My bet to a workmate over the future of cars

[danny_galaga]

I posted it on FB so it's locked in :D

 

 

A bet between me and Kahn. I figure by the time this bet expires in ten years one or both of us will have left Post so then we'll be Facebook friends 😄

 

The bet: I bet you one litre of petrol that by the beginning of 2031 there won't be any new internal combustion powered cars for people to buy. What IC cars are still around will probably still be allowed on the roads but will probably have a collectors club rego or be a lot more expensive to register. Therefore virtually all the cars all of us are driving now will have been recycled or there will be some sort of buy back scheme for the remainder. Only cars of exceptional interest will remain. Therefore your fully sick 2001 Holden Commodore will not make the cut, but your 1981 Lotus Esprit might. Collectors will keep interesting cars for on the track or to tinker with or show off at meetings, much like old codgers now play around with steam rollers.

 

Furthermore, no one will think twice about it. The average person would no longer desire to drive a petrol powered sedan around in 2031 than they would a Stanley Steamer. But they can if they like. Besides, at $10 a litre for fuel why would you? You can't even charge it up at home!

 

Provided FB survives ten years, hopefully we get reminded of this bet 🙂

[Gemini2544]

There is a problem with this bet. 4x4 & big diesel cars will still be common place as people pull Boats, Caravans, Trailers & Horse floats. No electric car could ever replace them.

[danny_galaga]

Part of my reasoning is that is exactly what will happen. If it doesn't, I lose the bet. It's not an emotional issue for me. Just seems obvious to me what is going to happen. My friend sees something else as obvious and hence the bet. He has said when he wins the bet he's pouring that one litre straight into his petrol car and doing donuts in front of my house :lol

[Pop Bumper Pete]

if it was by 2040 they will be gone, I would agree

but I will be dead by then so I dont really care

[Gemini2544]

if it was by 2040 they will be gone, I would agree

but I will be dead by then so I dont really care

 

I'll be 82 then the new 50...;)

[hotty]

2031.... I bet they will all be driverless too and the option for an electric fan forced hover conversion. I’m still waiting for the “Flying Car� be a long time now.

[Pie Chucker]

Provided FB survives ten years, hopefully we get reminded of this bet

 

 

Ideally Facebook gets shut down long before the internal combustion engine becomes obsolete.

[kimbleseven]

Great topic and a great idea to bet on! :)

My guess is 70% petrol/diesel 30% electric /hydrogen. I drove a Tesla the other day. It was very powerful being direct DC shunt motors (like a battery drill) but range is an issue for Aussies. And the price of electricity doesn't make them very economical in SA. Not to mention the disposal cost of lithium. But I think Tesla has some buy back deal for old batteries.

Hydrogen electric fuel cell or retrofitting an iC car to take hyrogen makes more sense. You don't have to dig hydrogen out of the ground in China. And hydrogen is abundant everywhere. But you do need to refrigerate it to some crazy temperature to ensure it is a liquid and is not flammable.

There are many plants including the yukka plant which can be grown and processed to make a synthetic fuel. If petrol becomes less popular I think it's price will drop not rise.

I will be staying with petrol. Any greenies who think electric cars are gonna save the planet just remember: coal fired plants are used to charge your green cars. And wind / solar won't charge your car enough at night no matter how many batteries you have installed.

[Pop Bumper Pete]

@kimbleseven 10 years ago I would have agreed with you, since then there is that battery setup in SA that Elon Musk installed, it shows that it could work

you can disconnect from the grid now, and power an electric car, just from panels on your roof and two batteries in your garage

cost is the biggest issue, and (like you said) the range of the cars

Robert Llewellyn has some youtube clips

[GIBO]

I think there is a huge market for affordable electric conversion kits for older cars

Would love to put one in a Delorean.

I would even put one in my hotrod,exposed motor steam punk style

[Railways]

This thing is absolutely awesome. First saw it on Iron Resurrection. Zombie 222

 

 

 

 

[fwaggle]

Hydrogen electric fuel cell or retrofitting an iC car to take hyrogen makes more sense. You don't have to dig hydrogen out of the ground in China. And hydrogen is abundant everywhere. But you do need to refrigerate it to some crazy temperature to ensure it is a liquid and is not flammable.

 

I used to be big into the idea of hydrogen refits years ago, because any wannabe macgyver can generate it in your own home (or at least your shed, but with a few precautions it's significantly less-unsafe than a meth lab) with basically zero precursor chemicals and next to no equipment, albeit not at fuel-grade (you can power ICEs with it, just not "commercial hydrogen vehicles" without special equipment). The problem you're missing there is hydrogen embrittlement, which was last time I looked still an unsolved problem and I haven't heard anything in the news about someone solving it. The storage issues have been solved for 20 years now, but hydrogen still destroys ICEs eventually.

 

Fuel cell vehicles are a bit of a mystery to me, but I'm under the impression a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is still an EV - hydrogen fuel cells are an electrical storage mechanism rather than a motor? Regardless, it'd take a miracle for hydrogen fuel cells to win out at this point - there's basically no infrastructure for it, yet you can charge a PIEV at home overnight and there's EV superchargers even in many rural places, and it's only going to get more pervasive over the next five years. A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle would have to basically be hitting the market (as in available for John Q Public to purchase retail) right now to have any hope of it catching up, outside of massive government intervention, IMHO. It'd take much less government intervention to subsidize putting superchargers in a few problem areas to solve the range issue.

 

There are many plants including the yukka plant which can be grown and processed to make a synthetic fuel. If petrol becomes less popular I think it's price will drop not rise.

I will be staying with petrol.

 

Here you're forgetting two things: the economy of scale, and the costs of the environmental damage that fossil fuels create... which if we have any hope at all of surviving it are going to be converted into taxes, and as the popularity of petrol goes down the negative opinion of increasing taxes on it goes with it, so expect the government to tax the hell out of it as its popularity wanes. There's absolutely no future where petrol is unpopular and cheap in a country like Australia. I say this as a guy who will probably be driving ICEs until he's too old to drive (and then if my relos are anything to go by, a few years after that), expect prices in the $10/litre adjusted for inflation (ie roughly ten loaves of cheap bread per litre) if we get anywhere near 50% EV penetration.

 

Biofuels don't really have a future as something you buy at the pump, I think. I do suspect that a few of us will probably be distilling our own ethanol to run our "classics" at some point, in order to avoid paying that ten bucks a litre to power my fifty year old V8 VE Commodore that I am sure I steadfastly refuse to get rid of. 😂 But pure ethanol has its own problems, not the least of which being you can drink it and the government does not like that one bit.

 

Any greenies who think electric cars are gonna save the planet just remember: coal fired plants are used to charge your green cars. And wind / solar won't charge your car enough at night no matter how many batteries you have installed.

 

Unmitigated horseshit, this last statement. Plenty of folks have rooftop solar that entirely covers the charging of their cars, and the fact that we have coal plants *now* doesn't mean we'll have coal plants forever - the "base load" argument is coal-lobby BS as well, if we build a 21st century electricity grid there's no issues there either. You'd be better off bringing up the environmental and ethical impact of mining lithium, at least there's *some* truth in those claims.

 

Edit: what *might* win out, just because our government is stupid enough to try it, is a national grid of natural gas-fired ICEs. I genuinely don't see even ScoMo's crew having the gall to try *that* though.

[prktkljokr]

I think there is a huge market for affordable electric conversion kits for older cars

Would love to put one in a Delorean.

I would even put one in my hotrod,exposed motor steam punk style

 

[GIBO]

 

 

Mmmmm ok ,was thinking more along the lines of this

https://chargedevs.com/newswire/ev-w...sion-projects/

[prktkljokr]

 

Mmmmm ok ,was thinking more along the lines of this

https://chargedevs.com/newswire/ev-w...sion-projects/

 

Nice and shiny, wont fit in with the rat rod look, but will fit in with your clean 32

[silverbak]

I think you'll lose your bet & I'm a Tesla/EV fan

 

Battery production constaints will be the inhibiter

[Autosteve]

Nice dreams but nothing is practical. Heres a couple of problems no one seems to consider.

If 1/4 of all current car owners in just one state in Australia sold there fossil fueled powered vehicles and swapped to electric, the "current grid wouldn't cope". This is because just one electric car charging in a household doubles the common household electrical demand. How many households only have one car in a household right now?

If one major country swaps to solely electric vehicle usage, that country alone with use all the world's known lithium reserves and lithium once altered for use in batteries is NOT reusable or renewablable. Simply because Tesla pays for the old batteries does not mean they can actually do anything with it however they like you to believe that.

Electric vehicle range quotes are done with one person in the vehicle, never 4,5 or 6 in the vehicle were distance is massively reduced and power consumption is massively increased.

Electricity generation can be done anywhere through many means however, the further away for where it is required, the more the voltage drop. Distance costs electricity and someone has to pay for those losses. That is one of the main reasons why electric generation was always state based over multiple power stations, not national based until about 20 years ago.

As the states close down coal power plants and are no longer able to supply there own state's power demands, they simply grab it from another state. If South Australia say runs out of demanded power it can produce, it trys grabbing it from Victoria. If Victoria has no reserves, it trys NSW. If NSW has no reserves it comes from QLD. This comes with a problem. To get that power from Qld to Sth Australia introduces massive losses. 1 quote I heard was only 1/4 of the power would actually make it to Sth Australia over such a distance.

While this doesn't actually work like this as such losses are unexceptable and a massive waste of power, the spot power price of the electricity used in Sth Australia on that day is. What actually happens is Sth Ozz does get that power from Victoria, Victoria then gets what it needs extra from NSW, and NSW then gets it's extra from QLD. All the states needing to get now imported power on such days pass the bill on to Sth Australia and therefore the end users pays.

Back to the electric vehicles, how many of you would be prepared to sign up to your local bush fire fighting team if you travel out to fight fires in an electic fire fighting truck?. You often have to chase the fire in very low range with 4 wheel or 6 wheel drive enabled and if that vehicle stops, you are dead. No grab some diesel from a couple of onboard jerry cans with diesel and 10 minutes later your going again. An electric fire fighting vehicle would be dead where it stops with no way of moving it short of bringing in charged batteries and swapped them over or at the very least, a generator and several hours wait and guess what that generator will be powered by anyway?.

What will happen to transport costs in Australia if all the trucks were all suddenly swapped to electric powered vehicles if the grid was actaully able to do it? What about our train network as in goods trains? Where is all this extra electricity going to come from?

No one ever asks these questions when talking about viable fossil fuel replacements do they?.

If you really want to go down this path, we really need an alternative that isn't as rare as lithium for the batteries for the storage and much, larger power generation plants that produce much cheaper power that we currently have that involves no taxpayer proping up to make them appear to be cheaper than they actually are.

If your hell bent on saving the planet, start buying vehicles that YOU yourself will keep and maintain for ten years because it is a well known fact to make that vehicle emits far more carbon dioxide than that vehicle will ever emit through it's life itself and the same can be said about wind turbines and solar panels as in power required to manufacture VS power output of the device over it's usable life.

The penalty should be those that keep swapping vehicles expecting others to take over there now unwanted rubbish not those that keep there own old vehicles maintained and operational.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[danny_galaga]

@Autosteve NEIGHSAYER!!!

 

 

[kimbleseven]

Yep what Steve said.

Hyrdogen cells don't need infrastructure anymore - you do a swap over like you would a gas bottle. There are charging stations in the USA but That was old school tech from when Arnold Schwarzenegger was the governator in CA.

[kimbleseven]

Hey Fwaggle. I don't think that was horsehit maybe but an opinion. What is this so called 21st century electricity grid? Peoples rooftop solar with no battery doesn't power the house during a blackout. Solar doesn't work at night. Rechargable batteries lose efficiency and need to be replaced. Wind turbines require lots of maintenance with moving parts and lots of control gear. At least solar is passive. I remember hearing on triple M the Tesla Battery in SA can power our state for 4 minutes under full load conditions on a 44c day.

And I'd love to read about EV range when you have the air con on. Apparently Tesla uses a heat pump system. This is basically a refrigerant compressor that uses electricity rather than being belt driven like ICEs. The heatpump would either drain the batteries or be grossly undersized. Same issue with electric heating elements or reverse cycle on the heatpump.

What is your practical solution mate? Nuclear? Solar thermal? Or do you think rooftop panels, wind turbines and lithium is all we need to save the planet.

Don't forget while we debate closing down a handful of coal fired power stations here in our region that the UNs Paris agreement sets out a path where China and India can build 100s more coal fired power stations. Because they are developing nations. Maybe the temperature will rise over there but not here because we are doing the right thing lol.

Electric cars need to be charged so we will need an expanded supply and more generation.

I think there is no solution except to make use of your resources and have power generation from many sources not just a few.. coal gas nuclear solar thermal hyrdogen solar geothermal rubbish dump waste etc etc. Id love to read your plan for a safe green future!

Google

[fwaggle]

I'm not even going to bother responding to the idiotic idea that if consumer vehicles are PIEVs that firetrucks have to be also.

 

I did learn some stuff about hydrogen fuel cells, it seems things have changed a bit in the years since I looked into them. I'm still skeptical - if they're so good why haven't they started taking off yet? You say they don't need infrastructure but you talk about swapping bottles - where do you get these bottles? How do they get to where you can get them? Do you have a link to a single available (in any country, I don't care if it's not available in Aus yet) commercial HFCV with swappable tanks? I've had a look and can't find anything - they're apparently (or were) testing a few units in Australia per the RACV.

 

What is this so called 21st century electricity grid?

 

One that delivers power from myriad sources, to where it needs to be, rather than central generation out to consumers only. One that has the ability to communicate and shut off non-essential services (like non-emergency car charging) when supply momentarily dips. One that includes storage, such as batteries and flywheels. Unfortunately, there's precious little money in most of these things, because most of our states' electricity providers are content to keep flogging the tired horse that is our state energy grids.

 

But seriously, are you asking or have you made your mind up already? *All* of your arguments have been done to death on other forums, I'm not about to rehash them all here except to quickly point out: absolutely no one on the planet assumes photovoltaic solar works at night. There are other solar systems that could work at night, but I'm not sure any of them are tenable. Wind generation is where most of our night-time electricity will come from, and you know that in a properly designed system you use bugger all electricity at night right? The whole purpose of running electric hot water services at night on the cheaper tariff isn't to give the consumer a break, it's to steady out the load a bit because spinning up and down fossil fuel generators is neither cheap nor easy. If we can do that, what else can we do?

 

Household battery storage is going to get more attractive too as technology improves (and it's already pretty attractive, to be honest). Realistically, the batteries only need to be large enough to ride out any transient shortfalls but folks are installing much bigger ones than that. Make it legal to cross tariffs and folks will be all over using energy when there's an excess and dumping their storage when there's a shortfall. The downside to this is you basically introduce TOU billing, which is extremely unfair to folks who don't have the latest and greatest gear, like the elderly and so on.

 

And I'd love to read about EV range when you have the air con on. Apparently Tesla uses a heat pump system. This is basically a refrigerant compressor that uses electricity rather than being belt driven like ICEs. The heatpump would either drain the batteries or be grossly undersized. Same issue with electric heating elements or reverse cycle on the heatpump.

 

Maybe I didn't make it clear, I objected to the factual inaccuracies of your post, but I am by no means an EV fanboy, and as far as Teslas go you're 100% asking the wrong person. I think Elon's a dickhead, so I wouldn't buy one on that fact alone, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if Tesla end up being the Duesenberg (or one of like 800 similar companies) of EVs. We don't know where things will end up, other than that if you think petrol is going to get cheaper you're living in a fairy land. None of the other PIEVs are particularly attractive to me (a self-confessed hoon), so I'll likely be driving my Commodore a while longer.

 

But anyway, if you were genuinely curious about EV range with HVAC on it'd take you ten seconds on Google to find out (answer: not as dramatic as you'd think, but definitely not nothing). I think you're just shit-scared the greenies are going to take your toys. Don't worry, me too - I just don't think it'll end up that way (no politician is going to be the person tabling the law stating you must junk your current car and buy something new), I do however think it's going to get progressively more expensive to run an ICE though, which was what started this conversation.

 

What is your practical solution mate? Nuclear? Solar thermal? Or do you think rooftop panels, wind turbines and lithium is all we need to save the planet.

Don't forget while we debate closing down a handful of coal fired power stations here in our region that the UNs Paris agreement sets out a path where China and India can build 100s more coal fired power stations. Because they are developing nations. Maybe the temperature will rise over there but not here because we are doing the right thing lol.

 

I'm sorry, I didn't realize that if I couldn't answer all your questions we should just throw the whole idea in the bin and burn fossil fuels forever. I don't have a practical solution to all the problems, it's not my wheelhouse. What I can tell you is that if we stopped subsidizing coal, most of the problems would quickly solve themselves with the free market - green energy is already cheaper, but our corrupt government (at all levels) love coal and love fossil fuels. Local folks in places like Morwell love coal because without it their town doesn't have an economy, but that's no reason to keep sending smoke up into the atmosphere forever.

 

Nuclear might have been a solution if we'd started 20 years ago, unfortunately no one "wants a Fukushima in their back yard" (not my words, don't bother arguing with this) so it never got off the ground. I'm not averse to nuclear if you do it properly: it's when you do it on the cheap and only burn the easy fissionable fuels then when they cool off chuck them in the ground for 1000 years to leave them for future generations to deal with that I object to it. But the NIMBY folks put paid to that and it's basically too late to start now, we'd have covered the countryside in solar and wind long before we ever sparked it the first time.

 

As far as India and China goes, now you're getting to the rub... but the thing is someone has to do it first, and if we weren't so damn dependent on coal exports maybe we'd stop selling it to them. Or all the coal-exporting countries in the UN accord get together and agree to tax it harder to discourage it economically. I'm fairly sure they have significant investments in green energy also though, and I think a fair portion of our coal is only good for smelting which AFAIK you can't do in a green way anyway. But that doesn't mean we don't need to try, in fact it makes it more important that the things we *can* do, like household generation, should be done as green as possible as early as possible. Unless you like bushfires, because they're only gonna get worse the more we screw up the environment.

 

Electric cars need to be charged so we will need an expanded supply and more generation.

 

I feel like you're missing that electric vehicles don't need to be charged immediately/constantly - part of the "21st century grid" is figuring out the behavioral use of your car (and battery-equipped house for that matter) and going with the grid instead of fighting with it. If you live in a small rural city, with everything within five minutes, and basically never leave at night to go any distance your car might borrow some of the charge it has in order to make up for a brief grid shortfall, or better yet, sell back the power during peak times as soon as you get home and recharge during cheaper hours. As long as it's charged by morning to take the kids to school and/or head to work you probably don't care.

 

In the extremely unlikely event I end up with an EV any time in the next 20 years (have I made that clear yet? I think EVs are great but unless my circumstances change a lot I can't see me getting one in the near future), I'd probably be one of those folks who configure it not to do this, as my folks live about two hours away and aren't getting any younger, so if I have to rush out there in the middle of the night I don't want to be stopping at the local supercharger first.

 

Yes, I know I said this would be "quickly" and it ended up being a novel... it's 1am and I'm not about to fix it. :)

[danny_galaga]

Hey Fwaggle. I don't think that was horsehit maybe but an opinion. What is this so called 21st century electricity grid? Peoples rooftop solar with no battery doesn't power the house during a blackout. Solar doesn't work at night. Rechargable batteries lose efficiency and need to be replaced. Wind turbines require lots of maintenance with moving parts and lots of control gear. At least solar is passive. I remember hearing on triple M the Tesla Battery in SA can power our state for 4 minutes under full load conditions on a 44c day.

And I'd love to read about EV range when you have the air con on. Apparently Tesla uses a heat pump system. This is basically a refrigerant compressor that uses electricity rather than being belt driven like ICEs. The heatpump would either drain the batteries or be grossly undersized. Same issue with electric heating elements or reverse cycle on the heatpump.

What is your practical solution mate? Nuclear? Solar thermal? Or do you think rooftop panels, wind turbines and lithium is all we need to save the planet.

Don't forget while we debate closing down a handful of coal fired power stations here in our region that the UNs Paris agreement sets out a path where China and India can build 100s more coal fired power stations. Because they are developing nations. Maybe the temperature will rise over there but not here because we are doing the right thing lol.

Electric cars need to be charged so we will need an expanded supply and more generation.

I think there is no solution except to make use of your resources and have power generation from many sources not just a few.. coal gas nuclear solar thermal hyrdogen solar geothermal rubbish dump waste etc etc. Id love to read your plan for a safe green future!

 

Andrew Bolt, what have you done with Kimble? :D

 

Serious though, all arguments against the future always seem to suppose that nothing changes around us. been done to death. For instance, did you know that the latest high voltage transmission systems being rolled out in the US and China are ultra high voltage DC and have virtually no voltage drop? In one hundred years time when Australia finally adopts it, you could send power from Perth to Melbourne without a worry. It's probably the same tech that is going to be used to export solar electricity to Singapore.

[Autosteve]

I'm for nuclear power generation myself. Been tested and proven and it actually works and would provide far more power than anything we have now and likely into the future at a fraction of the cost. Put it in my backyard after all I live within the 2km exclusion zone from Australia's only reactor right now. If that thing pops I get evauated at the country's cost unlike someone that lives 300 meters further down my road. Lucas Heights was made where it is because that ground is some of the most stable on the planet. Been there since 1957 and had no major problems and has only got safer over time anyway.

One thing I do know is the more half arsed schemes that are started to solve the power problem, the far greater the finished cost.

Problem is everyone thinks that have the answer and if all just throw money my way, I will prove it.

Wave power, look at the wreckage near Port Kemba NSW and another off the coast of SA and see how that went.

Wind power, look up "wind turbine graveyards" and see how they all went when the subsidies ended now left to rot and is another generation's problem to clean up like the mess we are creating here in some of the most pristine places in the Aussie bush and farm land well out of site off where the majority of the end users live.

Solar farms, again, look up, "solar farm graveyards" including Californians famous mirror reflector/ heat up salt experiment that destoyed the nearby town. Have a look how well that "experiment" is going now. Who is going to clean up that mess?.

Roof top solar. How often do you ever see a home owner on his roof cleaning those panels?. Think how dirty your house windows become and require cleaning and they are vertical. How often do you see electricians up on roof top renewing all the solar damaged wire connecting the panels?

That second one would probably explain why it near impossible to get house insurance in Germany for houses with roof top solar panels because of all the house fires started by poorly maintained solar wiring by many of the major house insurance companies seeing as Germany is about 10 years ahead of our solar panel, roof top programs.

Solar panels also deteriate. While they are full of warranties like 25 years against breakage or failure, there is no mention that solar panels produce less power over time and is therefore not covered by such warranties. Some say as high as 25% loss over 5 years and seeing as I have solar panels and battery storage as the only source of power on my farm for over 8 years as we are not on the grid. I do clean the panels and replace the wiring, panels about twice a year and wiring about every two years and monitor the whole system I can assure you that 25% is about right.

Nuclear waste> I honestly believe we in Australia should start burying it and charge a fortune for taking care of other countries nuclear waste. That money could pay for our nuclear power program. I have been to many places in this country and I can assure you if you drill a hole in some of our deserts and run mine shafts off it 200 meters under the ground, no one is ever going to invest all the required money and time to get to that depth in that exact location ever again and "accidently " open one of the lead lined purposely build storage containers used to store spent nuclear waste stored in those mine shafts. We don't dig that deep to find dinosaurs, only gold or fossil fuels would make it viable and if that is already proven not to be anywhere near that part of the choosen state where the bury location is, that isn't going to happen is it?

It amazes my the Greens are so hell bent on looking after the all things to do with nature but turn a blind eye to where some of these wind turbines are now being installed scaring the landscape for future generations to clean up. I guess it is like there rubbish they create in there globalist lifestyle. Not in my neighbourhood so out of site out of mind.

Nuclear problems of the past. Locate the power plant that is not beside the Pacific Ocean where sunarmies are not known to occur> Japan.

Three mile Island USA> use later technology that drops the rods into a safe location in the tank when there is a power outage or malfunction, not use power to control this happening.

Chenoval USSR> don't dress up a military nuclear weapons grade enrichment plant and make power for use for the country as a cover for it's actual intended use.

Water storage.... Snowy Hydro II. Imagine how many "gold spotted frogs" with be found by Greens when that is ready to start. All that money has all gone into inquires so far by the way. We built the original Snowy scheme to supply the Murray Irrigation Area with water to grow crops, the power was only a by product. We also used cheap labour from displaced foreign workers after WW2 as a means to build it at an affordable cost with many deaths and dangerous work practices. Not going to be that simple again when you consider the Snowy Hydro Scheme II is 3 times larger than the original Snowy program.

Electric Cars> where are all those first generation Toyota Preisus now?. A hybred system but still required lithium batteries to make it work. Acording to my mate that is a local auto electrican, the batteries deteriate and replacement battery banks are more than the car is worth. The batteries go into landfill and the cars were crushed. More throw away society with that all to common out of site out of mind mentality used by those that want to save the planet using up and wasting more of the rare materials on this planet for there personal private use.

I can afford it and I will be seen as a planet saver while I have it when it is new and onces I'm done with it, who cares.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Pop Bumper Pete]

Australia will never go nuclear, so get that out of your head

[kimbleseven]

Mini nuclear is also in fashion in the USA. Cheap and effiecient. We are the only 1st world country without nuclear power. The ABC recently had a documentary on Germany and their last coal fired stations. They said they dont need coal and are going 50% renewable. What they forgot to mention is that the baseload of their network is nuclear. They didn't even mention the word once. If we have wind solar what will be our baseload?