Electric vehicles and alternate fuel sources

Here are the latest Australian figures from the 3rd quarter 2024 from the Australian Automobile Association. As you can see pure electric car sales have collapsed and down 30%. People are having two bob each way and Hybrids have certainly picked up.  ICE = Internal Combustion Vehicle, BEV= Battery Electric Vehicle,  PHEV= Plug In Hybrid Vehicle, .HFCEV=Hydrogen

An interesting thing is all these electric models are actually losing market share with petrol/diesel cars growing at a faster rate or more correctly in this poor national sales quarter falling at a lower rate than electric.. Without Government sales electric figures would look pretty ordinary. The people with fervour have all gone out and bought and that market is drying up while the average punter who just wants his regular changeover sees no compelling reason to change for a more expensive less capable offering. Hybrid seems to be a possibility to induce at least some change.

 

 

 

 

I wonder how much of this reflects the availability of new cars
12 months ago there was a 6 - 12 month waiting list on a lot of the popular vehicles
I thought my local Ford dealer had shut up shop or lost their Ford dealership as I hadn't seen a car in the show room for yonks
Turns our they couldn't get new cars
I have noticed in recent months there are new vehicles in the show room and they are still sitting there
This what makes me ask the question

Paul

 

I don't see much point looking to hard what's selling and what's not at this point, solar panels have been around for a bloody long time, yet as an industrial electrician it is my opinion that they have only now reached a level of quality where I would lay out my hard-earned cash and put a system in. We are now at a point where every part of my system has a 25-year guarantee, at my age it's coved. When I buy something, I expect it to last a lifetime, I still have my 1970 ford Capri, I still have my 1976 Kawasaki Z900. There are those that rush and buy the next new thing and there are those that sit back and wait for the shakedown.

Louie

I think looking at sales is really important in this development phase.

Unless we are forced to go electric as many, including governments, are trying to achieve the whole show is commercially driven

Manufacturers can have all the hype they want over experimental vehicles (remember every car show used to display the latest experimental car that never came to fruition) but mass production and the experience and development that comes from that will not happen unless people want the product.

We can say Toyota or General Motors have these electric cars so the deal is done. Not so. All that advertising is to do with sales promotion. How many fanfares have been trumpeted about "Family Cars", "The Australian Car". "The Safe Car", "The Australian Conditions Car", "European Styling", "Common Rail Technology" and so on endlessly. Unless people buy them on a commercial basis it is not going to happen.

Common sense will kick in shortly when the wokeness, government coercion, outrageous capability, running and infrastructure costs and convenience claims are brought to heel. The manufacturers will look at the real reasons for low take-up and change from jumping on a fad market to long term profit making products. The only measure of this is sales figures.

Behind all the hype, new Technolgy is always a slow slog, disc brakes stumbled along for a long while before they ended up on everything, one of the first the Leyland P76. Janus Electric has been down the parth of electric truck conversions for a few years now, with a battery swap system, they seem to be making progress but not knocking any doors down, changing the world is a one step at a time adventure. There will always be the ones who jump on the new horse and those who wait until it has calmed down, and the informed market that we now have is aware of what happens in the real world

Yes I remember thinking I was like a rat with a gold tooth with my 1965 HD Holden with disc brakes (I can't remember but probably only on the front).

Many of us would be old enough to remember the advanced motorists fitting a vacuum booster to their FJ Holden (probably a REPCO deal). They would go around town in a car that had no power and drove like crap but with people oohing and aahing when they noticed the metal triangle on the back saying Power Brakes warning other motorists to keep their distance.

Interesting factoid on Trump.

His family money came from his Grand-Father who was involved in the Klondike Gold Rush.

He made his money running hotels and brothels.

Fits perfectly with the Don.

To quote the kids WTF!  340km on a lead acid battery 114 years ago?


 

From an Electric Car web site probably stolen from somewhere else.

Power as a service and General Vehicle
To overcome the limited operating range of electric vehicles, and the lack of recharging infrastructure, an exchangeable battery service was first proposed as early as 1896.The concept was first put into practice by Hartford Electric Light Company through the GeVeCo battery service and was initially available for electric trucks. The vehicle owner purchased the vehicle from General Vehicle Company (GVC, a subsidiary of the General Electric Company) without a battery and the electricity was purchased from Hartford Electric through an exchangeable battery. The owner paid a variable per-mile charge and a monthly service fee to cover the maintenance and storage of the truck. Both vehicles and batteries were modified to facilitate a fast battery exchange. The service was provided between 1910 and 1924 and during that period covered more than 6 million miles. Beginning in 1917 a similar successful service was operated in Chicago for owners of Milburn Wagon Company cars who also could buy the vehicle without the batteries.

In New York City, in the pre-World War I era, ten electric vehicle companies banded together to form the New York Electric Vehicle Association. The association included manufacturers and dealers, among them General Motors' truck division, and the aforementioned General Vehicle division of General Electric, which claimed to have almost 2,000 operating vehicles in the metropolitan region.[50] When opening their flagship department store, Lord and Taylor boasted of its electric vehicle fleet – numbering 38 trucks – and the conveyor system to efficiently load and unload goods.