Electric Cars Discussion

[Briz Vegas]

I read a 2017 quote from a GM president saying no RHD because they are in business to make money.  Just Google Bolt RHD.

 

A company' s philosophy matters to me as rightly or wrongly ( as a car guy) I feel my car makes a statement about me. For other people it's prestige or how the car looks.  Look at the dominance of dual cabs at the moment. People want to be see as rugged everyman or woman.

[Briz Vegas]

M O T O C H I M P

 

it looks uncomfortable but apparently it isn't. I am guessing that the legs back look reduces frontal area and therefore wind resistance.

 

i used to love Pez dispensers as a kid.  Pointless but amusing.

 

£1300 . That's cheaper than a lot of electric bicycles.

 

 

[proftournesol]

For those of us that live in apartments...

Quote

How many Teslas does it take to black out an apartment block?

By Sophie Vorrath onMay 23, 2017

While Australia’s slow uptake of electric vehicles is a source of great frustration to some, to others, like the nation’s owners and builders of apartment blocks, it offers precious time to work through some of the more thorny problems that are expected to arise out of mass EV uptake.

Problems such as: Who pays for the electricity used to charge an EV in an apartment building carpark? How do you bill it? How much will it cost apartment dwellers to charge their EVs at home? Where should EV charging stations be put? What does it do to a building’s emissions profile? And how many Tesla Model S cars can be charged at one apartment block before its lifts cut out?

As it turns out, all of these questions and more are about to be addressed in a comprehensive new study by Sydney-based start-up, Wattblock, backed by grant funding from the City of Sydney and the NSW government’s innovate program.

Wattblock, which was founded through the Telstra Muru-D acceleration program, specialises in energy and solar reports for residential strata buildings.

From its headquarters at the Michael Crouch Innovation Centre at UNSW in Sydney, and at River City Labs in Brisbane, the two-and-a-half year old company has so far helped more than 1000 strata buildings across Australia to cut their energy costs through efficiency and demand management measures.

The feasibility study on electric vehicle charging, to be conducted over the next six months, will encompass 20 apartment buildings in Sydney and another 20 in south-east Queensland (in conjunction with Griffith University and Energex).

According to the company’s co-founder and director, Brent Clark, it will answer questions around EV charging that are already starting to plague apartment dwellers and bodies corporate, as the number of EV owners in apartment dense cities like the Gold Coast start to rise.

“It’s about breaking down the barriers that you’ve currently got on apartment blocks,” Clark told One Step Off The Grid in an interview on Tuesday.

“At the moment, people who live in an apartment and want to buy an EV, they’ve just got challenges in front of them.”

To illustrate this point, Clark cites the example of a relatively small strata building in Pyrmont that already houses two Model S Tesla owners.

“If one more buys a Tesla the lift will stop working,” Clark said. “A third person is not allowed to charge inside the building until they find a solution.”

Larger buildings can charge more vehicles, he notes, “but basically no apartment block (in Australia) has the capacity to charge multiple EVs,” despite this very scenario being just around the corner, with cheaper EV models like the new Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Model 3 set to hit the market.

And it’s already happening elsewhere in the world. In San Francisco, for example, Clark talks about a building, The Lumina, that was marketed off the plan as having 25 apartments that would come with EV recharging.

“They got flooded with EV owners, and they’ve now 45 EVs in that complex,” he said.

In terms of load, Clark says, the electricity required to charge an EV is like adding another apartment into the block.

“What you want if you are a strata builder is you want to defer the upgrade of your main switchboard at all costs, because that is a huge capital expense,” he said.

“It is also costly to string cabling to individual car spots in the car park,” he added. “So body corporates should look at running higher amp cabling in the car park, and the apartment owners can pay for the final connection, if they need it.”

But the cost and management of electricity supply are not the only problems facing apartment builders and owners.

“Some initial some initial buildings that tried putting (communal) car chargers in a busy car parking place have also run into trouble.

“Ultimately, you’ve got to pass a by-law to limit the number of hours that any one vehicle can stay on a charger.”

Among the solutions Wattblock expects to canvass to address these problems are better planning in new buildings, and in pre-existing apartment blocks, the use of demand management, solar, battery storage, and energy efficiency to make more car-charging capacity available.

“At what point could we implement a power management solution that might be able to increase by a power of 10 the number of EVs being able to be charged at the building without overloading the main switchboard?” Clark says.

“Do we have strata buildings with designated spots for car-share car parking that are not being used, that could that be adapted to be an EV charge station?

“And if you have a precinct, a number of strata plans together, would they be interested in investing in a supercharging station?”

The other challenges come from a carbon abatement perspective, where you’re driving up building’s emissions if you’re using coal-based power to charge the EVs.

This is where solar and batteries might come in, says Clark, or if the apartment block doesn’t have enough room for solar, purchasing green power.

According to Clark, solar and batteries are now delivering payback to a strata building within about 10 years. And it is a market with huge untapped potential for the technologies.

“Obviously, the size of the solar system would be dependent on the roof area available,” he notes,” but across Australia we estimate that strata buildings consume 10 per cent of the national grid.

“So there’s at least a billion dollar solar opportunity on strata buildings.”

That said, Clark adds that, currently, you can count on your hands the number of apartment buildings that have built-in solar and/or batteries.

Energy security is another concern: “What if there is a power outage? Is there a case there for batteries?”

The challenge right now for Wattblock, however, is to find the 40 buildings for their case studies.

“We have found five apartment blocks that have electric vehicle owners in them, but we’re looking for more,” Clark said.

Considering the fact that, as of last year, apartments were the most common dwelling being built in Australia, this should not be too hard. But time is of the essence.

Any interested buildings in the City of Sydney can register here. South East Queensland strata buildings can register here.

 

[Briz Vegas]

Right.  Good one.  I will pass this on to some folks I know that are working in this space, so to speak.  

[Guest rmpfyf]

4 hours ago, Briz Vegas said:

Right.  Good one.  I will pass this on to some folks I know that are working in this space, so to speak.  

 

What? That problem came and went - quite a few solutions in market that do managed vehicle charging for fleets (no offence @proftournesol).

 

Evercharge was a small example, ChargePoint handles it fairly well.

[proftournesol]

7 hours ago, rmpfyf said:

 

What? That problem came and went - quite a few solutions in market that do managed vehicle charging for fleets (no offence @proftournesol).

 

Evercharge was a small example, ChargePoint handles it fairly well.

There are solutions for managing vehicle charging, there aren't solutions for building spare power capacity to handle multiple EVs charging at the same time. My apartment block has 2 floors of car parking including a level of car stackers. How do you charge a car on a stacker?

[Briz Vegas]

There may be tech solutions out there but you need to do holistic assessments of the issue in real life scenarios to see which is the best fit for a given set of circumstances.

 

This sort of stuff is useful for drafting building codes and the like. When working with emerging technology any regulatory solutions need to be performance based rather than mandating x or y solution or trying to get one size to fit all.

 

If it's a market based way forward then it's useful for other body corporates trying to meet demand.  They can see what others have done and if it worked before jumping themselves.

Edited May 25, 2017 by Briz Vegas

[Briz Vegas]

Prof, regarding capacity in a building for multiple cars, isn't time shifting to offpeak part of the solution with EVs. 

 

Use that wasted energy from coal plants that are feeding naff all demand at 2 am in the morning.  It's part of the argument that even on coal power EVs can be a good thing because they can reduce wasted energy.

Edited May 25, 2017 by Briz Vegas

[betty boop]

I was told recently by a car maker heavily into electric cars that it is the reason electric cars haven't really taken off in Japan and unlikely to in short term because they mostly park on streets abd public places and don't have homes typically with their own garage or place to park their own car to charge.

 

sonething probably not dis similar to great slabs of inner suburbs in Melb where people don't even have car ports let alone garages and street parking is all there is. And lucky in that if can find a place to park anywhere in front of your house.

 

Regardless of what electric cars evangelists proclaim, these are all kind of things have to be resolved for broad take up of electric cars. There are lot of things with regards infrastructure let  alone having the cars thst people want and need that need to get sorted !

 

[Hergest]

Regarding the charging of EVs in apartment complexes, there's a lot more to it than simply who pays. The biggest issue for most people at least in Sydney is that the vast majority of apartment blocks don't have power points in the car park areas. I do a lot of work in unit basements making these...

 

 

And it's rare to have power points apart from in the garbage compactor rooms and no possibility of running power across the car park without large expenditure.

[joz]

And if you have no off street parking what then.

Building regulations don't take into account that a dwelling may have two cars, they don't need multiple spaces even if they have resin dental space for two or more tenants.

[proftournesol]

1 hour ago, al said:

I was told recently by a car maker heavily into electric cars that it is the reason electric cars haven't really taken off in Japan and unlikely to in short term because they mostly park on streets abd public places and don't have homes typically with their own garage or place to park their own car to charge.

 

sonething probably not dis similar to great slabs of inner suburbs in Melb where people don't even have car ports let alone garages and street parking is all there is. And lucky in that if can find a place to park anywhere in front of your house.

 

Regardless of what electric cars evangelists proclaim, these are all kind of things have to be resolved for broad take up of electric cars. There are lot of things with regards infrastructure let  alone having the cars thst people want and need that need to get sorted !

 

There is huge penetration of EVs in places like Amsterdam and they are almost exclusively on street parking. Amsterdam is also full of on-street EV charging stations so you can just park and plug. Its an issue that is easy to solve but it requires political will and investment in infrastructure.

Hegest it cost me $2k to install 3 phase power to my apartment wall charger, but that's OK because in a year or two other people can pay me to use it

Our building is 2 years old and we only have capacity for 1 more charger before we need to update the building electrics.

[proftournesol]

The other issue is that apartment charging infrastructure requirements are uncertain as if autonomous EVs become common in the next few years then individual car ownership is likely to drop

[joz]

Of course in the future when we all have EVs I wonder what the country highway charging stations will look like as hundred of cars are wanting a recharge for a long trip.

[betty boop]

24 minutes ago, proftournesol said:

There is huge penetration of EVs in places like Amsterdam and they are almost exclusively on street parking. Amsterdam is also full of on-street EV charging stations so you can just park and plug. Its an issue that is easy to solve but it requires political will and investment in infrastructure.

Hegest it cost me $2k to install 3 phase power to my apartment wall charger, but that's OK because in a year or two other people can pay me to use it

Our building is 2 years old and we only have capacity for 1 more charger before we need to update the building electrics.

 

we are spending up hugely on infrastructure currently as a nation, but this really doesnt seem on our radar ...

[joz]

14 minutes ago, al said:

 

we are spending up hugely on infrastructure currently as a nation, but this really doesnt seem on our radar ...

 

Well not before they can perfect a taxing system for all the cars not paying for a fuel excise.

[Hergest]

53 minutes ago, joz said:

Of course in the future when we all have EVs I wonder what the country highway charging stations will look like as hundred of cars are wanting a recharge for a long trip.

 

I suppose not greatly different from now in that each car parking space would have a charger on it so while you go in for a coffee and break the car charges. I wouldn't have thought you would have a huge amount more people wanting to charge than the amount of folks you get now wanting a break. Also most off highway places I've stopped in have enormous amounts of spare ground to enlarge the car park/charging area.

 

*edit.

It could also become a great attraction of country towns bypassed by a major new highway if the local council develop a solar farm and offer free or minimal cost on street recharging while visitors spend money keeping the local cafes and shops alive. The opportunities could be huge.

Edited May 26, 2017 by Hergest

[betty boop]

can you imagine the change in psyche required from governments and councils ?

 

right now they CHARGE you to park wiht their parking meters and huge fines if overstay...

 

in the future we will expect them to charge the cars instead  

 

again 10 years ago california was doing this at the ferry terminals... shows how far back we are in our thinking. 

 

needs a mind shift ...

[joz]

41 minutes ago, Hergest said:

 

I suppose not greatly different from now in that each car parking space would have a charger on it so while you go in for a coffee and break the car charges. I wouldn't have thought you would have a huge amount more people wanting to charge than the amount of folks you get now wanting a break. Also most off highway places I've stopped in have enormous amounts of spare ground to enlarge the car park/charging area.

 

 

 

That's what I would have thought.

But as it is ATM a car pulls in at a servo refuels and pays and could be traveling again in ten minutes without a need to stop again from anything to 500-1000 kms. Also that would be a lot of cars needed if to be recharged.

But an EV will have at least twice as many stops which will take upto an hour.

Anyhow that's today, hopefully in the future it will be more efficient as I'm hugely in favor of the benefits of EVs.

 

[proftournesol]

2 hours ago, joz said:

Of course in the future when we all have EVs I wonder what the country highway charging stations will look like as hundred of cars are wanting a recharge for a long trip.

I regularly commute between Melbourne and NE Victoria. I stop to charge at the Euroa supercharger because its free for me but unless you buy a Model S you will be charged money to recharge your car. If I need to I can do the whole trip easily without stopping by charging to at least 90% before I leave Melbourne. If I leave with a charge under 90% then I'd be looking at a 10 minute stop at Euroa, a toilet break or a very quick queue for take away. Charging speeds will only increase as battery technology improves so I don't imagine it'll be that different other than not needing a formal refuelling forecourt, cars will just charge where they park.

It does create an opportunity for much better quality roadside food 

[joz]

3 hours ago, proftournesol said:

I regularly commute between Melbourne and NE Victoria. I stop to charge at the Euroa supercharger because its free for me but unless you buy a Model S you will be charged money to recharge your car. If I need to I can do the whole trip easily without stopping by charging to at least 90% before I leave Melbourne. If I leave with a charge under 90% then I'd be looking at a 10 minute stop at Euroa, a toilet break or a very quick queue for take away. Charging speeds will only increase as battery technology improves so I don't imagine it'll be that different other than not needing a formal refuelling forecourt, cars will just charge where they park.

It does create an opportunity for much better quality roadside food 

 

Prof, I understand that it happens to work well for you atm but for many people that just does not cut it.

Unfortunately as it exists at the moment I could not survive with an EV as my only transporter ( also I just can't find the moola for a Tesla yet)

But I really do hope both scenarios will be rectified sooner rather than later because although I haven't driven one yet I could happily see myself with one, one day.

[betty boop]

3 minutes ago, joz said:

 

Prof, I understand that it happens to work well for you atm but for many people that just does not cut it.

Unfortunately as it exists at the moment I could not survive with an EV as my only transporter ( also I just can't find the moola for a Tesla yet)

But I really do hope both scenarios will be rectified sooner rather than later because although I haven't driven one yet I could happily see myself with one, one day.

 

same, as it is wont work for me.... as my main source of transport. 

 

perhaps it might work for the family run about. smaller trips, and that is a future possilibty

 

but yeah either way cost wise not a reality at moment in anycase.

[GregWormald]

3 hours ago, proftournesol said:

It does create an opportunity for much better quality roadside food 

 

And an equal opportunity to rip you off for very substandard fare.

[proftournesol]

23 minutes ago, joz said:

 

Prof, I understand that it happens to work well for you atm but for many people that just does not cut it.

Unfortunately as it exists at the moment I could not survive with an EV as my only transporter ( also I just can't find the moola for a Tesla yet)

But I really do hope both scenarios will be rectified sooner rather than later because although I haven't driven one yet I could happily see myself with one, one day.

Current EVs won't work for every single person on every single trip but already they'd work for most people most trips, this will only improve. It also requires a change in habit, recharge at night and you'd have 300-450km range at the start of each day, enough for most people now and this will only improve. Expect more charging at work, in shopping strips and shopping centres etc so that regular opportunities for top ups will be there. If you drive 1000km a day at the moment you'll have to wait unless you're doing it up the Hume. Our Tesla is now effectively our only car, the poor old smart is parked in the shed up in the north east, it gets maybe one run every 2 months.

[proftournesol]

OK guys, get designing