My youngest son and his wife bought a Yaris Cross Hybrid 12 months ago and absolutely love it.
They get nearly 1200 kms out of a full tank (36L), and it only needs 91 octane petrol.
EV alternatives
- Thread starter Steven King
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They get nearly 1200 kms out of a full tank (36L), and it only needs 91 octane petrol.
Jeez, stats like that are in stark contrast to my family car... My wife has been saying we should get a hybrid as she's been involved with her companies fleet costings and has all the numbers etc. our Audi wagon (2.0 turbo, Quattro) is using 15L/100 Kay's. And it demands 95, prefers 98. Yeah, I could do with not spending $100 a week on fuel.
I think the Yaris is one of the best ones for economy, particularly with the 91 octane requirement.
I'm not into late model cars, but I must say the Yaris Cross isn't exactly unattractive, theirs is a greeny/gold metallic colour like the attached photo. It's not a PHEV though, but if most of your travel is mid to long range distances it's hard to beat on running costs. Imagine if the government hadn't all but abandoned LPG. One of these with a dedicated LPG injection system would cost about $4 per 100 kms to run, emit 60g of CO2 per km and virtually zero exhaust particulate matter.
The Kona has a bit of road noise but obviously no engine noise, the Corolla has both (and they tend to scream a bit going up a mountain range). Both aren't horrible driving along one of the lesser highways at 100kph with the cruise control on, they handle and ride pretty well. Kona's also have a bigger boot and much more room in the back seat which is far easier to get into than a Corolla's seat (and it's not to do with the Kona being a bit higher). You're more likely to get a better spec (GPS, screen based dashboard, blind spot detection and so on) in the Kona.
How do you work that out? A 50kw EVSE (which are every 200km or thereabouts) apart on the major transport routes in Queensland anyway will top up most EVs in around half an hour. Effectively you stop every two hours (or 200km) put half an hour of charge into the vehicle, buy a coffee, get rid of the waste from the last coffee and you're on your way to the next charger or your destination.600km ... so two days while waiting for chargers with an electric carI don't rekcon distances are the forte of electric cars.
not as more of the cars appear on the roads. its a never win situation. the more evs are trying to charge, the more the chargers are limited as they simply can't pull that sort of power from the infrastructure (imagine trying to run 1 dozen super fast chargers for example. You ware going to have the current draw of a large suburb for one tiny little reharging spot). so all the chargers default to super slow to protect the grid.
this sort of thing can only become the new normal
as soon as electric cars become anything other than an oddity a small percentage use, they will become almost impossible to charge in any sort of prompt fasion. Just have a look at the current draw from the draw fro one single fast charger. Its just mind blowing
Even if they only drop the charging rate to 50% because all of the chargers are trying to fast charge. suddenly you go from a 30minute through put ... to a 3 hour throughput. and you end up with the traffic jam of electric cars waiting to charge.
Another issue I see is... Given we are pushing ahead with intermittent "green" power. Everytime there is any sort of hot weather ... or cold weather .... or "windy weather" .... or rainy weather ... They want to start "load shedding". Guess what the first thing they will turn off will be. If your thinking everyone at home with a fast charger wired into a smart meter .... and every single electric car charging location in the area...... I think you will have guessed right 
With smart meters and everything linked, its very easy to shut off everything they decide can be shutoff readily
With smart meters and everything linked, its very easy to shut off everything they decide can be shutoff readily15L/100klms is just bad.
Even an old Valiant is no worse.
My Alfa 147 runs happily on cheaper fuel , "Green" fuel filler.
But then there are reasons why i don't work on Audi/VW.
Woman at work spent $1100 at dealer to replace a sensor that stopped the car.
I've seen that photo of Teslas queueing up too - and also photos of ICE vehicles trying to get into a petrol station which I could post but it proves nothing.
Maybe we're lucky in Queensland but its been a while since they have load shed to save power (storms are a different matter). When they want to manage the load they are far more likely to throttle back a large fleet of air conditioners and pool pumps using demand response technology - which was used 8 times in 2023 -> peaksmart-events. To my knowledge, domestic EV chargers don't qualify for the demand response management technology - it's not an option on any of the ones I've looked at. The system requires a module to be installed in the appliance on installation and it reacts to a signal sent through the power lines - regardless of if you have a smart meter. (I had demand response on my air conditioners before I had a smart meter).
And before some start saying the sky is falling (again) - participation in the demand response program is voluntary with a financial incentive to participate.
Given we are pushing ahead with intermittent "green" power. Everytime there is any sort of hot weather ... or cold weather .... or "windy weather" .... or rainy weather ... They want to start "load shedding". Guess what the first thing they will turn off will be. If your thinking everyone at home with a fast charger wired into a smart meter .... and every single electric car charging location in the area...... I think you will have guessed right
Maybe we're lucky in Queensland but its been a while since they have load shed to save power (storms are a different matter). When they want to manage the load they are far more likely to throttle back a large fleet of air conditioners and pool pumps using demand response technology - which was used 8 times in 2023 -> peaksmart-events. To my knowledge, domestic EV chargers don't qualify for the demand response management technology - it's not an option on any of the ones I've looked at. The system requires a module to be installed in the appliance on installation and it reacts to a signal sent through the power lines - regardless of if you have a smart meter. (I had demand response on my air conditioners before I had a smart meter).
And before some start saying the sky is falling (again) - participation in the demand response program is voluntary with a financial incentive to participate.
It does if they were each taking 1/2 an hour to top up their fuel tank.
of course that can happen. But your not understanding what I'm saying. Go an google power requirements for one of those fast chargers. The more electric cars on the road, the more that want to charge. the more that want to charge, the worse the issue becomes as we simply cannot draw that sort of power from the grid. No matter how many fast chargers a spot has, there is only so much power they can draw before must shut down and slow charge. I'm just stating simple facts.
This will only become a problem if people try to use the cars in a way they shouldn't really be used (long distance/away from base travel). Only a small number of vehicles can do this before you will overwhelm the charging infrastructure.
that's only if they can draw the full fast charge from the grid. if there is a dozen fast chargers installed, there is no way they will be able to pull 12 times a fast charge current from the grid, so they suddenly become "slow chargers" ..... 3hour charge ... not 30minutes.It does if they were each taking 1/2 an hour to top up their fuel tank.
EV chargers don't work like that. Even the old Tritium 75kW chargers that have two cables will share the load equally if both cables are in use. The chargers are also given the 'backhaul' infrastructure they need to be able to supply the current they are designed to use. Thats why the 350kW chargers are more expensive than the 50kW or the AC chargers.
I don't know what you're typing into Google to get your results, but if the result is from overseas it may not be relevant to Australia.
You're not getting it ... The grid itself will not be able to handle any volume of these chargers. Look at the number of petrol stations we currently have. Replace all of these with 12 fast chargers .... and the grid falls in a big heap. I don't think anyone understands the tremendous power requirements to fast charge any quantity of electric cars at the same time.
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In Qld, you are predominantly generating with coal and gas (see below), so load shedding will only happen if there is extreme demand (typically from A/C in summer) and there are generator shutdowns as I think there were for poorly co-ordinated maintenance / repairs in Qld last year. Otherwise, you won't be too worried about a cloudy day or no wind for the moment. Pool pumps draw very little compared to a car charger and anyone with a smart meter will have that appliance on a timer to operate off-peak. AC is a high current draw, but EV charging added on top and all a once will require significant upgrades. I borrowed this summary from an AC installer's website and, assuming it's fair, shows AC use at home will be a lesser consumer than an EV. No doubt some will draw more.
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7.5kW for a single-phase charger is an extra 32A coming down the line. If you want more speed you may still be limited by the on-board charger. For example an e-Partner has a single-phase 7.48kW charger and so it can't do more than that. DC is different and with a suitable fast public charger would allow you to add over 30 kWh in half an hour. That's not likely to be an economic option at home and the feed to your house would likely need an upgrade.
... and say you stopped on your way home this evening and now you want to plug in the EV (you do if you aren't worried about avoiding the peak charge for kWh via your smart meter!) and the impact of 'intermittent' energy is less now, so even less likely to experience load-shedding due to the sun setting or the wind dropping. I'm sure this will change, but at the moment, renewables in Qld are not a major generation contributor.
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Yeah, I need to get it checked again. I may as well get a good sounding v8 at the his point.
BTW: I'm not saying I think you shouldn't get an electric car. It just pays to be aware of the issues. Use a different form of transport if you are going to rely on public charger in extreme conditions or public holidays when everyone else will be trying to use them as well. I'm sure an electric car would work for nearly everyone that wants one. So long as they understand the drawback
I do 'get' your concerns - however a lot of them are baseless due to EVs and EV charging not working as you seem to consider it does.
I'd wouldn't be paying the demand charge because I can program the car to charge in the middle of the night for some hours. I know that the car has a number of km left 'in the tank' and I only need to top it up because I won't be driving 400km+ the next day. Some power resellers already offer an "EV Rate" that costs nothing or almost nothing to soak up some power off peak - such as midnight ot dawn or noon to 2pm. Like your mobile phone, you don't run your EV down to nothing before you charge it.
Also - Queensland's pwewr generation is planned to be 50% by 2030. I don't know when the data shown above is from, but the Queensland Government claims that 27% of electricity generated in the state is renewable as at February 2024 (source -> here)
A wise decision also for ICE vehicles if there is no electricity for the fuel pump or queues for the bowsers (or even a traffic jam on the road to the beach). Businesses will adapt and energy generators have strict rules on what can needs to be done to connect a large current draw device to the grid. Don't forget when petrol cars were in their infancy, petrol was purchased in 1 gallon drums from a Pharmacy but there were plenty of Farriers, coachbuilders and retailers for horse food and supplies.
Huh ? So EV's charging do not pull power from the grid?. How does that work? will everyone have there own micro-nuclear reactor at home? Your not considering the scale of this. If we went from what .... 3% electric cars to 25% ... just private vehicles like now. Do you honestly think the power grid could handle that
Especially the equivalent of petrol stations that would be drawing enogh power at one little location to power an entire suburb... only we'd need dozens of these in every suburb ....One thing I learned in life, is that when someone is giving you the "bums rush" spiel to sell you something, it always pays dividends to look deeply into the pros and the cons of the deal. Every time that Bowen gets up on TV and tries to sell the idea that EV's are the answer to the worlds ills, I know there is more to the story, you just have to scrape off the stuff that makes mushrooms (kept in the dark of course) grow so well!!
Now where were we, waiting for a cheap convenient battery powered vehicle that would get us from A to B reliably and in comfort and pay back the Petroleum profiteers for years of gouging motorists and also those governments that allowed it to do so, and provide them with the bottom line, the flow on direct and indirect taxes and excise filled the coffers with gold.
It looked pretty rosy for a time and I looked forward to buying one just to try out the experience, but then it seems , there are issues about resale value, battery replacement cost, Insurance and re-introduction of taxes to replace those that used to be supplied by ICE vehicles as we saw in Victoria, the "enlightened state" that is going broke and woke in different directions at the same time.
It seems that the politics and truth telling !! might once again set aside the battery car, even if some liked them as history shows. Only regret is that I might not live long enough to see the absolute outcome.
If only those regulators would allow us to do our own experiments, and convert our existing cars to run on batteries, a DIY encouragement to the idea, and I have the perfect car to recycle into a new EV life. My beloved Fuego..
Ken
Now where were we, waiting for a cheap convenient battery powered vehicle that would get us from A to B reliably and in comfort and pay back the Petroleum profiteers for years of gouging motorists and also those governments that allowed it to do so, and provide them with the bottom line, the flow on direct and indirect taxes and excise filled the coffers with gold.
It looked pretty rosy for a time and I looked forward to buying one just to try out the experience, but then it seems , there are issues about resale value, battery replacement cost, Insurance and re-introduction of taxes to replace those that used to be supplied by ICE vehicles as we saw in Victoria, the "enlightened state" that is going broke and woke in different directions at the same time.
It seems that the politics and truth telling !! might once again set aside the battery car, even if some liked them as history shows. Only regret is that I might not live long enough to see the absolute outcome.
If only those regulators would allow us to do our own experiments, and convert our existing cars to run on batteries, a DIY encouragement to the idea, and I have the perfect car to recycle into a new EV life. My beloved Fuego..
Ken
The electric car is nothing new. its been around for nearly as long (probably longer?) that the ICE vehicles. Battery technology is the main hold back IMO. The day a long lived, fast charged, safe (can't burn) battery is invented. I'm thinking they will replace a decent percentage of the ICE vehicles. Never all of them though. That's just crazyiness to even suggest (the only thing dumber suggesting trucks, busses and transport could be electric).One thing I learned in life, is that when someone is giving you the "bums rush" spiel to sell you something, it always pays dividends to look deeply into the pros and the cons of the deal. Every time that Bowen gets up on TV and tries to sell the idea that EV's are the answer to the worlds ills, I know there is more to the story, you just have to scrape off the stuff that makes mushrooms (kept in the dark of course) grow so well!!
Now where were we, waiting for a cheap convenient battery powered vehicle that would get us from A to B reliably and in comfort and pay back the Petroleum profiteers for years of gouging motorists and also those governments that allowed it to do so, and provide them with the bottom line, the flow on direct and indirect taxes and excise filled the coffers with gold.
It looked pretty rosy for a time and I looked forward to buying one just to try out the experience, but then it seems , there are issues about resale value, battery replacement cost, Insurance and re-introduction of taxes to replace those that used to be supplied by ICE vehicles as we saw in Victoria, the "enlightened state" that is going broke and woke in different directions at the same time.
It seems that the politics and truth telling !! might once again set aside the battery car, even if some liked them as history shows. Only regret is that I might not live long enough to see the absolute outcome.
If only those regulators would allow us to do our own experiments, and convert our existing cars to run on batteries, a DIY encouragement to the idea, and I have the perfect car to recycle into a new EV life. My beloved Fuego..
Ken