The first shipment of BYD Seals is now in the country, so with a bit of luck we'll be able to take delivery of ours within the next few weeks.
We got the old car cleaned today to take photos for the trade in valuation. For a ten and half year old car it still scrubs up OK. From certain angles. As long as you don't look too closely.
One of the documented Post-#Covid side effects is a neurodegenerative auto-immune condition that until recently was considered a sub-type of Multiple Sclerosis.
Many degenerative #AutoImmune conditions are thought to be post-viral triggered.
In ~30 years time, after today's children have spent the first 11 years of their lives being repeatedly infected, the most popular form of transport won't be the #Bus, or the #ElectricCar, or the #Train, or the #Scooter.
Bit of #ElectricCar psychology I hadn't expected. I'm quite particular about it being clean and tidy. It's such a quiet and peaceful place to be when driving and I don't want that spoiled by clutter or dirt.
If an #SUV was ever a 'green option' the likelihood of tightening of #batteries' #supplychains & associated costs suggest they won't be for long.
Essentially, as often explored in my timeline #publictransport is the real answer... and if you really need a car, then a smaller #electriccar is what is needed not some enormous hybrid-SUV
@ai6yr This really makes me wonder about GMs self driving tech. I’ve been thinking for some time that if I ever bought a second #ElectricCar that it would be nice if it had some self driving tech beyond adaptive cruise control and lane keeping ability on the freeway. It’s now looking like that is likely several years away and probably only at considerable expense. It’s sad to see GM falter like this as they seemed to be the leader in this area. @exador23
The BYD Seal "launched" in Australia this evening. The prices turned out to be very competitive so we put down a deposit for the base model. The NSW EV stamp duty exemption and rebate are still in force for electric car orders placed up until the end of the year so that helps reduce the effective cost even further.
The pricing on these is really aggressive. There are only a few electric sedans currently available in Australia but BYD are significantly undercutting them all here.
The cheapest Seal variant is AUD $49,888 while the Tesla Model 3, Polestar 2 and Hyundai Ioniq 6 start at $63,700, $69,900 and $75,430 respectively (inc. GST + delivery fees but not state fees & charges). The other cars all beat the base model Seal in some way (max range, or acceleration, or max charging speed) but unless you're playing EV Top Trumps the $14-25k lower price may make up for that.
If you do want higher specs then the mid range Seal ($58,798) is still cheaper than all of the competition and even the top of the range Seal ($68,798) is cheaper than everything but the base model Model 3.
We're considering upgrading our order from the base model to the mid-range one. This would mainly be for the bigger battery (83 vs 61 kWh) and faster maximum charging speed (150 vs 110 kW), which would mean fewer and/or shorter recharging stops when on long road trips. There are also a number of other nice-to-haves in the mid range model that the base model doesn't have, none of which are particularly compelling individually but taken together along with the power system differences we might be swayed.
With our current car we've pretty consistently averaged about 10,000 km per year, i.e. roughly 200 km per week.
To get a very rough energy consumption estimate for the BYD Seal I can divide the WLTP range by the battery capacity and get 13.4 kWh / 100 km and 14.5 kWh / 100 km for the base model and mid range model respectively.
Those WLTP based numbers are almost certainly optimistic for real world driving through Sydney traffic, so I round up slightly before multiplying by 200 km and estimate that we might get through somewhere in the vicinity of 30 kWh in a good week. Big uncertainties on that, but it should be within a factor of two of the real number for any week that we don't make any out of town trips (which is most weeks).
If we did all our charging at home, in the evenings, with electricity from the grid then that 30 kWh would cost us about $10 in electricity. If we manage to do all the charging from excess solar power that we'd otherwise export back to the grid then it would only cost us about $3.30.
Depending on time of year our solar panels typically generate somewhere between 120 and 320 kWh per week so taking 30-60 kWh per week out of that to top up the car would not make a huge difference, apart from in winter. For most of the year we should be able to charge almost entirely from excess solar, as long as the car spends enough time at home during the day.
It'll be interesting to see how it actually pans out.
On paper, in theory, #ElectricCar repairs should be far less than they would be for an internal combustion engine vehicle, as there are far fewer moving parts.
In reality though, that's not always the case. Here's who is gatekeeping EV repairs, and keeping them high.