The horrors of trying to buy an EV in Australia

Interesting article on this in the Guardian over the weekend.

Sold out: why Australia doesn’t have enough electric vehicles to go around | Electric vehicles | The Guardian

A huge part of the problem is government policy. Because our Federal government is fundamentally opposed to absolutely anything environmentally friendly (our "aid" to Ukraine is 70,000 tonnes of coal bought from a mining company that funds our ruling party), it makes more economic sense for EV manufacturers to send their limited supplies to companies with more EV-friendly policies.

We are starting to get a dribble of EVs now. But I might end up waiting till next year to buy one, because the range of available cars is so limited for now, and because waiting lists are so huge.

 

We have different dollars.

In fact, like-for-like, car prices have barely risen in Australia over the last 20 years. There was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald recently commemmorating the 25th anniversary of the Drive Car Of The Year awards in Australia.

It reprinted the 1999 Car Of The Year awards article. At the time, a Nissan Pulsar started at A$19,990. Now, the closest equivalent would probably be a Hyundai i30, which starts from A$20,990, with vastly more equipment, better refinement, and improved safety. A Subaru Liberty / Legacy was A$29,990; now it's A$32,990. When you consider inflation more generally over the past 20 years, this is remarkable: those cars should have risen in price by 30% or more over the period. House prices over that period have quadrupled. So we really can't complain about car prices.

 

It's an idea that really appeals to me, especially with kind of semi-classics. When I was a kid - in the 80s, so it was already old - my Dad had one of these....



..... and I'd love to pick one up (you can get them for about A$10,000 here) and do an EV resto-mod on it. At the moment, it's prohibitively expensive, but as tech develops I think it might be practical in a few years.

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There is a French company doing something along these lines now. It doesn't quite meet your specs, but the idea of a relatively-standardised EV conversion kit and service is there.

At the moment, though, it's 5,000 euro for a conversion, and there's only a 15kWh battery, and about 100km of range. You can see it here:
Rétrofit électrique de votre voiture | Transition-One
Click on "Découvrez nos modèles" to see the cars and specs.

 

I think it should be doable - not necessarily for the car I mentioned, but for common models. If you think, for example, not just of RAV 4s, and not just of Camrys, but of all the 2.4-litre Toyota 4-cyls, or all the 1.4-litre VW Group TSIs, or all the Ford 2.5-litre EcoBoosts, there must be a way of standardising a great deal of the components for each common engine.

 

Ah, yes. I've seen them. The VW and Porsche ones are really expensive, though, aren't they?

Yes, that's definitely a challenge - keeping the batteries low and evenly-spread would be difficult.

Given that the batteries are more of a challenge than the electric motor, I wonder whether it's possible to create a battery module that would fit in the gap the engine left? If you're pulling out a heavy engine, replacing it with batteries of a similar size and weight could work. And then there's the fuel tank. But I don't know what sort of capacity that would give you: I'm guessing not enough.