octave

Conveniently this is a software update and can be done over the air. I haven't seen that announcement The prediction is that Tesla will deliver 500k in Q4. (I tend to follow these things because I own shares in Tesla] Time will tell whether the target will be met. Tesla Model 3 Maintenance Costs Those who don't trust the technology are not being compelled at least in the foreseeable future to buy an EV. Most car companies have announced plans to cease ICE production in around 10 years. Most people here will be able to buy a shiny new ICE vehicle maintain it in to the future. I am interested in my next vehicle being EV for several reasons. I have driven 2 EV vehicles (over a couple of weeks) and they were both delightful to drive. As I have mentioned before I produce around 2 MWh of excess electricity from my roof. I could buy a house battery or I could put that money towards an EV with V2L which could act as a house battery. For me it makes sense. At this stage for others it probably doesn't, these folks need not buy an EV. If people regard EVs as some kind of experiment that will succeed or fail then we are not on the leading edge of that experiment. Our adoption of EVs in this country s one of the slowest in the word for various reasons. If EVs are a ridiculous failure then they will begin to decline in those countries that have the highest percentage of EVs like Norway. The prediction is that we have 47 years of oil reserves (at current consumption). One way or the other petrol/diesel/jet fuel will run out. The thing we should not do is to wait for that point and then scratch our heads and say "what should we do now?" Technology advances because people try many ideas and those ideas are tested in the real world. I am not necessarily a fan of biofuels and I don't see them as being a big part of the solution but it is great that people are working on these technologies. Continuing as we are is not an option, oil reserves are finite.

i have come to this discussion late but I have a few points. I don't think it is correct that Macron is talking about banning private jets but rather providing disincentive via the tax system. Is France going to ban private jets completely? "Private jets have been a source of outrage lately, as the city-hopping exploits of celebrities and billionaires come to light. A jet belonging to Steven Spielberg burned around €117,000 worth of fuel in the two months since June, according to flight tracking data." "Despite urgent calls from campaigners, France is unlikely to impose a total ban on jets. Government spokesman Olivier Véran reaffirmed today that it is "obviously not a question of banning them", given their important role in the economy. But “the French should not have to feel as if it’s always the same people who are being asked to make efforts". "Heavy taxation and restrictions are the most likely measures to be introduced. Companies could also be forced to publish details on their use of corporate aircraft, for greater transparency." Even for those who do not accept the science of anthropogenic climate change or other pollutants surely the squandering of a finite resource is worthy of attention. I am pretty sure that the price per KWh lithium-ion batteries has dropped substantially. https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline Happy to consider evidence to the contrary though. There was some comment on recharge times for EVs. The problem often with these debates is that both side tend to quote best or worst case scenarios. To address the worst case scenario of charging a Tesla on a 3Kw charger over 20 hours. For regular daily use the average user does not fill the battery full and then drive until it is empty. My son plugs his Tesla in when he gets home from work (not every day) He tries to keep the battery between 40% and 80%. His 7.5Kw smart charger does this during the cheap time overnight (good for him and good for the grid) The power in Wellington NZ where he lives is on average 82.1% renewable Energy in New Zealand 2022 We have done a road trip with him Auckland to wellington with one pleasant stop for lunch and a charge. My next car will be EV when the time is right. I produce from my rooftop solar about 2 Mwh more than I need and I also would like a house battery but at the moment the figures dont quite stack up. What would make sense is an EV with bidirectional charging V2L of V2G. This could both serve as transport and a house battery. Given my pattern of usage this would be the rational thing to do. When comparing EV to ICE is important to consider all the inputs from drilling for oil or mining lithium and cobalt etc. to the daily use and disposal/recycling at end of life (note once you have burnt petrol it is gone for ever). On my daily bike ride I ride past the refinery in Geelong. It is interesting to note that on the facility there is a rather large sub station which I gather is to provide power for the process of turning crude oil into petrol. On top of that there is the fact that the crude oil comes from an ocean going tanker that has travelled a considerable distance (powered by fossil fuels.) After processing the fuel is pumped into road tankers that distribute the petrol far and wide (driven by fossil fuels) I will leave it to others to detail the path that leads to an EV but at least the raw materials can be reused unlike fuels that are burnt. I think a lot of animosity towards EVs is based on the idea that people believe they will be forced to buy an EV before they want to. Car makers are still intending to manufacture ICE vehicles until the mid 2030s and then a mid 30s car will have a 10 year plus life although I suspect ICE cars will be for the wealthy enthusiasts. Also people sometimes have anxiety towards change. Circling back to exec jets, how about this. We tax the Spielberg types to make their exorbitant "flea hop" trips and use that money to advance jet fuels to make them cleaner and more sustainable. Doesn't everyone want us to develop clean fuel that is not in limited supply. Airlines are already using small amounts of biofuels Biofuels are Taking Off with the Airline Industry On Board

It was plastic. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/3Dratchet_wrench

Are you really serious with this comment? OK then, there are many different sources of lead exposure, By the way what are the lead levels at the average beach????? Links to studies would be appreciated. Most activates us humans undertake come with some risk. Most of us mentally perform some kind or risk benefit analysis. I could go flying and this gives me a certain risk to life and limb. In flying we try to understand the risks and mitigate them. A given safety procedure goes through a risk benefit analysis or we could say that most safety procedures have up and down sides. So the question is what is the down side of adopting fuel without lead? To use your beach analogy, if I go to the beach and I am exposed to a small amount of lead I may weigh of the enjoyment I get against the small amount of lead (again please inform me what the exposure at the beach is) I get some thing good at a small risk. If I use new unleaded aviation fuel the upside is that I am not pumping out (albeit at a small amount) a substance which is toxic and more importantly to myself I am not handling a fuel with a know cumulative toxin, So this then must be weighed up against the downside which is????????????? Anyone? No but it is smart to choose your battles. I understand this makes you unhappy but the reality is that whether you agree or not lead WILL disappear from fuel. You can tilt at windmills or yell at clouds but that is the reality. Change happens some find it hard to cope with. Just to remind you, there is no credible movement to ban your aeroplane. This could have been an issue if there were no alternatives BUT THERE ARE. No one is blaming you. After the change from leaded to unleaded those who hung on to there unleaded cars were not pilloried or run out of town. Most sensible people realized that this change was an evolution not a revolution. Aviation fuel has evolved, as I understand it there are various grades Avgas Various fuels have been phased in and out. This is no different. It is not part of some culture war. I imagine it will go something like this: My local airfield has a fuel facility that has available Mogas unleaded, Avgas LL and Jet A1. Future facilities may either have an extra tank with this new unleaded avgas or perhaps may replace mogas with this new fuel (if suitable) Perhaps at first the new unleaded will be more costly. This will probably change as the sales volume increases. Perhaps there could be a tax break to help. Gradually the unleaded fuel will become the desired product but LL can still be available for those aircraft that cannot use unleaded. I honestly don't see this as the most pressing problem facing pilots and owners. You do seem to be a little defensive. The thing that closes threads or gets people suspended from this forum is when people begin the drift towards personal attacks. if you feel Ian's research is not valid or cherry picked then present your facts without cherry picking. Perhaps present your evidence about lead levels at the beach. In other words don't just say "Ian's so called research" Present his offerings and critique them point by point.

Agreed an this as made a huge difference to lead levels. You seem to have misinterpreted my comment. Your question is would I ban naturally occurring sources of lead. Cleary that is a nonsense proposition I refer you to what I actually said. The point is you obviously cannot ban naturally occurring sources of lead but you can have some control over lead additives. I really don't know how to put it more simply. Regardless of what percentage of lead comes from naturally occurring sources versus GA aircraft the effect is cumulative. It would be a different case if there were no alternatives. I am not advocating grounding the fleet until they all use unleaded. What I do think is that the change is coming (whether you like it or not) just as it did for cars. I can remember the fuss leading up to the phasing out of leaded fuel vehicles. I remember my father in law buying a car just before the change. In retrospect this now seems a little foolish since he has had about 6 good unleaded vehicles since. FB I still don't quite get your problem here. Apart from the fact that some engines are already designed to run on unleaded (Rotax) new fuels are coming online which do not contain lead. Gradually this fuel will become more available and its price will fall with volume. What is the problem? Cleary I did not say this. There are natural causes of ionizing radiation and then there are human caused sources. The fact that we cant fully protect ourselves from the ionizing radiation from the sun does not mean we don't strive to reduce exposure from sources such as medical imaging. It is not one source of exposure compared to another source, it is the total of both sources. Apart from all of that, even if you don't accept the current thinking on this, from a purely personal perspective the fact is that our right to fly does require some social license. Any search on the internet will show numerous groups opposing GA airports on the grounds of noise and lead pollution. Noise is more difficult but the lead has a clear solution. In a few years time this argument will just seem silly.

The phasing out of lead in car fuel in Australia had a significant effect on lead levels. https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/protection/chemicals-management/lead#:~:text=The amount of lead in Australia's air has decreased significantly,of unleaded petrol in 1986. How much of a problem is air-borne lead in Australia? "The amount of lead in Australia's air has decreased significantly since the introduction of unleaded petrol in 1986. Before the phase-out of leaded petrol, which began in 1993, the national air quality standard for lead was regularly exceeded in urban environments. Levels are now less than 10 per cent of the national annual standard of 0.5 micrograms per cubic metre of air. Lead levels remain high in some regional towns with large industrial point sources (such as lead smelters), and levels may exceed the national standards in these areas." I accept that there are many fewer aircraft than cars but I cant see that this justifies exemptions and I would imagine that the general public would think this also. BF As far as I can see your argument is that environmental sources of lead exposure are greater than the exposure from aircraft. This may generally be true although location may be relevant. Since lead is a cumulative toxin, it does not make much sense to say since we have exposure from source A and source B and that source A is is greater than source B so lets have both. Some sources of lead exposure are inevitable but the important thing is to keep lead levels below the recommended levels. It is surely sensible to control the sources we can control.

Petrol can only be burnt once. The materials in batteries can potentially be recycled. Tesla is working towards a circular economy. Fossil fuels are a finite resource. Whilst it is reasonable to ask where materials for the batteries (not just for EVs) will come from we also need to apply that questioning to the status quo.

Batteries will continue to improve just like other technology. We are not at the end of technological development. You can drive interstate in an EV, I have done it. The amount of excess power my house rooftop system produces is enough to drive 14000km. I am looking at getting an EV next year. The vehicles I am considering can also provide V2L (vehicle to load) which can act as a house battery.

2nd attempt! Driving the Tesla Plaid UNDERWATER! We did it!! Tesla Submarine 2.0

Is a battery electric vehicle safe in a flood?

From the US NTSB NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) showed that electric cars in the US caught fire at a rate of 25.1 per 100,000 sales compared to 1,530 for ICE vehicles and 3,475 for hybrids. Pure EV is the least likely to catch fire followed by ICE and the most likely to catch fire is a hybrid which has a higher rate than the other 2 combined. I imagine a hybrid has a higher rate because it both petrol and batteries.

The range of A Toyota Mirai is 402 miles (12.4 pounds of hydrogen) I think the cost of hydrogen is too much and at least in this country the distribution network is miniscule. I totally agree with your point about green vs brown hydrogen although there are several green hydrogen plants in the planning stage and a potential export market. Overseas there are service stations that produce there own hydrogen on site by electrolysis. The hydrogen fuel station in Altona uses electrolysis. There are commercially available hydrogen fuel cells for home use. They take your unused solar power and electrolyze tap water and then use it to power a fuel cell thereby acting as a power storage battery. This would suit me although the cost/benefit does not make it economically viable for me at this stage but it is getting ever closer. In Europe hydrogen is being added to town gas in a process called blending. Most countries have quite a low limit but it can be up to 20% with existing infrastructure. This is actually being trialed at a Keele university in Britain and I believe is distributed to 100 houses as well as the university campus. Also I believe a trial in NSW. Getting back to aviation though a hydrogen powered aircraft did in fact crash land during testing and was substantially damaged fortunately no injuries and no leakage or fire. When it comes to larger aircraft it is interesting to see what Airbus and Boeing are up to A tour of the Airbus A380 hydrogen engine test aircraft For aviation and hydrogen it is very much early days but given 66 years between Kitty Hawke and the Sea of Tranquility I will be fascinating to see how aviation evolves in the next decades.

Can you put some figures on this? Happy to supply my figures (without any subsidies or SECs) There are already hydrogen refilling stations now, granted not many however motorists ARE filling Toyota Mirais now, again not a large number though. In 2021 there were just 38 registrations of Hydrogen cars (Hyumda Nexo and Toyoya Mirai) Personally I don't see a huge amount sense in smaller hydrogen passenger vehicles however it probably makes sense for larger vehicles. Overseas there are hydrogen buses in regular use. Refueling seems to be much like filling a LP gas car. How do you fill up a hydrogen car? - DrivingElectric JCB has working hydrogen powered excavation equipment both fuel cell and hydrogen combustion powered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRXT3832YBI

Textron buys electric aircraft maker Pipistrel for new sustainable aircraft unit

An interesting analysis of the possible effects of aviation sanctions. The END of Russian Aviation!?

Yep https://hoaxeye.com/2017/09/07/low-flying/

I don't accept your assertion that the vaccinated are less safe than the unvaccinated. Certainly sites that I would regard as being reliable do not support this assertion. It can be difficult to sift through and interpret statistics. Perhaps you could post links from the CDC or similar source. I will just make an assertion fhat is reasonably easy to fact check. My assertion is this. In the United states there seems to be a strong correlation between the vaccination rate of each US state. and the infection rate. This link from the Mayo Clinic has a map. If you hover over each state you can see the Vaccination rate the average daily cases and the infection rate per 100000 people. https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/map In terms of vaccination I think I have said many times that I am not in favor of mandatory vaccination however I do believe that a place of business has the right to insist n either vaccination or regular testing. I joined the RAAF in 1979 and during the 12 years I was there it was a condition of employment to be fully vaccinated and otherwise ready to be sent anywhere in the world if necessary. There actually was a mechanism to refuse however this made you unable to carry out the required duties. i agree that as a society we do make judgments about how much money and resources we expend to save a given number of lives. If your plane goes down a very expensive helicopter will probably spend considerable time and money looking for you. What I feel is being missed is that we are saying look it is only 1084 deaths so lets get rid of all the restrictions and vaccinations. If we did this we would not be considering the worth of 1084 but considerably more. We can predict this through examining how easily the virus is passed on and by comparing our situation with other countries. You surely agree that without the precautions we are taking the infection number and therefore the death and serious illness numbers would be higher. I feel for the most part I have put my view politely if somewhat firmly at times. I am more than happy to adjust my position with good quality evidence. In the end it is up to you what you do. The government response informed by epidemiologists is that the emergence from lockdowns will be a function of vaccination numbers and measures such as vaccine passports. I understand that you are against this but nevertheless this is what will most likely happen. You can decide not to get vaccinated (none of my business) but although you might think it unfair or stupid you can decide to go along with it or not but there are impositions on this. Thanks for the apology, I guess it makes us even for my Brazil population typo. Standing by for flightrites laughing empji, it actually has the opposite effect on than what is intended.

uummm I don't believe I have ever mentioned playgrounds and if I have motioned masks it has only been as an example of some measures that can help reduce the transmission rate. Feel free to search my posts and provide an example. I suspect you are conflating my posts with other peoples posts

jack you might have noticed or not that at no point have I made any comment on flying during the lockdown. I am less concerned with the letter of the law than the actual practical risks.

Yep the error was mine, I left a zero off. I do place a high value on accuracy and I am happy to admit my error. Still though over half a million deaths is tragic is it not?

Ummmm no I am not concerned about Smallpox because it was eradicated by vaccinations, what is your point? We can go back and forth on this indefinitely but the fact is that it is covid dealt with with as best as we can. The game plan is to keep the deaths and illness to a level that can be dealt with until we reach a vaccination level that will allow for a gradually reopening . It will still be with us but with vaccination, hygiene, selective lockdowns when necessary we can keep it at reasanble levels. You list deadly diseases from the past to compare with our present situation. Diseases such as smallpox and the plague were eventually tamed by science not self appointed keyboard experts. The fact is you may not be happy with how it is being handled but this is the scientific advice, I realize you probably believe you have more expertise. Your dissatisfaction with the situation has been noted but basically you are stuck with. Either you can join a political group to fight it or you can lobby a politician or you can ignore rules and advice and go down the civil disobedience route. The thing that is undignified is whining about it.

Marty I left a 0 off the Brazil population but it still equates to a death rate of around 50000 if applied to Australia's population The question for the let it rip mob is that left unchecked covid would be a huge killer.

Well luckily we have medical researchers who don't just wonder but look for evidence. now I always hate to give wrong facts but I left a zero off the Brazil population bit still applied to Australia would be horrendous

Flightright what part of that post amuses you? Is it over half a million deaths? Here is something to amuse you, my sisters father in law died recently of covid, that should give you a laugh.

But these are not contagious they don't spread exponentially through the population. What you appear to favor is letting it rip like Brazil did. A population of less than Australia (20 million). Death toll is 586590 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/brazil/ Is that what you would be happy with here?