Hasbeen, in addition to my previous comments: the idea that all the EVs would start charging at once is quite batty. But hypothetically if they did, grid scale batteries would prevent the grid from crashing. And Venezuela did restart its grid but it's had major blackouts again since - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Venezuelan_blackouts

Josephus,
The 50% figure is of new cars sold, not all cars on the road. Though I question its wisdom, it's easily possible.

Bitumen doesn't depend on coal. Most is a product of oil refining and there even places where it occurs naturally. There are also plenty of other alternatives, but bitumen has the great advantage of being cheap.

Is Mise,
Was the yearly new model ever really a thing in Australia?

"SA disproved your claim when they restarted the grid with wind power after the statewide blackout. I'll probably respond to the rest of the claims in this thread later, but I thought this particularly glaring error needed correcting right away". Aidan, Tuesday,


Garbage Aidan. They used some diesel, lots of gas, & the interconnector from Victoria. You can't start any alternator without excitement power. Do try to do some research.

Belly I agree we should have nuclear, but we should have the cheapest power. That is still coal, despite any garbage from Aiden. Charging electric cars from our existing grid produces more CO2 than running equivalent ICE cars.

Steely, I can't believe you are as stupid as your posts. I can only assume you are a gravy train rider, or you wouldn't post such rubbish. It was a mixture of ridiculously high wages for process workers, & government stupidity in buying mostly imports for it's fleets, instead of sticking with local products.

Even when local production was at it's height, most were sold to government & industry for company fleets. A huge percentage of private owners bought second hand from these sources, not new.

The majority of new private buyers are at the cheep end, small & medium cars, or at the SUV & large crew cab utes. Few buy large new saloons today, & actually haven't for decades. With our costs any small car production was not viable.

If you want to blame anyone, try the unions, & government been counters. Our wage structure destroyed our industry. I once supplied plastic raw material to 7 TV, 8 refrigerator, 4 washing machine manufacturers all in Sydney. All now gone because they couldn't compete withy Asian wage structures. Hell even some Asians can no longer compete. Cheap shipping killed what high costs didn't.

If ever someone figures out how to ship complete fold up houses from Asia, our last avenue of major employment will also be gone.

Hasbeen if we put our bias aside a day must come when coal and oil are no longer available
Yes Nuclear costs much more to build, but less to run
Early morning dip in the news found a Nordic country 60 percent of all new cars are EV
yes we are a far bigger country, will need second generation cars to fill our needs
City,s are ok now
Think with me on the red phone box on the corner,not so long ago that was our only phone away from home
We progressed, from the brick mobile to today's computer in your pocket phone
So it will, as it must, be with both electricity and EVs

Hasbeen,
It appears I may be wrong about the restart after the statewide blackout, as I can't find a link to confirm what I remember.

>You can't start any alternator without excitement power. Do try to do some research.
Technically the ones I was thinking of that don't require excitement power are magnetos rather than alternators.

Lithium batteries: Lithium does not occur as a free element in nature. It is found in small amounts in ores from igneous rocks and in salts from mineral springs. Pure lithium metal is produced by electrolysis from a mixture of fused (molten) lithium chloride and potassium chloride.

To extract lithium from these brines, the waters are pumped to the surface and into a series of evaporation ponds, where the water evaporates over a number of months. Potassium is usually harvested first from the early ponds, and then later ponds contain a larger concentration of lithium.

The typical estimated life of a Lithium-Ion battery is about two to three years or 300 to 500 charge cycles, whichever occurs first. One charge cycle is a period of use from fully charged, to fully discharged, and fully recharged again.

Dear Hasbeen,

Jeez you talk rubbish a lot. What killed off the car industry was the fact that the Liberals were not prepared to support it when the mining boom took the Australian dollar to nearly $1.20 US. This was never going to last and it now sits at about $0.70 US.

Chinese wages were always going to go up in fact Chinese engineers are now paid more than their Australian counterparts. Places like the US and Germany supported their car industries through the GFC. Both US and German wages outstripped Australian equivalents in the motor vehicle manufacturing industry and they both enjoy strong sectors.

Yet you sit back and say it was the Unions fault because that is your ideology. Willfully ignorant yet again.