Oh the news this evening was a piece on electric vehicles and why Australia is so slow taking them up. (You can blame Scotty from Marketing for that).
What I found interesting was shopping malls offering free car charging using solar power to encourage people to use their centre. Apparently the battery in an electric car could run the average house for about three days so far from electric cars putting a strain on the power system electric cars could lead to the power grid’s demise. EV owners charging their car for free then driving home to run the house off an inverter with power supplied by the car.
it is a possibility that had never occurred to me and puts a whole new slant on the move to electric vehicles. They are too expensive for me but the price is bound to come down.
Again that isn’t the point, we have already covered that ground elsewhere. Let’s not just rehash all the same old arguments that have been covered ad nauseum but look at electric vehicles from a different perspective. This is about technology not the environment
As far as I can see Bruce, there is going to have to be a lot of shopping malls etc to provide the power to charge up everyone’s EV’s. And using your car battery to power your house is going to reduce the length of life of the battery, and at £6000 for the average one, they aren’t cheap.
How long is the power going to be free?
I would imagine it would become like free unlimited parking at shopping malls, if you don’t provide it you won’t have customers especially as solar panels and associated equipment continue to plummet in price.
Solar panels wouldn’t work so good here Bruce, we don’t get as much sunshine as you.
I would think that here, most of the EV’s charging power would be coming off the national grid, and in that case there is still going to be a massive shortfall.
It doesn’t sound like the technology for the two way charging is perfected yet. But if it were, would people really drive to the mall every 3 days to power their house?
It would be more efficient if the government subsidized the solar power technology (that the malls are using to fuel the charging stations) for each house to power themselves.
If malls need to entice people to go there with fuel incentives, their longevity is not guaranteed. It’s not a long term solution.
I’ve just finished reading an interesting article from my county council concerning all multi storey car parks. Apparently, due to the much increased weight of each EV, each floor of the car parks will have to be rethought with a view to cutting capacity by 50% and thus also reducing the revenue. No mention about the additional wear & tear on the roads though
I don’t think that will be such a problem here for a while as most EVs are less than 2 tonnes whereas the the most popular family cars here (four door utes) are at least 2 tonnes (and they don’t come in electric versions yet)
