, but fires have already occurred.

I am not against EV technology, but believe that for Australian conditions Toyota got it right with their Hybrid technology, plug in to charge battery pack and electric drive motors but with an on-board petrol generator for long distance travellers, and a much smaller battery pack with maybe 25-30 Km range. When the energy is low the generator starts automatically and also when more power is needed.


Albert 20/02/2020, 8:35 am
DT, what’s the point. If the sole purpose of electric vehicles is to reduce emissions then the addition of a ICE for long distance travellers just stuffed up the whole theory. In addition, what about the short life span of batteries and the exorbitant cost of replacement batteries.
Then we have the problem of what to do with expired batteries as their disposal is set to create an environmental horror story.
Of course, we can’t forget about the price of electric vehicles and I believe they are currently going for somewhere between $80,000 to $100,000 for a small vehicle that couldn’t pull the skin of a rice pudding let alone a laden caravan.
Sorry but this bran fart has a long way to go before it even begins to make sense with or without the aid of ICE.


luk1955 20/02/2020, 7:51 am
You can damm well bet the governments, in cohesion with the 5G network, will have total control of those electric cars. Want a quick trip to the grocery, no way. Want to go to a protest gathering, no way. You will need permission from the government to use your electric car. This is the real reason behind these explosive vehicles. To totally control your freedom of movements. And there will have to be either nuclear power or more coal fired power plants to generate the massive amounts of power needed for these mobile jail cells. Their emissions will come from the power plants, and the rare earth mining for the motors for these cars will leave huge scars on the landscape for thousands of years.


Aktosplatz 20/02/2020, 10:12 am
All of this buggering about because of a whipped up aversion to fossil fuels for no realistic plausible reason.

All based on crap computer modelling and greedy investors in low efficiency renewable energy.

I hope everyone has signed that petition DT organised here on the general comments page.

juliar wrote on Dec 9^th, 2019 at 10:15am:

Well anyone could see this coming when a few more of these useless electric toy cars get about and take at least half an hour to recharge. Queues lasting up to 3 hours will be commonplace. And free charging will end and an equivalent road tax based on distance traveled will come in. And after a few more crashes and fires the insurance for a toy electric car will skyrocket.

CHarge at home then. Easy, have a problem? Theres always a solution

BH the very few people that CAN charge at home are in a tiny minority.

People in the country who can afford the vast number of solar panels to make it worthwhile can do it probably.

But those in the bushfire areas would have had a very lean time with all the smoke blocking the non-functioning solar panels and lots of places also had no power for weeks. And what about the rain blocking the non-functioning solar panels ?

But BH your inability to see outside your own tiny circle means you don't understand that very few people in the city areas have a north facing roof and lots of people park on the street. And the electric heaps are most suited for short commuter trips in the city.

BH next thing you will say you don't understand the first thing about how solar panels work in the moonlight.

Hey socko why don't you report these accidents ???

Two families in 'miracle' escape after automatic brakes on their Tesla Model X cars stopped them being crushed to death by a falling tree during Storm Dennis

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8012215/Tesla-Model-X-automatic-brakes-stopped-two-families-crushed-tree-Storm-Dennis.html

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/02/17/21/24856038-8012215-image-a-1_1581976703770.jpg

Wolseley wrote on Feb 17^th, 2020 at 1:17am:

John Smith wrote on Feb 16th, 2020 at 11:27pm: Wolseley wrote on Feb 16th, 2020 at 9:58pm: [quote author=Wolseley link=1575595584/10#10 date=1581854280] The last time I recall queueing up for petrol was years ago, when there was a petrol strike on (and how many years ago was that?). i queue up almost every time i go to fill up. You must be doing something wrong then.

i agree ... i need an electric car :D :D

The usual FAKE rubbish from the loony Greeny who is a Tesla Fan Girl.

Most normal cars today all have automatic braking if a collision is imminent. So much for the sad usual rubbish from the loony uneducated Greeny.

Mr Smith, the unsafe electric heaps typically have to wait about 3 hours to get onto a charger as each one of these range anxiety heaps takes about half an hour.

juliar wrote on Feb 20^th, 2020 at 9:05pm:

The usual FAKE rubbish from the loony Greeny who is a Tesla Fan Girl. Most normal cars today all have automatic braking if a collision is imminent. So much for the sad usual rubbish from the loony uneducated Greeny. Mr Smith, the unsafe electric heaps typically have to wait about 3 hours to get onto a charger as each one of these range anxiety heaps takes about half an hour.

what's fake about it cockhead ?

juliar wrote on Feb 20^th, 2020 at 9:05pm:

The usual FAKE rubbish from the loony Greeny who is a Tesla Fan Girl. Most normal cars today all have automatic braking if a collision is imminent. So much for the sad usual rubbish from the loony uneducated Greeny. Mr Smith, the unsafe electric heaps typically have to wait about 3 hours to get onto a charger as each one of these range anxiety heaps takes about half an hour.

You up all night driving socko are you ?? :D LOL

Mention the unsafe Tesla death cars and the loony uneducated Greeny is sucked right in.

Yes they are so unsafe that is why the share price has gone through the roof :D LOL

https://smallcaps.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Tesla-Nasdaq-share-price-chart-2020.jpg

The silly fool Greeny uses the standard Greeny scam of displaying her ignorance with a sham "graph".

Not very bright uneducated Greenies are notorious for displaying their ignorance with doctored "graphs" which are pure bulldust.


https://cs.copart.com/v1/AUTH_svc.pdoc00001/PIX241/b02558c0-1eb0-4e5c-839e-0ca8c4d91f3f.JPG
Gee these Tesla 3 death traps don't stop very well with their crummy brakes.

Keep posting car accidents socko. It makes the Tesla share price stronger everytime you post :D LOL

https://smallcaps.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Tesla-Nasdaq-share-price-chart-2020.jpg

Sir lastnail wrote on Feb 24^th, 2020 at 1:26pm:

Keep posting car accidents socko. It makes the Tesla share price stronger everytime you post :D LOL https://smallcaps.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Tesla-Nasdaq-share-price-chart-2020.jpg

Yes it just confirms what a dill he/she is !

What an earth shattering team Reddy and the loony Greeny with the FAKE GRAPH.

But back to reality as another unsafe dangerous pollution spewing very inconvenient Tesla 3 is shortened a bit.

There is a rumor that these sick Tesla things are going to be hit with a Pollution Tax for causing excessive emissions at the coal power stations where the Tesla exhaust is.


https://i.postimg.cc/cC5zPFLw/Capture.jpg

Why are electric cars not replacing the conventional cars?
Fady Nabil, Senior Software Engineer (2010-present)
Answered 21h ago

Because, people can not be fooled.

EV cars have so many drawbacks that they are simply deal breakers :

Range is not a problem, in a gasoline car, even a car with 200 KM range is Ok, since you can refill in minutes.

The problem is the charging time, which can be full day from home (giving you have a house and a Garage, most people don’t) or 1–4 hours from a fast charger. Anything that refills in more than 5 min is NOT ACCEPTABLE for anyone who have a real job. Arguments like lunch or coffee while charging is really desperate! You are just trying to find something to do while your appliance is charging!

Range Inconsistence, Some car claims to have 500 KM of range (That’s expensive), but actually that only applies to the city driving, on highways, with higher speeds, you could easily drop to 1/3 or half the range! That does not happen with an ICE car.

It’s not fun! and yeah, that’s important. No engine sounds, no gear shifts, it sounds like an electric appliance.

They are expensive, A Tesla model 3 that basically looks like a Mazda 3 crashed into a bump starts from 35,000 $, and you will have to reach 60,000 $ to have a useful range. That’s a very poor car that starts from the BMW Series 3 price up to the price of a Jaguar E-Type.

Teslas have high tire wear due to the very high acceleration from start.

giving you have a house and a Garage, most people don’t



Actually a lot do.

https://www.skoda-auto.com/news/news-detail/vision-e



Drools, since juliars problem seems to be with Teslas should have no problems with this one

BH you know you are technically agnostic.

All electric heaps share most of the same impractical problems.

Australians don't want them.

BH would you want to be saddled with one of these electric toasters on wheels and have to wait 3 hours for a charge ?

BH do you think you could recharge your electric appliance over night with your solar panels ?

true thats why you only have to wait 30 mins on a chrge

BH you are forgiven for being technically agnostic - you forget about the electric toasters on wheels queued up in front of you.

But you could easily recharge your electric toaster on wheels with your solar panels over night.

Now what armchair waving BH HATES and AVOIDS - reality!!!  And especially Google which gives him Google Bumps!!!!



Unhappy Tesla owners wait in long line to have their electric cars charged
2018-03-05 19:00

The future of electric vehicles according to energy experts
California - Tesla owners in California were photographed waiting in a long line to charge their electric vehicles.

A tweet, posted on Monday 5 March, shows at least 10 cars parked behind one another.

READ: Electric cars are changing the world and they’re just getting started

https://i.postimg.cc/wj3PF6xW/Capture.jpg
The photograph was also the subject of a thread on Reddit: "Mountain View, California Tesla Supercharger waiting line approximately one hour ago... (When a 45 minute recharge becomes a 4 hour nightmare)"


Mark B. Spiegel
Mar 5, 2018
Mountain View, California $TSLA Supercharger waiting line approximately one hour ago...

Ready for the mass market!

https://i.postimg.cc/cJxppVSj/Capture.jpg


Mark B. Spiegel
@markbspiegel
·
Mar 5, 2018
Update from a moment ago... The line is now 10-deep-- I can't wait to see the fights break out between the S/X drivers and the plebian Model 3 drivers, lol...

https://i.postimg.cc/6qCwWn11/Capture.jpg

Australia’s emerging issue of congestion at electric vehicle charging stations
OCTOBER 26, 2019 DAVE SOUTHGATE

https://thedriven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/IMG20191006130955-copy-800x400.jpg
Congestion at electric vehicle charging stations seems to be a rapidly emerging issue.

The recent influx of second generation EVs, with their greater range, is enticing many more drivers into taking regional or longer distance EV road trips.

A lot of us now seem to be turning up at the same charger at the same time.

In a recent road trip article I wrote for The Driven, I described a congestion situation at the NRMA charger at Mittagong which generated lots of comments.

As a result of these comments, and discussions with friends, I think it is worthwhile airing some possible responses to this situation.

In the long term, I assume we will reach a state of equilibrium and the supply of chargers will more or less meet demand. The challenge is in the short term as we navigate the ICE to EV transition.

How can we use our chargers most effectively?

In this article I want to focus my comments on congestion at en route rapid chargers which are mainly used by travellers.

Managing congestion at destination chargers is quite a different issue – I’ve been caught out a few times by that problem as well.

At the Charger
Encouraging drivers to stay with their car

It seems to me that a lot of the congestion ill-feeling is generated by drivers who simply hook‑up their cars for a full charge and then disappear.

A simple solution to this situation would be to incorporate some form of timer into all chargers.



At the end of a specified time period a charger would be designed to halt charging and release the cable (this could require some modification to current car design rules).

I think a maximum charge time of 30 mins would be appropriate. This amount of time would allow the driver to have a toilet break and grab a cup of coffee.

Thirty minutes of DC charging takes our Leaf from 20% to 80% full. If there is no queue the driver can simply re‑start the charging if desired.

Remove free charging
At the moment many EV chargers do not have a monetary charge.

This is providing a strong incentive for local drivers to regularly charge their cars at en route chargers.

I look forward to the day when all chargers impose a cost and believe that the cost of the electricity should be more than domestic rates so that charging at home is cheaper.

Having said that, I recognise that some EV owners without the ability to charge at home (eg apartment dwellers; houses without off‑street parking) will often have little choice but to ‘fill up’ at chargers used by travellers.

Notices encouraging reasonable behaviour
I would like to see some form of charging behaviour protocol developed and have this prominently displayed on chargers.

I don’t think it’s too hard to think of a list of ‘dos and don’ts’ which most of us would like to see adhered to.



These would in effect just seek that EV drivers consider other people and be aware of the inconvenience they can cause other travellers through thoughtless behaviour.

More Chargers?
Many people’s response to congestion is simply to say ‘add another charger’. I’m somewhat wary of this approach.

In the first instance, at many current charging locations it is likely to be technically difficult to simply add more chargers due to site constraints (eg lack of power; lack of parking space).

Maybe more importantly, at the moment it seems to me that many of the congestion problems are more related to poor behaviour than real lack of charging capacity.

I would favour behaviour control being introduced before charger replication at any given site.

As more chargers are rolled out across the country I believe careful consideration needs to be given to where they are located. System design is important.

In the long run I can envisage multiple futuristic EV charging stations with all sorts of shops and cafes along the length of our major highways but at this preliminary stage in the transition I think we should aim for having a dispersed charging network.

I believe it is important not to solely concentrate new chargers on a few ‘thick routes’ (eg the Hume Highway) as a kneejerk reaction to intermittent congestion.

I think the NRMA is doing the right thing by spreading its chargers throughout regional centres in NSW. This will hopefully have the effect of dispersing, rather than concentrating, EV travel.

Changing the Mindset
At the moment it seems to me that many EV drivers have a state of mind built around the petrol car: drive fast until you run out of fuel; fill up; and then repeat the process as many times as needed until you get to your destination.

This doesn’t necessarily work for EVs. I believe with a change of mindset we can reduce the amount of rapid charging that is undertaken.

Minimising rapid charging is both good for your EV and good for congestion.


Slow down – you will get there faster!
The efficiency of any car is reduced the faster it goes.

If you hare along in an EV you will use more energy and hence reduce your range.


Read on why Australians do NOT want these inconvenient electric appliances

https://thedriven.io/2019/10/26/congestion-pax-how-to-behave-at-electric-vehicle-charging-stations/

Captain Pugwash • 5 months ago
We should be looking at more advanced markets rather than trying to come up with bespoke solutions that rely on people being nice. It won’t take long before you get charger rage, and that’s before less EV community minded people start buying EVs. There are lots of lessons to be learnt from overseas and lots of lessons still to be learnt the hard way.

I only entered the world of EV ownership a month ago and I intentionally picked an EV with the longest possible range for this very reason. I wanted charging on the road to be the exception not the rule and I expected congestion to be an issue. One charger at a location is a token effort at best and was always going to a weak point in the charging network.. Tesla, Ionity, Electrify American and now Chargefox and Evie seem to understand that you need 6 chargers or similar at a location on major highways. Look at some of the supercharger stations in Norway. They have row after row of chargers. Ultimately I can see some sort of automated queuing system to get people in and out quickly.

Then you have the issue of charging speed. My car does 200kW plus peak but some brand new models can only manage 50kW. Should the faster cars be using the faster chargers, should a Leaf hook up to and “ hog” a 350kW charger? We need smart solutions that don’t rely on people being nice to strangers. Just look at our government policy on being nice to “ others”. Enough said...... not that we shouldn’t push to raise the bar and expectations.


More COMMENTS here

https://thedriven.io/2019/10/26/congestion-pax-how-to-behave-at-electric-vehicle-charging-stations/

Electric cars: the uncomfortable truth
Andrew Frankel DECEMBER 12TH 2018 - LAST UPDATED: DECEMBER 3RD 2019

Electric cars are just another bridge to the real answer, reckons Andrew Frankel  (Hydrogen!!!!)

https://msmproduction.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/content/Road%20cars/Audi/audi_e-tron.jpg
Audi e-tron

This Saturday I was meant to be doing a race like no other. For personal and professional scheduling reasons (altogether too boring to go into) I had to decline the opportunity, which is a shame.

Otherwise, I’d have been lining up on Saudi Arabia’s Ad Diriyah circuit to race a Jaguar I-Pace in the first round of the first-ever one-make race series for pure electric cars.

The I-Pace is the best electric car on sale at present but, like them all, it’s still heavy and all but silent, not qualities you’d usually associate with the creation of a great racing car. But I don’t know what I’d have thought of the car and it would have been fascinating to find out.

It was no less fascinating to drive Audi’s first all-electric car in the Abu Dhabi desert last week. This isn’t a review – there are other, more pressing things to say – but for those who are interested, the e-tron is an expensive five-seat SUV, just like the I-Pace, but takes a rather different approach.

While the Jaguar is unashamedly avant-garde in design, as if to celebrate the new technology it contains, the Audi is quite the reverse. It is as conservative in style and execution as any other Audi, as if the idea of driving an electric car is already quite adventurous enough… I prefer Jaguar’s strategy, but Audi’s may be more appealing over time.

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) will come to dominate in the medium-term but they are not the long-term answer
Back to the desert. We were told the speed limit was 75mph, and to adhere rigidly to it because the penalties for transgressors were steep.

Of course the cynic in me also thought this would help preserve battery life on what was an ambitiously long route for an electric car, and Audi probably wouldn’t want journalists running out of juice all over the Emirate. But then we found a new stretch of motorway with a clearly posted speed limit of 100mph, so I cruised along in triple figures, expecting the range to be decimated.

We then got lost in the desert and found ourselves on an arrow-straight dirt track with visibility measurable in dozens of miles in every direction – so I came over all Dakar warrior and, let’s just say, didn’t hang around on that surface either. Yet the e-tron still did 200 miles before reaching an allotted stop and still had 50 miles of range left when Audi took it back.

More: Lola’s all-electric race car project that never was

So far so good. And, extraordinarily, Audi had brought a mobile charging station along that provided another 200 miles of range in less than half an hour. At home I would have had to leave it all night to charge.

And this is just the start: Audi’s charger was rated at 150kW; a 3-pin plug at home is rated at about 3.6kW.

But a new generation of even faster chargers from a European manufacturer’s consortium called Ionity is rolling out all over Europe and will be in the UK next year. These can charge at up to 350kW meaning that – according to its website – ‘a vehicle capable of the full 350kW charging power can be charged in approx. 10-15 minutes’.

Put another way, on the rare occasions we do really long distances, we’ll have to stop for a quick coffee every three to four hours, which most of us might choose to do anyway.

More: “For a company like Tesla, this whiffs of desperation”

But that’s the tipping point. I reckon that a normal fuel stop for a car with an average sized tank takes around seven minutes from engine off to engine on – if there’s not too much of a queue for the tills, if you don’t need the loo and if you don’t spend too long agonising over sandwich choice. But in a petrol or diesel car, you have no choice but to leave home with whatever’s in the tank, while in an electric car you’ll always leave home with a full battery, reducing the chance of needing to stop in the first place.

So the future is finally here, we can embrace electricity, abandon fossil fuels and surge into a brave, new and environmentally unimpeachable new world order of personal transport.

Or can we?

As it stands, the truth today is rather different. Right now, there is nowhere in the UK you can charge at even 150kW, let alone 350kW, and that’s because until now there have been no cars on sale that can accept a 150kW charge. The Audi e-tron is the first.

But let’s say that’s just an infrastructure issue and, within 5 years the country is plastered with stations capable of 350kW or more, and the roads full of cars that can accept a zap of that magnitude.

Where is all that power going to come from when our poor old national grid gets a fit of the vapors if too many people switch the kettle on at the same time?

And how is the govt going to replace those billions currently raised in fuel tax? It will have no choice but to tax electricity in the same way, so if you’re expecting it still to be cheap to top up your battery, you will absolutely be needing to think again.

Read on why these electric heaps are doomed just like in the 1800's.

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/road-cars/electric-cars-uncomfortable-truth

ead on why Australians do NOT want these inconvenient electric appliance



Wow try reading the article. Its not arguing what you think it does as all.

BH U R just trying your round and round the mulberry bush stuff again.

I am well aware of what the article actually says and it repudiates your petty attempts at playing your circular games of just half denying everything.  But keep going if that sort of stuff amuses you.  Small things etc. I will leave you to it as it becomes rather boring after a while.

It doesn't give you reasons not to buy an EV, just things to look out for.

BH I hope you buy one of these dangerous unsafe pollution spewing very inconvenient electric heaps and discover for yourself why Australians don't want them.