Petrol is $1.60 per litre...Would you buy an electric car?

Funny you've posted this cause i rid a scooter and i was thinking 'where are all the electric scooters?'. Like, making a scooter run on electricity (read: batteries) would be MUCH easier than cars .. yet i've not heard or read about it?

in summary: yes, i would buy an electric car over a petrol car, assuming i can afford it. I bet you $5 that the first 5 odd years these electric cars will be out of reach of the average person so we'll still be stuck with archaic petrol guzzlers and killing the planet.

*sigh*

Hi Goku,

Absolutely I would consider an electric car for sure. I'm not sure if you have heard but there is a "supercar" that is electric being developed by a small company in San Francisco named Tesla Motors. The Tesla Roadster is 100% electric and does 0-100km in about 3.9seconds. Im not sure about recharge time though. I know that some of the batteries on these cars take about 8hrs to fill, which is a big problem, and is one of the main reasons why i can't get one just yet. Currently it takes about 4 minutes to fill up a petrol based car vs 8 hrs for an electric. I know which one I would prefer.

The world is definitely going to be a better place when everyone's cars are electric though.

I heard another report on the news last night that petrol consumption is actually UP and is not decreasing. I wonder what price petrol has to hit before people driving less becomes a reality.

I was just talking about this on the weekend with a friend over dinner and he said he gets about 800km to a tank on a hatchback hybrid. I was shocked!!! Hearing this definitely made think twice about the price of petrol.

Hi guys,

I was at the 2009 Melbourne International Motor show yesterday and I did see some 'coming soon' electric cars. The one that stood out was called the Mitsubishi MIEV. It's supposedly coming out in the next year or so. Here's a write up:

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FirstDrives/articleId=124867

AJ

Hi, I ride a Vectrix Electric Scooter. It has a top speed of 100km/h (Gets there very fast) and a usable range of 40km if you are riding it hard, or up to 100km if you sit on 40km/h. It costs me 30 cents a day to get to and from work. Very quiet, powerful and a joy to ride.

Regards Bruce

It's not "would you buy one" it's "where the hell are they?". Most (if not all) the major manufacturers have EVs in the works and are due 2012-ish... First (mass produced) in Australia will be the Mitsubishi iMiEV which is a plug-in EV with no petrol engine, the next biggy will be the Holden (Chevy) Volt which gets 40 miles on a charge but has a small petrol engine which keeps the batteries charged for longer drives.

If either of those were available today, I'd have one. I got sick of waiting for EVs and got myself a "new" car while I wait... stupid car companies going broke in the US could have had these out much earlier (GM had the EV1 out 10 years ago!) but instead they wanted to pump out truck-sized cars.

Bruce that is INSANE! The cost of transport for you is very efficient. But don't you get a bit worried about safety? I know that I would love to ride a bike, but I can't bring myself to get over the safety side of things. I mean If you get hit in a Car, you will be fine (for a smaller crash). But on a Scotter, just the smallest Tap from a bad driver means you will get seriously injured...does this worry you at all?

Hi AJ, the safety side of things can be a concern. I've been riding motorbikes for 35 years. I was on the police bikes for 20 years and have attended numerous serious crashes involving motorcycles. I've only attended a couple of crashes involving scooters though. I think the difference is that a large group of motorcycle riders, ride to fast and take to many "shortcuts" in traffic, increasing their risk factors. You have to treat every other vehicle on the road as a threat and stay out of their blind spots. I love riding my new scooter, it is large, quiet, no polution, very cheap to run, only $350 a year for insurance and $89 for registration. It actually saves me money and pays for itself. Saying all that, if a could have bought an electric car (Like the Tesla S Signature) I would rather drive that.

Hi Bruce7740,

Sorry about the late reply, I didn't catch yours last month!

Riding motorcycles for the police? Were you an officer? You must have seen some things in your time! Also very interesting about scooters being not such an issue in accidents. I guess people on motorcycles are more speed freaks that scooters.

I also cannot wait for the electrics to arrive. Yes the Tesla or even the new Tesla S would be amazing, fingers crossed they make it to Australian shores soon. Have a great weekend!

AJ

Hi AJ,
Yes I am a police officer. I was patroling on police motocycles up until March this year when they decided in their infinite wisdom to remove 64 motorcycles from service, leaving only 30 to patrol WA. It's always the bean counters that get their way in the end.

PS: Bike riders go faster because they can............

Regards,

Bruce

There is another option to waiting forever for the car companies to start selling EVs in Australia: You can convert an older car. I know of at least 80 EVs in Australia, from scooters to full sized cars. ( http://www.evalbum.com/geo , down the bottom for Australia.) The vast majority of those are either built from scratch or converted by their owner.

You don't even have to be particularly technically minded, if you're willing to put the time in and consult people who have done it before you. The Australian Electric Vehicle Association is full of people who are willing to help with advice or links to other websites (like, say the AEVA one: http://www.aeva.asn.au ).

I'm going to do this myself, since even if there was an EV available for sale in Australia, it wouldn't be the type of car I want. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. haha

Who would have thought that Petrol would have dropped to $1.30 almost a year after this thread started!! I certainly would not have predicted this would happen.

AJ

$1.30? Where do you get fuel? If you go Wednesday morning with a voucher of some sort you can get below $1.10 per liter, E10's even cheaper.

$1.10 per litre?!? What vouchers? I gotta get me some of those!

I too would like to know where you are getting these coupons from!!

Replacing petrol with electricity doesn't fix parking problems and traffic congestion - I'll stick with my motorbike!

Geez, you guys must all live on Mars... Vouchers from Coles (Liquorland) or Safeway get you 4c off per litre. Go in on a Wednesday morning (cheapest price of the week by 10c or more).

I filled up last week and it was around $1.13 per litre for unleaded (even less for E10).

Of course if you're talking about high-octane fuel that's another story, but if you have a car that requires premium unleaded you seriously can't be complaining about the price of petrol.

I have to use premium unleaded in my bike but I choose the day to refill - Tuesday or whenever it seems cheapest.

I use premium in my car, too. The extra cost to fill up is offset by the extra kilometres I can do to a tank on premium. It works out slightly cheaper to fill up with premium. Also I use the fuel watch emails to see where it'll be cheapest in my area before I go to fill up. (Usually the petrol station near my work is around 4 cents cheaper than the local one.)

Sounds like good advice!

Having just gotten back from the USA I was lucky enough to see an electric Tesla sportscar on the road. If this is the future I will gladly go electric. Why so long to roll this technology out?

@JVS I've heard the the cost of filling up an electric car is not that much different from petrol based ones. Could be totally wrong on that, but for some reason I think i read about it somewhere.

A few big advantages to battery EVs are...

1) You can "fill up" almost anywhere (but most likely in your home garage). No more letting fuel stations dictate your driving path. Where can you charge your mobile phone? I read yesterday the Chevy/Holden Volt will charge from 30% to 100% in around 3 hours on 240v power, how long does your mobile take to charge?

2) You can generate electricity in many ways including wind and solar. Some EV owners in California built carports with photovoltaic panels on the roof so they can charge their cars while parking. An Aussie farmer converted his Mitsubishi Triton ute to battery power and charges it with wind and solar power. Free fuel!

3) Battery technology and solar panel technology is improving almost daily. Just read a blog like Engadget and you're guaranteed to get news in either of those fields frequently.

...plus much more. Of course there are problems with them but they are technical problems, not resource problems (like running out of oil). My biggest problem with them at the moment is why the hell don't we have them here yet! My drive to work is about 25km so even something like the Volt (electric range of over 60km) could get me to and from work purely on electricity.

@soutarm "You can "fill up" almost anywhere" - as in anywhere that has an outlet? Petrol stations in AU don't have the facilities for this yet. Are they on their way?

Anywhere with a power socket.

BUT that's too much of a blanket statement. You can't just go to a Petrol Station and jack into thier power socket. Out on the road, where is the nearest 'power socket'?!?!

I've read that around A$1 billion is being spent here on establishing one of the world’s largest electric car recharging infrastructures, powered entirely by renewable energy.

There's an interesting clip here from Triple J on how petrol stations (over time) could transition more into just corner stores when demand for electric cars increase:
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/notes/s2653724.htm

Why would you go to a petrol station for electricity?

Governments around the world are setting up public charging stations in carparks etc. (anywhere you might want to leave your car) and third party organisations like Better Place (http://australia.betterplace.com/) are doing this kind of thing all over the world. Of course you won't get power for free but for those people that drive to work their employers might offer charging facilities as part of their salary package etc.

You would treat your car like you treat your phone, you don't have to go to a specialist store to recharge your phone's battery just as it's dying, you plug it in at home overnight to charge so you can use it the next day.

Cars like the Chevy Volt have an onboard engine that generate electricity allowing you to keep your battery charged if you go past the EV-only (40 miles) range giving you the ability to drive 1000 miles on a single tank (if you need to). The Tesla Roadster can go 200 miles on a single charge.

So, as battery tech improves (giving you faster charging times and longer ranges) and alternative electricity capturing methods improve (solar, wind etc.) we'll look back and laugh at how rediculous it was to go to a specialist store to refuel your car (one of the main reasons I don't like hydrogen fuel cells).

@soutarm - if I'm out on the road, where else would I go for electric power? I don't want to have to park my car to get it. Also remember that petrol stations have food and mini super markets attached, which is another reason they won't disappear anytime soon.

You can't treat your car like a phone. If your phone dies you can still get from A to B. Not so with the electric car. You will always have to go to a petrol\electic station to charge up, as long driving trips require a 'stop over' to charge up. EG - What if I'm travelling to Sydney and back? I'd need to fill up somewhere, and get a snack as well - hence a 'Electric Station'.

AJ: You are right; for long trips you can't sit there for hours waiting for the batteries to charge up. There are a few solutions to this. Firstly: Fast-charging stations, which would pump the juice in at a high rate. You need to have the car set up for this with a high-current charger and chunkier cables, and also this will shorten the life of the batteries. Secondly: You can swap batteries, which I think is a great solution but it has the problem of needing to standardise battery packs - and they are rather heavy so automated equipment would be needed to do the lifting. The third method would be to have an on-board generator to top up the battery pack. This is what the chevy volt does - and what I plan on doing with my EV conversion. Technically this makes it a series-hybrid, and you lose the green cred. But allows greater flexibility, if you can chose your fuel and aren't restricted to petrol, and of course you can't charge or swap batteries in the bush! And I plan on going 4WDing in my EV, damnit. haha.

The first two solutions will keep jobs, assuming petrol station owners are flexible enough to branch out into a new profit stream before their old one dies off. The third is better for me, personally, and for people living or working away from civilisation. The generator doesn't have to be diesel, or even internal combustion (a stirling engine appeals to me). It could even be a fuel cell of some kind. But for every day city or inter-city driving, the first two options are great. The second solution is what Better Place are doing, and rather than buying the battery pack outright, you join their club and the membership fee and battery swapping fees offset the cost of the battery pack. I suppose it'd be like paying repayments, only with less interest haha.


Also: with regard to charging costs. It works out to around 2c per kilometre, usually, compared to 15c per kilometre for my outback. However that's just the cost of electricity (which of course is nothing if you make the power yourself). Once you take the cost of the battery pack, amortised over the life of the pack, it works out to be roughly the same as petrol. Even for the insanely expensive lithium iron phosphate batteries, since they last longer than lead. But during that time you produce less pollution, and most people would be making repayments on their car as well as buying petrol - so you would not have to worry so much about the latter at least.

@Thalass: that's one of the best posts I've read for a while - very helpful indead! Now I'm off to google search what some of these technologies are :)

haha thanks. At least all my reading can help someone! I want to do my conversion, but can't afford it at the moment. It's driving me nuts.

Something else I forgot, but has been mentioned before. Most people don't drive more than 60km a day. I usually drive 50km to work and back, so 60 or 70km is plenty of range, with a bit of a buffer in case of detours or something. 100km range is easy and fairly cheap to achieve, and would cover nearly all driving for city people.

So for the first step of my conversion I'm going to aim for at least 60km range (hopefully a bit more, depending on how the battery pack works out). And then I at least won't have to line up at the petrol station with everyone else for something expensive that I don't want to buy! I'll start out each day with a full 'tank'!

After that, I can work on a genset for going off road. :)

In parts of Europe Petrol is about $3 a litre so we have it pretty good!

How about LPG, I've done 120.000k in my ed falcon at approx 10c saving a litre thats $12,000 towards an ev when they get here at a reasonable price, which I don't think will happen for a long time yet. RayMac.

RayMac's correction. Not 10c a litre, 10c a kilometer. Sorry RayMac.

You must checkout the latest electric car from Jaguar - I'm a convert if they look like this.
http://www.motorshout.com/7984/united_kingdom_2010_jaguar_c-x75_concept/

I read in wheels magazine (i think) that Mercedes are making an electric version of the SLK, and it looks awesome. I'm still saving my money for a Tesla Model S, though.