Is this the end of Rotax

[Kyle Communications]

Yes Planey...you got that right ..all the money lost to the govt for excise and GST on the fuel.

 

 

[kgwilson]

The one thing that all governments are pretty good at is finding ways to extract money from the population. Either it will be based on km or at charging stations they can add their cut there. The problem is with charging at home or from personal solar/wind etc sources so it will likely be based on distance travelled. They may make everyone have a GPS device which will then be worked around by anyone smart enough, just like tax avoidance and tax evasion now.

[planesmaker]

So really not going to work out cheaper to run. Maybe and only maybe less pollution 

[turboplanner]

34 minutes ago, kgwilson said:

The one thing that all governments are pretty good at is finding ways to extract money from the population. Either it will be based on km or at charging stations they can add their cut there. The problem is with charging at home or from personal solar/wind etc sources so it will likely be based on distance travelled. They may make everyone have a GPS device which will then be worked around by anyone smart enough, just like tax avoidance and tax evasion now.

Already collecting revenue in Victoria to match the roads contribution from ICE vehicles which have a sliding scale, e.g. semi trailers cost thousands of dollars.

[Flightrite]

3 hours ago, planesmaker said:

Need we mention the large tax revenue from fuel sales will have to be replaced with???

That's the one thing our corrupt Govt is keeping in the back of their minds all the time! They (we) can ill afford to lose that tax income, Otto's design will be with us for the life span of everyone on these pages & beyond!

[pmccarthy]

Teach me to brag about parts availability for old vehicles. I just tried to fit a gasket obtained from the UK and it was the wrong one! Back to making my own.

[turboplanner]

5 hours ago, Flightrite said:

That's the one thing our corrupt Govt is keeping in the back of their minds all the time! They (we) can ill afford to lose that tax income, Otto's design will be with us for the life span of everyone on these pages & beyond!

Someone has to build and maintain the roads or we are back in the 1700s where, in the USA there was a trail cut east west from memory 27 inches widefor horse and rider, and even that cutting probably came from a horse tax.

 

 

[spacesailor]

Some rural roads Are being returned to graded gravel, with the saving of not sealing those long inter-town roads.

spacesailor

[coljones]

The biggest problem facing EV is not country folk but inner city dwellers who don't have off-street parking or easy access to charging facilities.

 

For the rest, even those in the country, where daily driving distances of less than 150km are extremely common, there should be no problems selecting EVs from the current worldwide catalogues.

 

For those doing greeter distances than 400km return there will be hybrids available, maybe less than 1% of the total demand.

[walrus]

Cojones, the problem is not “economic demand” but marginal productivity - my inner city commute is to buy an ice cream - there is no economic cost to making the trip by foot or by bus or not at all. The country trip is 40km to buy 5Litres of Grazon to kill Capeweed.  There is a very different economic cost associated with that transaction.

 

That is why 10 litres of diesel fuel is worth more to an Indian farmer who uses it to run a cultivator than to a Sydney housewife who wants to get her hair cut.

[coljones]

3 hours ago, walrus said:

Cojones, the problem is not “economic demand” but marginal productivity - my inner city commute is to buy an ice cream - there is no economic cost to making the trip by foot or by bus or not at all. The country trip is 40km to buy 5Litres of Grazon to kill Capeweed.  There is a very different economic cost associated with that transaction.

 

That is why 10 litres of diesel fuel is worth more to an Indian farmer who uses it to run a cultivator than to a Sydney housewife who wants to get her hair cut.

Your problem as an inner city person, is if you are without off-street parking, how will you solve the problem of charging your car? For the rest, even those in the sticks, the biggest problem is distance, which, except for those doing long distances, is not a problem at all. I very seriously doubt that the vast majority of drivers in Australia would have a daily commute of more than 100km and on a trip of more than 300.

[pmccarthy]

That may be true, but my daily commute for twenty years was 220km and literally thousands of people in Bendigo, Ballarat, Castlemaine and the dozens of smaller towns who worked in Melbourne did the same.

[turboplanner]

41 minutes ago, pmccarthy said:

That may be true, but my daily commute for twenty years was 220km and literally thousands of people in Bendigo, Ballarat, Castlemaine and the dozens of smaller towns who worked in Melbourne did the same.

Remember the OP was about some academics at the Grattan Institute calling for "outlawing" of ICE cars from 2035. They also mentioned some non-industry terms like "light vehicles" which we'll take to mean trucks.                                                    When you outlaw something, you have to provide a replacement so you need it to be invented first so you can then adapt it to the application  and feasible production, they are often the rocks that break the lightbulb idea.

 

The regional daily commute is one essential need, and before someone says "Use public tranpsort" it doesn't run from the thousands of farm properties where the wife commutes to Melbourne, the local hospital etc.

 

Then there are the reciprocal trips where people like myself might start in the city at 4 am with a first appointment at Ballarat around 8.30 and finish in Mildura for the day, Griffith the next day and back to Melbourne. That application has to be filled by a replacement EV.

[spacesailor]

Also there is, in Australia lots of ' grey nomads ' without a residential address.

Were would they go for an overnight recharge.

Lots are using Petrol generators. While Diesel is their ' Winibaggo ' houses fuel.

I only use my two vehicles for pleasure, not  ' commuting ' & not only on sealed roads.

Try getting fuel let alone EV recharge station on the Buchanan Hyway NT, Topsprings is ONE servo.

Who knows were the next is ?.

Largest number of helicopters, Iv,e ever seen at just one farm-station.

spacesailor

[Keith Page]

On 20/07/2021 at 1:07 PM, Kyle Communications said:

The trouble is Marty not everyone lives in a smallish place in Australia like you do.  For me to drive the 300km  to the farm towing a trailer drop off some gear then head back...can not be done...and some times we dont have any power when we get there due to being on a SWER line...so that dirty coal fired power station up the road is no good to us. I would have to start my diesel generator to try to charge the car long enough for the return trip home.

 

EV cars are only practical for small travel distances and just carrying passengers...until there is a mega major shift in performance...it wont happen in this country. Most of us travel too far and too wide

 

Trucks fit into this category.

Imagine an electric B-Double, Brisbane to Darwin.

OR Is that why there is talk about inland rail?

[turboplanner]

1 hour ago, Keith Page said:

Trucks fit into this category.

Imagine an electric B-Double, Brisbane to Darwin.

OR Is that why there is talk about inland rail?

Interestingly the two trial elecric trucks I've been following for about four years are currently parked, and it looks like range is the biggest issue. As you can imagine, when you screw on the load masses we permit in Australia, it uses up a heap of power.

 

The Brisbane to Darwin run is a fascinating one where the Prime Movers can be lightweight to carry more and start out in Brisbane with two, three or four Metro Prime movers pulling B Doubles or singles or a combination to Brisbane hubs to pick up freight, then two Prime Movers pull two B Double sets up to Toowoomba, where another Prime Mover has been picking up freight with a single 45 foot trailer.

 

Then in the coupling years the long distance Prime Mover is coupled with an A Trailer, A Trailer, B trailer, Converter dolly and B Trailer and lastly another Converter dolly and 45 footer.

 

So the operator is burning 1/5 the fuel he used to burn in the semi trailer days, and only has one driver to worry about instead of five.

 

Even with the long distance from Brisbane to Darwing a train can't get anywhere near the door to door speed and cost.

 

The inland rail project has been going for 40 years. Every decade or so some new consortium gets together and has a go, but the numbers don't seem to stack up. 

[skippydiesel]

Trains!  Its not so much the trains as the rail system - after 50+ years I still find it hard to believe that Australia has not had the foresight to modernise its rails systems.

 

A modern rail line (without road X rail crossings) enabling trains to cruise at 200 kph (or more) with automated freight handling at stopping points, would be hard to match for energy and time (door to door)efficiency.

[spacesailor]

"  with automated freight handling at stopping points, would be hard to match for energy and time ".

I believe the ore transporting rail is fully automated.  (  just to save a couple of workers wages ).

was on the news. 

spacesailor

[kgwilson]

Janus Electric will be trialling electric Class 8 prime movers for B Doubles and single trailer trucks between Sydney & Brisbane later this year. The cost to convert is cheaper than a diesel overhaul and the 2m x 1.2 metre battery costs $120,000 but can be swapped out in three minutes which is why they are planning battery swap stations along the route. Range is around 600km for smaller rigs and about 400km for B doubles. 

 

 

[skippydiesel]

Ugly trucks - a nice cab over/forward control (eg Scania) would have looked the futuristic part so much better.

[turboplanner]

1 hour ago, skippydiesel said:

Ugly trucks - a nice cab over/forward control (eg Scania) would have looked the futuristic part so much better.

This isn't a manufacturer's product Skippy, just an old W model Kenworth where someone has pulled the diesel out, bolted an electric motor, batteries and some controls, and it's a genuine electric truck. The leyout is not much different to the electric fork lift trucks we used to build in Australia in the 1960s.  I did the same in 2004, shipping two trucks to a US supplier who pulled the engines out, bolted an electric motor to the transmission, fitted batteries and they were fitted with pumps and hoses and used airside for pumping fuel from the apron tanks into airliners.

 

The bonneted truck design is for long distance work, reducing fatigue by placing the driver within the wheelbase where the vertical movement is less than the front suspension movement. In a cabover trick like the Scania, the vertical movement is greater than the front suspension movement because the driver is in cantilever which gives that extra flick. The diffenence, even in a small truck is around 40 mm, and if you multiply that by a few hundred thousand times on a Melbourne-Brisbane leg, it makes a big difference to the fatigue level.

[Thruster88]

The long wheel base conventional truck argument may have been valid in the dark ages, now short wheel base cab over euro trucks like volvo with their excellent cab suspension have same or better ride and quietness. They can also tow longer trailers within the regs for an extra two pallet$ or have room for a big battery. 

        Not sure how swapping out that $120k battery is going to work in the real world, who owns it if it goes bad?

        Should the government mandate the type of vehicles we drive and fly or should they stick to things like a covid vaccine rollout? 

Edited July 23, 2021 by Thruster88

[tillmanr]

I won,t be around to worry. Sad for those who will inherit the new world.

[turboplanner]

1 hour ago, Thruster88 said:

The long wheel base conventional truck argument may have been valid in the dark ages, now short wheel base cab over euro trucks like volvo with their excellent cab suspension have same or better ride and quietness. They can also tow longer trailers within the regs for an extra two pallet$ or have room for a big battery. 

        Not sure how swapping out that $120k battery is going to work in the real world, who owns it if it goes bad?

        Should the government mandate the type of vehicles we drive and fly or should they stick to things like a covid vaccine rollout? 

I left the harmonics out for simplicity on ride, but we currently have a serious fatigue issue with over the road trucks; a lot of extra drivers dying compared with about 25 years ago.

 

The two extra pallets was a sad story. We got an agreement to extend overall length to provide enough space for long wheelbase bonneted trucks, crarying 2500 litres fuel and a decent size sleeper. When the lengths were extended, someone forgot to limit the pin to tri dimension and the trailer manufacturers extended their length and filled the hole with two pallets. Worse, they pushed the gooseneck forward about half a pallet on drop frames to get a minute gain in cubic which created a nightmare with rear swing radius, so you either had a hang up between chassis ends and landing legs at legal axle loadings or you had to overload the drive by about half a tonne and move the fifth wheel forward creating a swing clearance problem and shortening the sleeper. Which is why we're seeing cab overs on long distance route. There's been some talk lately about correcting it.

[skippydiesel]

Turbo - You certainly know your HGV stuff but as an occasional driver of 40 years, all I can tell you is that the view/visibility from a forward control (cab over) beats the heck out of the conventional/long bonnet style.

 

Further I have an immediate feeling of competence in a forward control that I never feel in a conventional.

 

As far as suspension goes - very limited experience of either designs on really rough roads - so find the ride comparable.

 

Spent  6 months helping a mate out with a hot mix semi - mostly in north Sydney. Prim mover a conventional KW - bloody awful in those very tight streets and the way cars would pass & cut in, complexly disappear under the bonnet - no chance of seeing if they were braking - just terrifying.