85
Australia’s EV sales are skyrocketing. Our charging infrastructure may soon struggle to keep up
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
85 points (97.8% liked)
Australia
5146 readers
94 users here now
A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.
Before you post:
If you're posting anything related to:
- The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
- Politics, post it to Australian Politics
- World News/Events, post it to World News
- A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian
If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:
- When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment
Banner Photo
Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
- Aussie Memes
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Moderation
Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.
Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Combustion engines charge their own batteries, while they run, why don't evs run on a dual battery system, if that's not possible during operation, and be charging one, while the other is in use. Probably space and efficiency of the battery, I'm guessing? Can they just use a separate kinetic energy system recharge in motion? I genuinely wonder if this wasn't done to prop up the fossil fuel / power industry in the first place, because how many electric cars did they buy just to bury.
These are called “range extenders”, and I’ve had some limited experience with them using a loaner BMW i3 a decade ago.
The issue is, that it’s a bit of a “worst of both worlds” scenario: you’re always lugging around d the weight of two propulsion systems, impacting electric range. You also lose a tonne of storage space as a result, and there can be reliability concerns with stale fuel etc. if you don’t use the extender often enough.
Toyota’s hybrids have been around for ages, and are a more “practical” implementation of this principle - but ultimately it’s all a bit of a fool’s errand in trying to rationally account for irrational range anxiety.
We’re expecting delivery of our first EV a little later this year, but just knowing that all we need to do is plug the car in when we get home and wake up to a “full tank” the next day saves us so much time and hassle having to go to a servo every week.
Ultimately as battery technology is rapidly improving, and will continue to do so as global demand skyrockets. The resulting density improvements, mean that EV range will surpass regular ICE vehicles in the next decade or so.
Combustion engines burn more fuel to charge the 12V battery, they don't just make free energy.
You can have two batteries and use one while charging the other, but you'll use up the first battery much faster. You can't get more energy by transferring energy back and forth between two batteries just like you can't get more water by pouring it back and forth between two buckets. Using an electric motor to drive a generator to make more power also doesn't work. Neither does pointing a flashlight at a solar panel.
The first two laws of thermodynamics are, more or less:
See also: Perpetual motion machines
Absolutely, but also electrical byproduct or waste can be utilised. Old incandescest light bulbs has heat as wastage. The car is in motion, that motion could be utilised for energy creation. Literally hydro electric energy is utilising the kinetic energy of the water moving to move the rotor over the stator. I don't see why the wheels can't be a rotor, the axle a stator. I assume space issue.
The motion of the car isn't a byproduct, it's the main thing you're using energy to produce, and harvesting that same energy means you need to spend more energy than you're getting back otherwise the car stops. That's how regenerative braking works.
You could harvest waste heat for energy generation, but it's hard and there isn't really enough of it to bother with in an EV. They do dump heat gathered from the drive unit into the A/C system to save energy on heating the cabin though.