Quote Originally Posted by SLR_dave View Post
Lots of good points, and reflections, and I wondered too about fosile fuel conversion and still do. Speed from this electric car is impressive though (I'm sure it cant tow - but I wouldnt tow in an rx7/8 either). And I wouldnt buy one anyway but the tech i thunk does give a reason - 0 to 100 in 3.4!

BTW if the ACT Government forecasts are to be believed (not always advisable) the ACT willl be off fossil fuel for electricity generation by 2020. It doesnt all come from the snowy hydro here any more and they've been working on it for about 8 years. For a small poulation thats quite possible now, but, theres a lot here with decent cash (not me though) and heaps of em put on P/V solar on the roof, etc, back to the grid, on the various deals of cashback. There is now enough solar electricity being generated it threatens the longstand of the Govt owned ACTEW electricity utility company if solar installations continue. They have weighed in hard to slow it down and buy a share of the solar conversion market. This is despite the very bleak winter of this region (5 months of the year in grey).

Dont get me wrong I like cars and I like petrol, and I wondered about that charging cycle too but, P/V panels are getting better and I think its not too far off before you can charge a car like this on phase 3 with mostly no fossil fuel energy. I dunno if I like it for motoring, but I'd like to have a look and see.
I agree it will improve, but until solar panels can get power from the moon there will always need to be some sort of alternative even if it is simply storage of some sort. The peak solar conversion time (something like 90% or so) is roughly 10am-3pm unless you can track the sun with the panels. The Snowy hydro works well for peak demand periods, and they purchase fossil fuel generated power at night during off-peak periods (cheap) and pump the water back up to the top dam ready for peak generation again. I've also stood there watching some of the machines operating as synchronous motors with the excitation set so that they are importing reactive power - effectively acting as power factor correction for a large part of the State.