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I think this is called 'using the performance'...

so, the problem is not the amount of power we generate as a country. it is the delivery infrastructure we have a family member who works as a grid manager for Orion, and have had several in depth conversations with them about the difficulties they are facing with the governments mind numbing blindness to all the other issues and infrastructure challenges that EV's cause. Our current supply network in the majority of the country is not not capable of delivering a solution to a mass adoption of EV vehicles. for an example, There has just been a multi million dollar sub station placed out the back of Rolleston to power the majority of Rolleston, this was finished early last year and was expected to last for a further 5-7 years of development out that way. HOWEVER, only 18 months later and this substation is at its peak capability due to the mass expanse of Rolleston and the surrounding areas. yes, they can pull another line down from the HV lines running down the south island and build another substation but the cost is monumental when they have to start doing this to literally cater for EV's. This is only 1 example, there are literally hundreds of other examples like this. not only is the supply grid not upto standard, the supply lines to older houses are also not upto standard when you start looking at households that end up with multiple EV's. these are all issues that Orion are already facing with the small uptake we have currently. Our current network can not support what people (the gubberment) are looking to achieve, the amount of money that needs to be spend to deliver infrastructure to support it is truly mind blowing further comments above were trying to say that electric vehicles will be remarkedly cheaper to run than a traditional vehicle, this is simply not going to be true. you look at normal service items (tires, brakes, cv's that sort of stuff) and the maintenance cost will be about the same as a dinosaur burning monster. yet, you have a stupid amount of $$$ required every 10 years ish (if you are lucky it will be that long) for replacement battery packs. if you actually look at it, on the grand scheme of things it will be much of a muchness in regards to running costs. I would be very surprised if we don't see something along the lines of a independent electricity rate for EV chargers. now speaking of battery packs, are EV's really "cleaner" than current solutions? absolutely not. the footprint of a modern EV can arguably be pointed as being the same, if not bigger than a traditional vehicle over its lifetime. where do the batteries go, sure, they can be recycled... sent to the other side of the world on ughhhhh dinosaur burning ships. oooo the irony, what about the pollutants released when we start having mass amounts of fires both caused from the EV itself and overloading of infrastructure Call me a cynic or whatever you want but on so many levels this proposed mass adoption seems wrong for so many reasons... as with anything on this planet, it's not what we are doing but the amount in which we are doing it. If suddenly you could click your fingers and every.single.vehicle was electric there would be other issues based on the numbers..... still comes down to the plain and simple fact that the world id overpopulated! bring back natural selection hahaha to be clear, I am not against the implementation of the EV at all, however trying to push for a mass adoption is the worst idea. but it's a catch 22 as no vehicle manufacturer is really coming out with a "better" alternative at this point! Bit of a rant! enjoy!

Wait, do you think there's separate grids for the NI and SI? The HVDC cables travel from Benmore to Welly and back. Most of the MWs travel north to the load heavy North Island from the generation rich South Island. Closing Tiwai smelter would free up MWs (approximately 500MWh) from Manapori to be used elsewhere on the grid (but other issues would arise beyond the energy sector). I think smart meters for car chargers is a brilliant idea if your electricity supplier let's you have the wholesale price. During winter, the wholesale price can be as low as $0.01 at night. This would lower household electricity bills and stop constraints on the grid (which also drives up energy prices) during peak periods.

if greece can do it...

Ye of little imagination

Unexpectedly we might be moving a bit sooner than I thought and my classic e28 has been far more daily competent than I thought it would.. So the big 7 does not get the road time to justify it sitting there! Lots of details in advert, genuinely an amazing and rare car: https://www.trademe.co.nz/3603075905 Would entertain offers here, asking $38k on Trade Me, which vs pricing on the older E65 seems legit. I also can supply the android mirocast unit to share phone to those rear screens.

This is a lovely counterpoint to the monstrosities that are the iX and the XM...love this colourscheme too. https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/listing/3611774149

@BanditThat's not off topic, it's a BMW and has a connection to Hicky in a thread about the TT. I can connect the dots Great looking piece of kit with some expensive hardware upgrades, I bet when new that was a lot of coin to put on the track. Who ever stumps up the cash for that will have an epic ride. Given the price of a new 1000RR is 3 to 4x what is being asked for that bike it's a good deal (and you won't get 3-4x the performance), assuming you were already hunting for a BMW track hack it looks tempting. Needs some BMW M decals to complete the look though.

Without a doubt the enforced Covid layoffs for both motor bike and car racing has given each of the sports a tremendous boost in popularity, moreso perhaps for the watcher. Our Youtube and other channels have been very active of late. Further to Twistee's first post , while segueing smoothly off topic (slightly) this has popped up for sale quite close to home too. The ask appears (to us anyway) quite affordable. Hmm, with a little bit of juggling both in the garage, and the wallet surely space should be found for this? 😁 Discuss.... https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/motorbikes/motorbikes/sports/bmw/listing/3602370567?bof=bHgVunfq

Except you are not going to get every car owner charging their ev all night every night, much the same way that every car owner doesn't put a tank full of gas in their car every day. There are plenty of options to spread out the demand, it will just take some incentives to get people to adjust their behavior. I wonder how much less demand there is on the grid now that we are not refining petrol at Marsden point?....

Yep definitely a beautiful colour combo. Shame about the wheel design. In fact wheel design in general is pretty poor these days I feel.

closing a smelting plant does nothing to power in Auckland, it can't be transferred from one end of country to the other. and flexibility is bollocks, 95% of evs will arrive home after 5pm to go on charge. Unless private companies like wilsons install them all through their multistory carparks then you got places like wellington where every govt worker lives with the car parked on the street down a cliff from the house, going to be a lot of extension leads the whole thing is a joke until they agree to build a nuclear sub sized reactor in a container and place it somewhere near auckland they are screwed. aus the country with the largest private solar panel input has now realised it screws the power companies up, they still need to have the generating capacity to cover nights and windless days etc but they also lose all the profits of being sole supplier . their business model doesn't work basically when you have people all giving power back to the grid at unneeded times, but you still need to cover them with generation capacity in case.

Rules on RUCs on EVs have been in place for a long time. EVs are subject to RUC, there has been an “exemption” in place for a number of years and was until either a set date or the total number of EVs on the road reached a certain percentage. The end date has been moved out a couple of times but it has now been stated it won’t move again, iirc it’s some time in 2023. Cost of electricity + RUC will still be way cheaper per km than petrol or diesel. As for the supply grid, a lot rests on the closure of the smelting plant down south freeing up a lot of capacity. With the vast majority of charging done at home the flexibility is there to use “off-peak” periods.

Bugger that, you can sleep in a car but you can't race a house!

Was presented with a coolant leak in the 130 today... pulled out of the garage this morning and there was a small pool on the floor, jumped in it this evening for the (short) trip home and got a dash warning and left another small pool in my parking spot at work. Didn't get much beyond 100*C on the ~9km trip home but it's a problem that will need addressing. Long weekend on Waiheke this one so no time to look at it until next weekend so I'll have to carry around some demineralised water or premix G48 for the time being. To be fair, it's the only mechanical problem I've had with it in 2.5 years and ~10k kms so I can't complain. And well, BMW cooling systems, it was hardly unexpected. 🙄 Better than blowing the bottom out of the radiator at the top of the harbour bridge, 20km from home, in the old 328 I suppose...

Someones who’s multi million dollar mortgage just got a whole lot more expensive.

So last night I got round to doing something I’ve been meaning to for a long time - flashed the GDSMG2 module with the ‘255’ CSL binary using WinKFP. I also flashed the DME with the CSL SMG shifting and rev matching parameters and the clutch inertia parameters using BMW Flash and the ECUWorx MSS5X Binary Modification Tool. To provide stable supply to the battery I hooked the car up to our Subaru with jumper leads during the flashing process to minimise the bricking risk. I then flashed the GDSMG2 module first with WinKFP: Followed by taking a partial copy of the DME user data area, modifying it with the ECUWorx tool, and then flashing the modified binary back to the DME: The MSS5X Binary Modification Tool is great. So easy to use and such a time saver. I am completely confident in my ability to modify the binary by hand, but I spend a fair chunk of my time in the depths of software, so when it comes to extra-curricular car activities I was more than happy to spend $40 to save the time and mental effort that would be required. The flashing process went flawlessly for me, and I was all done in about 45 mins. For anyone doing it my advice is as follows: 1: Ensure that your programming platform is stable and working. I gave my hardware, OS cable, etc a good work out with INPA and ISTA first to get as much confidence as I could that the connection to the car seemed reliable. 2: Make sure you have a stable power supply. Either jumper to another (running) car, Or fork out for a supply mode charger. 3: Read up carefully on the process, make sure you know the steps and that you have everything in place, you don’t want to be messing around figuring stuff out when you’re in the middle of doing it. 4: Make sure you understand that flashing modules over OBDII is inherently risky, and that you can’t eliminate all risk. Make sure you can live with it going bad, and that you have a plan for how to resolve if you end up with a bricked module. So onto the CSL binary and DME updates themselves… Everyone says how much better the CSL binary is. I’ve heard lots about how it’s faster. To be honest I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it. The standard SMG software has always seemed pretty decent to me, and it’s plenty fast to begin with, so I wasn’t sure I wanted more speed and harshness. Oh how wrong I was. The CSL flash is a bit faster, but the real benefits are how much smoother it is shifting under acceleration, and how wonderful the rev matching is on downshifting. It’s a revelation. It significantly improves the SMG function, without taking away any of the character that makes the SMG special to begin with. Suffice to say this change will be sticking round on my car!