Cars & Motorbikes Any Electric Car Enthusiasts Here?

They take a lot more power than people think:

The Tesla Model X can be purchased with battery packs of different capacities between 60 to 100 kilowatt hours (kWh)

Sat was one of our biggest power generation days this year (We weren't home to use anything and the Battery was already 65% full from the day before (35% sedentary use overnight)) when the sun came up.

Our battery holds 13.5KWh
We pushed 12.3KWH to the grid

Absolute best case scenario our 5KW solar system created 26KWH of excess electricity.

Even with the small Tesla model X battery you are still 34KWH short.

The hidden cost here is you have sucked every bit of energy out of your solar, you no longer offset any power so pay full price for anything running throughout the day.

Eventually I want to upgrade to a 15KW system and swap over to 3 phase power (You can only push 5KW per phase back to the grid). I will scale the batteries out to 2 then also but we are talking a good 5 or more years. When this is done then it will be a self sufficient system but not with the current setup.

 

Yikes, judging people based on the car that they drive, that's a bit extreme IMO

 

I agree - our next will most likely be a Toyota Hybrid (just got to decide on what model). Toyota's have don't amazingly well on the Hybrids but have had issues with their straight EV's

We'll be moving into town and walking distance to most things, so only time will tell whether we replace the second car with an electric or simply get rid of it

 

I regularly (this time of year) export over 60kWh to the grid per day. Enough to drive close to 300km (I only drive around 20km a day, in an ICE car though).

Most people will judge you by the car you drive. If it's intentionally loud, it's often about drawing attention. Especially if they then rev their engines in a 30km/h zone.

 

What size system do you have?

 

Most people who do would be small minded at best, judgement based on actions eg. rev the engine in 30km/h zone, is different and I would suggest it doesn't matter if you have a quiet car or a loud car, if you're doing that you're doing it for attention. My 2 cents

 

11.6kW (10kW AC). I wish I was able to fit on more. I'm in Sydney and my current feed in tariff is 20c/kWh, so even on 100%, which is worst case scenario, you're getting a phenomenal return.
I'm getting an electricity "bill" tomorrow. Should be over -$300 for the quarter. I haven't paid an electricity bill in a while.

I went with cheap systems and installers, which has its pitfalls, but all up it only cost me $8500 and that's with the first system having been installed four years+ ago.

 

who is offering 20 c feed in tarrif?

 

Or your kids or dog popped the car into neutral .... or worse yet, with some European cars, your spouse was trying to turn on the wipers or indicators and popped it into neutral

Many people who have driven my AMG have made that mistake

 

AGL was, but now it has even become a 21c FIT.



Same as Origin.

 

Get a bigger system ...

 

Origin are offering 21c

 

I saw an interesting post that I thought I would share. As you all know one of the biggest detractors for going EV is cost so the good people of Hobart are doing a co-op buy of second hand Nissan Leafs which they import from Japan

Community bulk buy — The Good Car Company - Affordable electric vehicles for Australians

 

I can't seem to find prices?

 

Their normal prices are
Nissan Leaf AZE0

2013 - 2015 24 kWh battery with 110 km range from $18,000

2016 - 2017 30 kWh battery with 170 km range from $30,000

Nissan Leaf ZE1

2017 -2019 40 kWh battery with 240 km range from $42,000

Nissan eNV200 (this is like a small tradie van)

2014-2017 24 kWh battery with 160km range from $32,000

2018 40 kWh battery with 180km range from $45,000


I imagine with the co-op buy for the group they will achieve greater discounts on that.

 

Leafs range is too low and doesnt have the tech that tesla has , but a good affordable option i guess. I have a property manager friend in NZ who has one for his work car and loves it.

 

Yup you can't expect all the bells and whistles for under $30k but as cost is one of the biggest hurdles for increasing ownership it's a start in the right direction.

Definitely more of an inner city run about. I do about 100-150km a day so a low range EV is not a practical option for me but probably could be for a lot of people.

 

Not cost effective for us, maybe in the future.

So no battery then if you are pushing 60KW. my figures before came in around 30 and my system is half the size of yours but I push a lot to my battery.

So with all that extra power, it still isn't enough to fill the car battery.

Add to that that for "most" people the daytime is when the car is not at home so you won't be charging off solar, you will need a battery..... which only holds 13.5KWh (half that if you have the Powerwall 1 instead of the newer Powerwall 2) which would give you maybe 8 for the car (or <15% of the cars capacity or in real terms..... about 50KM in distance) as you will need 5KWh* for the house through the night and the battery holds 0.5 for emergency outages. This is best case scenario, if the battery doesn't fill throughout the day you will pull from the grid.

from my calculations I have worked before getting our battery, this battery was a nice to have and financially we could justify is because the house came with the solar so we didn't have that expense. To make it realistic as a cost saving exercise we would need 2 more batteries and triple the solar output. but that's another 30 grand right there and it's just not cost effective at this point.

And we don't have kids, introduce that to the mix and you have pushed out the costs even further because they all take showers before the solar is running so that needs to be stored in some battery space or once again it comes from the grid.

It's great if it works for you but EV's running on "off grid power" are not a viable solution for the majority of households yet, they will be but not yet, 10 years when batteries improve and so does solar.

* Here are the assumptions I made in order for the house to get through a night on 5KWh:
Little to no aircon use
no electric oven use
no electric heater use
no tumble dryer use
short showers if you have electric hot water

Doable but not practical

 

Your right mate!!! I ride the bike around Eastern Creek with 80 other people all wanting attention off each other. It is the sole reason why we do the sport.

But in all seriousness your Mum gave me all the attention I needed.

 

Someone's in a bad mood. Got lapped by an electric bike on the weekend?

Those things are starting to get pretty bloody impressive!