20 – All electric car plan by 2030 ?
Going way back in history, it seems some ancients may have had technology beyond our understanding today. Some believe the Great Pyramid was an electricity generator –
Some drawings in Egypt and India suggest that some kinds of flying machines existed – who can know for sure ?
Before the 20th century, a horse was probably the fastest known method of transport. Then came the automobile … rough … hard to start with a crank handle … unreliable … but everyone wanted one. Fuel was not really a problem as oil and its derivatives already existed for lamps, engines and many devices, even in remote areas.
The roads were dirt and gravel and Woodward Avenue in Michigan had the first mile (1.6 km) of concrete-paved roadway in the country in 1913. Well, 100 years later there are approximately 4 million miles (6.5m km) of roads in the United States, 2.6m miles (4,3m km) paved and 1.4m miles (2.2m km) unpaved.
What about pollution from petrol and diesel vehicles ? An arguable issue indeed, but can you imagine how much horse poo would be in the cities today – If you think the amount of dog poo on streets is a problem, well, the dog poo problem is nothing compared with the horse poo problem of the late 19th century.
In 1900, approx 150,000 horses in New York. A typical horse produced about 11kg of poo and about a litre or more of urine a day, usually distributed along the course of its route or deposited in the stable. The manure piles attracted huge numbers of flies. The horses posed another sanitation problem when they dropped dead, sometimes from overwork, sometimes from disease.
Thank goodness for the invention of the car ?
The numbers for traffic related deaths will probably be similar for petrol or electric vehicles – that remains to be seen.
Technology always has its hiccups and teething problems when a new device is released on the market – The first cars were horrible, but today most people think they are wonderful machines. Remember your first black and white TV or your 2kg mobile phone limits ?
How would you like to visit a 19th century dentist … or fly in a Bi-plane anywhere today … or push an original lawn mower ?
The electric car concept seems too good to be true … and it probably is at this stage.
But where will the voracious ATO and Gov’t get the billions of $$ currently collected from fuel tax ?
and while the Greens and cohorts seem to be determined to shut down electricity production plants, where will the power come from ? … Solar and wind ? … get real ! Even if super duper batteries are allowed on the market, they gotta be filled from somewhere.
1 – The monthly average domestic household energy need is 880 kilowatts or 10,560 kilowatts a year.
2 – There are over 18,000,000 (eighteen million) vehicles registered in New South Wales of which 12,000,000 are cars.
3 – Let’s say that the lowest minimum horse power for cars is 100 – most are between 150 to 350. One hundred horse power (100 hp) equals 73.7 kilowatts.
4 – 73.7 kilowatts multiplied by twelve million is 882,000,000 kilowatts, and that will be every day
5 – That’s 322 billion kilowatts a year. So, where is all the power coming from just to charge vehicles? And this is only in NSW.
Currently it takes 16 hours to fully charge an electric car and on a theoretical “quick” charge, the time is, allegedly, two hours. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture the frustration, delays and confusion at refill stations (wherever they’ll be located) during peak hour and during holiday periods. Even at the quickest rate of two hours queues will be thirty kilometres long. The whole of NSW would become gridlocked. Imagine too if an electric car in peak time on the M1 to Gosford or the M5 to Campbelltown hour experienced a flat battery? No jerry cans in the boot to save the day there. Electrickery Bill Shorten is leading us all into a living nightmare.
In the older suburbs such as Redfern, Balmain, Dulwich Hill, Paddington, Leichhardt, Annandale, Woollahra, Cremorne, Neutral Bay, Enmore, Newtown, Rozelle, Darlinghurst, Kirribilli, Wollstonecraft, and Waverton, where there is only off-street parking, how will those car owners go about charging their vehicles. The whole concept is a joke and the Libs, Labor and the Greens don’t seem to care, just like Chris Bowen’s response to pensioners regarding franking credits and negative gearing – “if you don’t like it, vote for someone else”.
A message to all the grey nomads, sell your caravans now because an electric powered car that can tow a van, would cost a fortune and the cost to run it would be prohibitive – not to mention a flat battery between Mt Isa and Katherine.
Electric vehicles would be great if we used Tesla’s free power for all, world wide, but that ain’t gonna happen yet, not while the faulty money system exists.