4x4 electric motor torque

A loooong lead will only get you half way Garry. A loooooooong lead will be required.
Dave.

A looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong lead will get you there and back!!!!
You can thank me later.!

Seems to me that your carrying a lot of extra lead weight ( 13' o's) for a return trip Jack. That plus the power loss could make it an expensive trip. :)
Dave .

Yes, the current favourite road user charge among states that have applied it for EVs is 2.5 cents/km.

The NSW legislation just passed says that if you paid duty for your electric vehicle (ie bought before Sept 1) you will never have to pay the RUC. (In NSW, stamp duty is paid on transfer of ownership, either from dealer to first owner or for second hand vehicles, from owner to owner)

In NSW from Sept 1 just gone stamp duty is abolished for battery electric vehicle and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Plus from Sept 1 there's a $3000 subsidy for the first 25,000 new vehicles priced below $68,750 (before on-roads).

Lord knows what will happen to power prices.

It takes more energy to turn the magneto than what it can provide.

Dunc, certainly the lack of recharge stations "out there" means this big brown land isn't EV-ready for many of us.

But the intrepids will still "have a go". In April we were settling in at Eucla R/H when a Tesla quietly arrived. He asked where the charge station was:
* Management: what charge station?
* Tesla driver: there's supposed to be one here.
* Management: News to me.

This retired couple were from Margaret River and were extreme eco-greenie-off-grid type with solar everything back home. They were relying on a published database of EV charge stations, and it mis-reported Eucla R/H as having one. They were heading WEST, having already been east and touring all over NSW. On the outbound journey they had stopped/"refuelled" at Border Village, but on the return decided to use Eucla instead. Only 12km difference, except that's what their range-to-empty indicated now. After much debate they charged off a 15A outlet, an overnight issue to get them to the next recharge location.

Were they game or foolhardy? Depends on one's point of view. After nearly 50 years travelling in REMOTE areas, I wouldn't do it as there's b-all infrastructure out there. And even if there IS a recharge station at some remote roadhouse, what if it's already in use and waiting an hour doesn't cut it?

There is, reportedly, a 3 phase outlet at the roadhouse that management (perhaps previous management) has said is available for electric vehicle drivers for a fee. Currently 88c/kWh, so my 64kWh vehicle would cost me around $56 for a fill from empty for about 420km. $25 flat fee if you stay there.

Resourceful EV owners will carry a portable charger with a 5-pin 3 phase adapter so they can use those outlets - the outlets, chargers and adapters are commonly available.

It is not a standard EV charging station, so that may have prompted the unhelpful minimalist response, rather like "Do you have the time?" "Yes".

I doubt there will be a rush to electric outback touring, but gradually trunk routes are being electrified. It is quite possible to drive Perth-Adelaide-Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane -Port Douglas in an EV with a nominal 400km range, plus other major routes in various states.

But not in the red dirt that I like :-(

https://www.plugshare.com if you're interested. Brown are fast chargers, green are slow.

One thing for sure, my little Kona EV goes like stink and is an absolute pleasure to drive. Perfect town and inter city/interstate car. For daily running around it charges overnight off a 10 amp outlet.

That would only work if as you said you could "Make sure you gave back more than you take"

And as Eucla is most likely off the grid and powered by diesel generators......

Most Tesla’s have regenerative braking. It is fairly common on other brands also. It uses a magneto to harness some of the inertia while the car is slowing. You usually won’t see a decent Tesla driver brake until the last second due to this.

To my knowledge, all battery electric vehicles have regenerative braking. When you lift your right foot the traction motor becomes a generator - there is no extra charging device like a magneto. In the Hyundai Kona EV you can set the amount by which that occurs, depending on personal preference. It is possible to have one-pedal driving where both acceleration AND braking are controlled with the accelerator pedal.

The foot brake uses regeneration in all but the most severe braking - the idea being to put as much charge back into the battery as possible.

The friction brakes are rarely used in normal circumstances, except that they do engage in hard and emergency stops and below about 5kph when regenerative braking is not very effective. The blending of regenerative and friction braking is computer-controlled.

No you would not, they had a very poor touring range on the Long Way Up

Stephen -
I think the battery technology is changing very rapidly and will make the electric vehicle much better than the batteries we use today.

Like a battery that you recharge faster than filling a car today.

A J

Certainly is AJ. A variety of different chemistry batteries being developed and even the old standard lithium
is being modified to improve charging time. Reliability, longevity, safety, ability to serial connect, cost of production and obviously performance will determine which make the cut.
storedot fast charge batteries

Yep.

A litre of petrol contains about 9kWh of energy. So our Mazda 3 (passed on to the daughter) used about 9l/100km around town, IIRC, so about 81kWh/100km, vs Kona EV's 11kWh/100km .

Mazda 6l/100km highway, = 54kWh/100km, Kona 14kWh/100 highway.

More liquid hydrocarbons left for my BT50, LOL

.
Sadly Peter, drinking ultra-pure water is not good for humans. See here. Mixing a little of it with the 'usual stuff' may be OK though. lol
It can be consumed if suitably buffered though.

Peter,
Thats how electric drive dump trucks do it with a motor on each rear wheel and I have worked with trucks that can haul 400 metric tonnes. But they do derive their electricity from a 20 cylinder diesel engine.

Same as trains of course.
Won't be long before they are all hydrogen (including interstate semis and aircraft).
Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome

Be interesting to find out just how much hydrogen it would take to produce the amount of power to do the equivalent amount of work and how much energy it takes to refine the hydrogen and where that energy will come from.
Might knock the guts out of the mining magnates annual profits.
But one thing is curtian, if it isnt done soon there wont be need for mines for much longer.

Initially, power for hydrogen will come from excess renewables - solar and wind - when they are producing more than the grid demand.
This is already happening from time to time in Adelaide and renewables are being turned off to protect the grid. What a stupid situation.
As we get more and more renewables and establish more and more storage like pumped solar, power will become cheaper and cheaper and new industries, like hydrogen production, will boom.
Even now it is attracting proposals.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-11-05/green-hydrogen-solar-power-project-tiwi-islands/100590306
https://www.epa.wa.gov.au/sites/default/files/Referral_Documentation/Renewable%20Hydrogen%20Project%20EPA%20s38%20Referral%20Supporting%20Repo....pdf

Renewable power will be a bit like your mobile 'phone. Used to be expensive to make a call. Now there is a monthly fee to maintain the facilities and they don't care how many calls you make, or where to.
Power costs will go the same way. The fixed daily fee to maintain the grid will increase and the cost of power used will get lower and lower.
Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome

I hear the power industry is in trouble because the less demand there is from consumers producing their own power the less income they have and are struggling to maintain the ageinginfrastructure.
This became obvious when the government began privatising the power companies.

Heavy mobile plant will struggle to be able to carry enough hydrogen to do much productive work, maybe if the hydrogen can be liquidified but I dont know if that is feasable either.

The steel age might be rapidly coming to an end together with Australias major income, then will see the unions run for the hills and abandon Australia after forcing all secondary industry off shore just as they abandoned Broken Hill when the big 4 mines wound down production.

Sorry Allan B, but H2O is water and the marketing hype around "Pure water" needs to be called out.
Sure, Obviously we need to be careful of the source of drinking water but if it is actually H20 and uncontaminated it cannot harm us. There is too much misinformation these days... (and yes I am qualified to comment)

.
Kerry, I did not refer to "Pure Water" as marketed for human consumption. I stated "ultra-pure water" produced from combustion of hydrogen. And did you actually read the link I posted? This was not an academically scientific article but was chosen as it expresses in lay language. However, there are ample scientific articles published which describe the properties and behaviour of ultra-pure water which explain the deleterious effect of how it attracts minerals from the body.
Ultra-pure water is produced for specialised use in industry, but it isn't drinking water!
And yes, there is "too much misinformation these days".

Water ain't water Kerry. lol

Yes Allan agree, It is a moot point though - It would not remain ultra pure for long out on the road....(I dont want to start a p1&$ing competition here...but -). It is unlikely anyone would be able to collect it and drink before it absorbs CO2 and Nitrogen etc from the air changing its pH let alone drink enough of it in isolation to harm them, in fact it is possible to do good in some ways. Yes I read the article. No I am not going to elaborate any further suffice to say, I have a Major in Human Bioscience from UNE have had considerable experience with water as a physical and mental/emotional therapeutic medium both internally and externally and in verying states, temperatures and solutions, hence my passion to comment. I could write a book...

just my perspective for what its worth..
Cheers KW

In my professional life I was an environmental chemist predominately involved in water quality. The websites purporting to describe the ills of ultrapure water are a bit suspect. All water will dissolve (leach in the parlance of these websites) soluble components up to their solubility, which is a lot higher than the concentrations found in so called 'healthy' potable water. Once ingested, the water will mix with food and drink in the stomach. The amount of trace elements, major cations and anions from these sources will be greater than that in the ingested potable water. To put it in perspective good qulaity potable water should have <300mg/L dissolved salts (this will normally be dominated by sodium chloride with some calcium and magnesium carbonate in areas with hard water). If you drank 3 liters per day you would ingest up to 0.9g of 'salt'. WHO guidelines recommend less than 5g of sodium chloride, with most adults consuming 2x that amount (WHO). Note that most table salt is derived from seawater (contemporary or ancient) and contains a suite of other cations and anions is the same relative proportions as seawater.

"Torque is a static turning force. Yes the electric vehicle can create High torque but an electric motor is using maximum amps to create a torque at practically no speed. Not useful. "

Not useful? Wrong, wrong wrong. It is perfect for standing starts which all vehicles do all the time every time they start from rest. No clutch required to get off the mark, no torque converter generating heat and wasting energy, no weighty transmission with friction losses apart from a single reduction gear and a diff. The diff can be, and is on some models, eliminated with a motor on each driven wheel. Low speed and zero speed torque can be and is modulated by your right foot and is perfect for severe off-roading. Read up about the Rivian's off road performance.

"Also the high amp draw will ram the battery will expire very soon and not last long of that is imposed on it regularly."
Just like if you flog your ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) car off the mark regularly you get increased wear and tear. There are Teslas driving on their original batteries after 300,000 miles (480,000km). In normal use EV batteries are expected to outlast the life of the rest of the vehicle. The average EV vehicle warranty is 5yr/100000km (mine is 5ys/unlimited km) and the average battery warranty (including mine) is 8 years/160000km. What is/was your last ICE vehicle's drive train warranty?

"Sufficient torque at suitably geared road speed is better. "
That is exactly how they are made already. Mine is 7.981:1. The engineers beat you to it, I'm afraid.

"Haven't seen many Tesla cars towing anything. Nearly every one I have seen has only 1 person in it, same for almost any electric car. "
Spurious argument. Pretty much the same applies for every car you see around town. Newer EVs now have a tow rating. Some cars becoming available in Australia are rated up to 1800kg and , the electric utes in the US up to 5 tonnes.

Electric desert travel? Well, common sense says that's not going to happen for quite a while. But then as Hoyks suggested elsewhere, reduced fossil fuel used by EVs may make more available for longer for remote area travellers -if you will be able to afford it.

As for the Albanese quote, well if you believe that that is actually what he meant then .... oh, never mind. Solar will charge a battery somewhere - a home battery or a mega grid battery or pumped hydro (which is, in effect, a battery) and then you charge your car off that - at night. Of course that won't be free, but it will not be fossil-fired and that was his point.

Frank
The electric vehicle 1300Nm doesn't hang there putting out that torque so it is a bit meaningless. Yes, they can be more than an an ICE motor. Using high torque starts will deplete the battery quickly. where a Prado auto uses variable gearing. Electric vehicle has what you mentioned, in your case 7.981:1 so it HAS to use amps to make torque.
So you believe high amps starts often/always still retains full battery life? That is the only way you get 1300nm and probably can't use it anyway because of traction control system.
Electric vehicles have less weight and power absorbing stuff we know. of course an advantage so extends run time.
No one is saying they can't tow something, it just uses battery, more battery, much more than what the system programming is optimally set for. Will that make the battery flat sooner?
The battery life question, we will see how yours is in 5 years and beyond. In France there are hundreds and hundreds of ev cars, not old, from government use just sitting, no one can recycle anything from them. Same goes for thousands of wind turbine blades which have to be buried. out of site isn't out of mind. WE have a long wat to go yet.

Albo DID say on national television. "you want to see what the future looks like? well it is here right now, solar panels on the roof, charging your car overnight". Was he wrong to say that, why did he say it and not mention the additional $10,000 gear, lithium battery/special/inverter etc, which has to be specially fitted to each house to make it begin to be possible. Even then the house cannot charge the vehicle and run the house too, seeing the average house lithium is around 1/3 of a cars battery capacity. More $ from the home owner will fix that of course.
With another colleague in a gov setting we made a, registered, converted to, electric vehicle a number of years ago. But battery tech is much better now and motors and controllers too. Years back a Formula V fitted with batteries and electric conversion easily out accelerated and faster than the engine version in track work at Sydney EV day.

" In France there are hundreds and hundreds of ev cars, not old, from government use just sitting, no one can recycle anything from them. "
False.
https://factcheck.afp.com/electric-cars-france-were-not-discarded-due-faulty-technology
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/electric-cars-abandoned-france/
Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome

RMD,
"The electric vehicle 1300Nm doesn't hang there putting out that torque so it is a bit meaningless. "
Well yes, but once it starts to turn the remaining 1299Nm is mighty handy!

I don't get the point you're trying to make about the Prado. Yes, the Prado uses variable gear ratios AND a modulated right foot to vary the torque delivered. The EV uses only the right foot. Of course it uses amps to create the torque, just as the Prado uses fuel. Press harder, use more amps, use more fuel. Either way the tank empties faster the harder and more often you push the right foot. I don't think we are in disagreement.

" So you believe high amps starts often/always still retains full battery life? "
Not at all, and I didn't say that. I said "Just like if you flog your ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) car off the mark regularly you get increased wear and tear." In an EV that is reflected in the short term in battery SOC and in the long term, battery life. Same as an ICE vehicle, drive moderately and everything will last longer. Again, I doubt that we differ.

Towing:
I simply answered your point that you don't see EVs towing trailers. Now that EVs with a rated towing capacity are coming onto the market, perhaps you will see some loaded with the weekend project going to and from Bunnings or Flower Power. And that will affect the range. But I would say that on average, in suburbia which is where EVs are most appropriate, that will make no difference. You'll still get to Bunnings and back with enough juice to do it again and again. You'll just have to recharge more often.

Highway towing is a different matter. Range is severely affected by towing and until there are more frequent chargers available it is largely impractical except for a few EVs that have exceptional range/battery capacity. Having said that someone has had a go. It's pretty basic trailer-touring, but as vehicles and batteries improve, so will the options.

As for Albo - I think further discussion about him and his quote would be off topic, so I'll leave it alone.

Re the house battery having insufficient capacity to charge an EV - on average it doesn't need to have the same capacity as the EV battery to give the EV the benefit of stored solar. Statistics show that the average annual driven distance by passenger cars is 14,000km, or 40km a day (rounded up).Link. That represents about 5kWh out of an average EV's battery - easily replaced by a 10kWh house battery. Of course there will be instances where this won't work, but on average it will. It's already being done in countries that are ahead of us in this area.

I think it is pointless to fixate on the expensive house battery. Energy from renewables is here and increasing. Mass storage of excess energy is in its infancy but is growing, so that charging EVs from stored renewable energy is not just a possibility in the future, it is a certainty and it's not that far away.

That was exactly the scenario a while back for an EV-er doing a trip on WA's (in)famous "Electric Highway" (RACWA term). Rocked up at the one charging station in town - busy. Owner#1 sat inside having extended lunch while awaiting full charge. Option was wait 1 hour or give up.

In an earlier response I mentioned the wait option often being a non-option. Certainly out where we often transit (GCR etc - we're WAussies) many roadhouses have limited hours - examples such as Warakurna and Tjukayirla come to mind.

The full EV vs Aussie outback has a way to go. Before that, any decent hybrid will do it easily.

Frank, charging from your rooftop solar has a cost. If you think otherwise, I'm disappointed.

If you are otherwise meeting your household consumption, it's export FIT it is costing you. If you aren't matching your household demand, it's costing you import of grid power.

Yes, fair points Zippo, when you analyse it all you get nothing for nothing.

I think of it this way:
My FIT is 9c per kWh
My consumption tariff is 20c/kWh.

If I charge it with imported grid energy it's costing me 20c/kWh.

If I charge it with what would be exported energy it's costing me 9c/kWh in lost FIT. That's an 11 cent saving. That'll do me.

Frank , how far would you get down the road on say that $13 to $17? And Zippo, you can get a control gizmo fitted that only sends your unused Rooftop solar power to certain items such as a Hot Water tank, that may be the best idea if it doesn't have a negative effect on the EV's battery. Regards, Michael

Michael,
My vehicle's full charge range is about 450km. On a road trip you don't normally recharge beyond 80% because the getting the last 20% is pretty slow. You can if you want but the wait times get too long. So I work on 80% range, about 360km.

The $13 to $17 top up represents 60% of battery capacity, so the top-up would add about 270km to what remains, bringing the SOC to 80%, or about 360km.

How do we manage that?

For example, on a trip down the Hume to Melbourne a 360km range will comfortably get us to Jugiong, our favourite first stop for a bio break and a meal with 80km to spare. The 50kW NRMA fast charger will top up the car to 80% in under an hour - perfect for that kind of stop.

If that charger is u/s or occupied we would go on to Gundagai where there are 3 fast chargers. The larger ones there will top up to 80% in under 45 minutes.

That will get us to Euroa in Vic to 4 fast chargers with about 20km to spare, so another 45 minutes for a break and top-up. If, approaching Albury, the quite accurate range estimator says that's sketchy we'd get a 10 minute top up at an NRMA fast charger there then on to Euroa, or maybe a top up to 80% and go straight to Melbourne with 60km to spare. Either or.

Frank, Thank you, sounds great and it really just a new learning curve for a while in regard to recharging. Mysedan has similar power and torque to your EV, gets 10L per 100 ks on the highway so cost $16 per100ks so the EV is a huge saving for sure., Michael

Michael,

I've posted this elsewhere but when you look at energy consumption, the numbers are even more startling.

1 litre of petrol contains about 9kWh of energy. So your vehicle is using about 90kWh/100km.

EV's do better in stop-start driving than they do on the highway - the reverse of ICE vehicles - due to regenerative braking from all the stopping recharging the battery when kinetic energy is recovered. An ICE vehicle when stopping just wastes that energy as heat in the brakes.

My Kona's city consumption is about 11kWh/100 and highway about 14kWh/100, for possibly a similar sized car to yours. (The Kona is a small crossover SUV, max weight 2180kg.) That's a big saving on 90 per hundred. The difference is going to waste heat, friction in the transmission, etc.

My BT50 (permanently set up for touring) averages 160kWh/100. Yikes!

Michael,

"And Zippo, you can get a control gizmo fitted that only sends your unused Rooftop solar power to certain items such as a Hot Water tank, that may be the best idea if it doesn't have a negative effect on the EV's battery."

AFAIK, all solar inverters automatically send solar to the house (hot water, home battery, etc) and export any excess.

You can also get a home EV charger that hooks up to home solar/mains and prioritises the solar input. You can set it to charge off solar only, solar with mains to fill in any shortfall, or mains only.

Frank, the device that Michael referred to is separate from the normal inverter output feed to the dwelling load. It is called a DIVERTER, and it diverts (no fooling) part of the solar output to a storage system e.g. electric HWS which is NORMALLY fed via an off-peak or time-of-day tariff feed.

Thankyou Zippo. I was not aware of such a device and went off on a tangent dictated by my assumptions LOL

I guess I would be in the “kicking and screaming “ category. But my only objection is the speed of change. I don’t buy the notion that we are on the very brink of oblivion and must act instantly. There are some who would be happy to see Western nations bankrupt themselves trying to be carbon neutral within a few years.
I am happy for the process to take a few decades, with reasonable spending especially on alternative power sources. For me, batteries are a temporary solution, and will just be another source of millions of tons of difficult waste to deal with.
I rather like the solar power, and maybe hydrogen, which are both plentiful and getting cheaper.
Of course dealing with millions of used solar panels will be yet another issue.

Cheers
Jim

Entirely reasonable, Jim, but this country has wasted a couple of those decades and now it has realised it is time to catch up. Hence the speed of change we have seen very recently.

Current EV battery technology is considered to be due for replacement when the battery is no longer able to deliver 70% of its rated capacity. That doesn't mean it goes to landfill. It just means it is no longer suitable for use in an EV. It is quite suitable to be re-purposed, perhaps re-packaged as a house battery or some other perhaps less critical application. And when its finished there, IIRC 95% of a current EV battery is recyclable, able to be processed and made into new batteries, so not too difficult to deal with. The major EV battery manufacturers have commited to recycling their products but as of now the industry is too young for that to occur - there is not yet much of a supply of old batteries to be recycled. That will, of course, change in the next few years.

As you suggest, solar power to generate Hydrogen to run fuel cells is probably the most attractive tech currently available, but hydrogen filling stations are few and far between at the moment so except for a lucky few, it is not yet practical so batteries prevail. But it's on the way, for sure.

Cheers

.
Jim, we are already beyond "the brink" and need to get back to it without too much delay. Even though it may be expensive. What price do you put on survival of our children?

And everything in our modern consumer society is a "temporary solution". Including us!
It is dismaying for me to reflect that all but one of the seven industrial companies I worked for no longer exist. The one remainder, Santos, will disappear before long!

And look how fast that happened, even the professionals.
Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome

"the last guy towed a large generator around & that's on the black stuff "

Talk about reinventing the wheel! They've just rediscovered the HYBRID EV.

Hey Gazz,
My Kona EV generates a sound to warn pedestrians when it is travelling at less than 30kph. It is not a gutteral V8 roar (wish it was) but it works. In shopping centre precincts I've repeatedly seen pedestrians turn to look.

It also beeps when in reverse.

You cannot turn those off, though some folk in the forums wish they could.

It can detect a pedestrian in front and stop if the driver takes no action.

I think most current models are similar, earlier models maybe not so much.

If you go back in time when cars were first coming onto our roads, in some countries, it was law that a man waving a flag must precede the vehicle on the road to warn people that a horseless carriage was approaching.

Macca.

Bicycles in Amsterdam are dangerous too when your used to looking to the right when stepping on to a roadway.