Well the Federal EV report has been leaked over the pond here and the govt has said NO subsidies will be given on new EV's and charging stations will be a business expense NOT the govt's.
Here in the Adelaide Hills everytime theres a storm towns lose their power sometimes for over a day. Over 20 years ago here the grid was leased for 99 years to a HongKong billionaire and since then no major infrastructure has been done. Power lines are a major cause of bushfires yet this govt won't mandate power lines be put underground to eliminate the bush fire risk.
Last election Labor went forward and sprouted EV's where the loony lnp got on the band wagon saying every tradie would lose their hilux.
So elsewhere in the world EV's may be the new thing but over the pond here we are being left behind in a big way
Hi -
Good to have this point of view. I'm wondering if there is some commonality here for some of us, not so much as to which country, but as to rural- or semi-rural point of view.
Here in far southern Arizona, USA, I"m at about 3500 feet above sea level, and I won't say I'm in the middle of nowhere, but there are only about 50k people in this small old county. When I got an EV in 2012 (partly due to professional interest) there were no public charge stations. I put one in with a partner in 2013, donated free to the community, and that is (to this day) still the only proper hard-wired Level 2 station. There are no fast stations. (A good low-cost measure that can be taken to address this lack of public charge stations in some areas is to enable common plugs, for those businesses willing to do so as a stop-gap measure.... for example, there is a bed and breakfast 20 miles away that has an occasional Tesla guest because they let the guests fill up overnight with a 240 Volt common plug.... the county does have some of these other common plugs that have been abled, but our station is still the only full-blown Level 2 hard-wired J1772 connection point).
So, things have moved slowly in parts of the US as well. I sometimes see some of this not through the usual/mainstream industry analysis lens, but a bit of it through the lens of rural-vs-city, and how analysts and news and policy folks tend unfortunately to be biased in making analysis and news and policy with a city-focus. This happens in various types of issues of course, ... not just EV industry discussion. [I'm having some deja vu now.... years ago, before I got an EV, a board participant, I can't remember who, predicted that one of the most salient points for me might be the rural-vs-city aspect.]
I do think extended grid outages such as you mention are a consideration in getting an EV, though I would imagine many of the readers on fieldlines would have by now some of their own energy collection/storage so a grid outage may not be a black and white matter for them. I do have solar and some battery storage and a grid connection. We do have occasional (once every few years.... wild guess) extended (a few hours) grid outages here, last I checked (a few years ago). We also have I think a lot of smaller outages. The main problems I've had, as all of this relates to my present EV, are:
- one of my charging spots tends to get very finicky (a lot of turning off and on, and it may or may not be hurting the vehicle). I have never figured out if this is because of the grid or for some other reason. My poor-man's stop-gap solution is I unplugged the car from that spot and plugged into a steadier battery-backed lower voltage connection on a different circuit, and the car seems happier with that, though it prevents me from quick-charges except in a pinch.
- I have no idea if/when/how often/for how long the grid goes out. The folks who made the hardware and software for my inverter and batteries (Outback) still haven't devised a way to communicate this to me in a way that is fool-proofed to the point where even I can deal with it. (Not to do with my EV, but to do with this pet peeve of inverter/software systems that do not tell a person this key information, it has also led to two major internet outages for me over the last year, as my provider of internet by mountaintop microwave/radio has had grid issues but has not known it because (I'm told) of the lack of notification clarity from their battery backup system).
Other issues at random:
- closest service center that can handle repairs on the vehicle is 52 miles away. To this day, not one single dealer in the county sells any of the good long-range BEVs.
- hilliness of the county is an added factor in dealing with EV range considerations.
- I have to leave the house with a fairly full battery in order to get around without too much difficulty or range anxiety.
- there is such a lack of selection of good long-range BEVs (and ones where the batteries have not been killed yet by the heat) that have yet trickled down into the used marketplace, and the incumbent volume manufacturers are taking their sweet time for so many years (decades) to bring them to market, that there is a lot of compromise inherent to one's BEV buying decisions, especially for this area (lots of pickup trucks and SUVS in the parking lots in this area, and for the most part they're not an affectation, they're just what people need to tend to go about their business). I'll probably trade my long-range BEV sedan for a more utilitaritian truck or SUV of some sort, in a few years, once the used market starts to fill in with a really good robust selection.