New Zealand Army

[RegR]

My current view on electric vehicles is that they are a waste of time , because the extra energy to run them is generated by fossil fuel generation, which runs at a thermal efficiency of 25% and a modern petrol car runs at between 30 to 40%. so not counting the huge amount of co2 required to make the lithium they are still making the situation worse than a petrol engine. All that they are doing is transferring the carbon footprint from the car to the power station. A greenie that I was pointing this out to said " but we are 80% renewable to which I replied that we are already using the 80% and you cannot use it twice. The fact is that the renewable energy in NZ is a finite figure of KW and any extra requirements such as extra electric vehicles is generated with fossil fuels. The use of the 80% figure in this context is a complete wrongful miss use of statistics. The use of electric vehicles is only justified if they are charged from a renewable source and the additional load on the national grid is not renewable. However non plug in Hybrids are good for the environment.
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Robbing Peter to pay Paul, "solving" one problem to then only cause another/others. Wait until we start stockpiling the used batteries!

Whilst I agree the govt should be seen to be doing their "part" it needs to be tangible and overall effective otherwise a pointless exercise and making any organisations (such as NZDF, police etc) day to day job harder/costlier/limited with no clear benefits just to prove a point is ironically a waste of resources imo. I'm sure there are certain applications but an overall blanket implementation policy is wishful thinking at best, down right dangerous at worst.

 

[ngatimozart]

My current view on electric vehicles is that they are a waste of time , because the extra energy to run them is generated by fossil fuel generation, which runs at a thermal efficiency of 25% and a modern petrol car runs at between 30 to 40%. so not counting the huge amount of co2 required to make the lithium they are still making the situation worse than a petrol engine. All that they are doing is transferring the carbon footprint from the car to the power station. A greenie that I was pointing this out to said " but we are 80% renewable to which I replied that we are already using the 80% and you cannot use it twice. The fact is that the renewable energy in NZ is a finite figure of KW and any extra requirements such as extra electric vehicles is generated with fossil fuels. The use of the 80% figure in this context is a complete wrongful miss use of statistics. The use of electric vehicles is only justified if they are charged from a renewable source and the additional load on the national grid is not renewable. However non plug in Hybrids are good for the environment.
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You are a heretical heathen you are. I shall report you to the PM's office for uttering such malicious fallacies against the holy religious think speak.

That's actually a considerable problem that not much thought has been given too. The next point is that electric car batteries are hideously expensive to replace and at the present point in time are unrecyclable so they end up in land fill. For the amount of money that you have to fork out on purchasing a new battery to replace the stuffed one, and then pay for a qualified person to install it, you might as well buy a new car.

 

[swerve]

Wrong about the batteries. Lithium-ion batteries can be & some are recycled. The problem is cost, but that's coming down. There's potentially a lot of money to be made from cost-efficient recycling of Li-ion batteries, & people are working hard on it.

 

[RegR]

Wrong about the batteries. Lithium-ion batteries can be & some are recycled. The problem is cost, but that's coming down. There's potentially a lot of money to be made from cost-efficient recycling of Li-ion batteries, & people are working hard on it.

"Can be", "some are" and "potentially" are not exactly great confidence builders when we are only just beginning this mass migration towards a new global phenomenon? Will do, all and definitely are catchphrases we should be associating with this now/already whilst manageable and not "possibly", "potentially", "maybe" later on when full mass production really kicks in and we have no alternative but EV batteries in large scale quantities. Costs are a universal problem in any scenario and are generally either offset, absorbed or passed on but either way, someone ultimately pays. It is literally too early days to consider the full potential costs as we are still in the honeymoon period (using not used) so to speak ie imagine defence having to pay for a fleet of milspec EV batteries to be disposed of in NZ at the end of their LOT through, no doubt, some stringent self imposed "environmentally concious" process to either recycle/destroy? Potentially huge costs again...time will tell.

 

[htbrst]

We are above 80% renewable generation now and aim to be at 100% within 10 years. Your assertion that most of the extra power that goes into the electric fleet is from the thermal proportion takes a very simplistic view of how charging an electric vehicle works - the vast majority of their time on charge is overnight when thermal stations are offline.

Presumably NZDF will start by replacing the garrison Corollas et al ( you can tell they are NZDF operated by the “how’s my driving sticker”). Electric LAVs will be decades away but it can only be strategically good for the country to not have to import fuel to provide motive power to our overall vehicle fleet.

If your buying a new car, travel over 20,000kms per year or so and petrol is over $3/litre an electric car is a no brainer in the current environment already.

 

[Gracie1234]

Adding to the renewables conversation. NZ does have a plan to move to 100% renewable electricity generations with plans to increase generation at our existing sites without additional dams constructed will be the first phase. Battery technology in use today will be replaced with cheaper to produce, more environmentally friendly and easier to recycle technologies. The goal is to make a battery without using rare elements such as Lithium.
As a country, we are also well on the way to switching our heavy vehicle fleet to hydrogen. A network of refueling stations will be completed in a year or so, that will cover 90% of our transport routes. $5B has been secured to generate green hydrogen which will make us probably the first country that will actually be exporting it to other countries, agreements are already in place with Japan and South Korea.

NZ Hydrogen Projects — New Zealand Hydrogen Council

www.nzhydrogen.org

Meridian's Southern Green Hydrogen Project selects Woodside Energy as preferred partner | Meridian Energy

www.southerngreenhydrogen.co.nz

For me it is not a matter of if but when, there will be first-mover advantages for our economy and a strong economy is needed to provide resources to defend it.
I would expect that we will move to hybrid power for most of our next vehicle fleet.

 

[Rob c]

We are above 80% renewable generation now and aim to be at 100% within 10 years. Your assertion that most of the extra power that goes into the electric fleet is from the thermal proportion takes a very simplistic view of how charging an electric vehicle works - the vast majority of their time on charge is overnight when thermal stations are offline.

From the information I received ( sorry lost the link) the highest the renewable rate at night is 92%. and the electric vehicle is still an extra drain on the system. Even if we were 100% at night the extra drain would cause further drain on hydro, reducing the amount of water available available for power production at other times. Again this is not an unlimited resource and will still cause additional fossil fuel consumption. As for the 100% in 10 years, I have never been able to find out what the plan is on how to achieve this in the required timeframe and at this time I have the feeling that it may be just some political talk to sound good but not commit to anything. I do believe that we need to be fully committed to the 100% renewable energy as quickly as possible, but to achieve this we need a strong fully focused plan of action and financing with cross party support to achieve this and action taking place now. This not happening and until we get a focus on this I think the electric vehicle is only a politically symbolic show at trying to stop climate change and we need to get serious and focus on getting our power supply fully renewable first. I am sorry but empty political statements don't cut it.
While there are a lot for very worth while projects that are underway, I very much doubt that they will come anyway close to being completed in time as the time taken to advance from project status to hardware in this country is miles too long. Even a small project locally for a rail siding to load logs took 4 years to get approval to change the land use from agricultural to industrial and with the caveats that were included, this may not now happen. This is just a small example of how with the best of intentions we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot.

 

[swerve]

"Can be", "some are" and "potentially" are not exactly great confidence builders when we are only just beginning this mass migration towards a new global phenomenon? Will do, all and definitely are catchphrases we should be associating with this now/already whilst manageable and not "possibly", "potentially", "maybe" later on when full mass production really kicks in and we have no alternative but EV batteries in large scale quantities. Costs are a universal problem in any scenario and are generally either offset, absorbed or passed on but either way, someone ultimately pays. It is literally too early days to consider the full potential costs as we are still in the honeymoon period (using not used) so to speak ie imagine defence having to pay for a fleet of milspec EV batteries to be disposed of in NZ at the end of their LOT through, no doubt, some stringent self imposed "environmentally concious" process to either recycle/destroy? Potentially huge costs again...time will tell.

Right now, they're recyclable. That's what I was replying to: "unrecyclable". It's wrong. Not only can they be recycled, but some are.

Of course, a lot of other types of battery have been profitable to recycle for a very long time. At the moment recycling Li-ion batteries is like solar cells some years ago: a niche, not competitive with other ways of generating electricity. Then someone (Germany) provided incentives & money piled in. They're now very competitive. Their price has crashed & efficiency shot up. People in the business are saying they're confident the same will happen to Li-ion recycling. There are ideas a-plenty for how to do it more cheaply. They just need investment - & that's flowing now, because there are getting to be enough of them out there to justify it. It doesn't need new physics or the like. Some of it is just a question of applying existing mass production techniques, which just needs enough throughput to pay for the capital investment.

Lithium's rather expensive, BTW, & the price has been going up. There's a lot of money going into finding new sources & ways to extract it. That's driving investment in recycling technology, right now. This isn't a future airy-fairy thing. Hard-nosed businesspeople are taking it seriously. And there's also money going into promising alternative battery technologies. Given demand, supply follows.

 

[Rob c]

the vast majority of their time on charge is overnight when thermal stations are offline.

This is not quite correct as while the industrial load goers down the domestic load goes up until 10 to 11pm then the low load factor comes in to play. Most electric vehicle commuters would plug in when they got home and would have done the majority of their charging before this happens. Also the majority of use of public chargers would be used during the day.
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[OldTex]

The use by military forces of electric vehicles would suggest that the first application will be in garrison only type vehicles. My reasoning for that is that they would utilise the civilian power generation and distribution infrastructure. The use of EV in the tactical space becomes more problematic as the power generation and distribution network will be limited or non-existent, and this is before considering use in a conflict area. It is reasonable therefore to suppose that tactical military EV will be self-charging hybrids. This does not reduce the emissions to zero. The use of other fuels or power sources such as fuel cells or hydrogen introduce challenges for the storage, handling and use of those fuels (which is the basis for many armed forces having moved from petrol to diesel).

 

[John Fedup]

How many nations can produce green hydrogen economically, damn few. Sufficient electricity for electrolysis needs carbon free fuel so any talk about a 90-100% electric vehicle future can’t happen without fission or hopefully fusion.

 

[swerve]

Solar & wind can be used for electrolysis. A problem that both share is that they're intermittent. Making hydrogen while electricity output is more than demand would be a partial solution.

 

[John Fedup]

Solar & wind can be used for electrolysis. A problem that both share is that they're intermittent. Making hydrogen while electricity output is more than demand would be a partial solution.

In addition both are influenced by geography. North Africa, much of Australia, and the American SW are all prime solar regions. Certain areas have consistent winds making them idea for windmills. Both options are great for those regions. Transmission from remote desert locations will reduce efficiency somewhat but is not a show stopper. One thing I object to in Ontario is using valuable and limited farmland for solar farms (and urban sprawl). Regardless of how much more solar and power generation expands, a huge new nuclear capacity will still be required for a zero carbon emission world.

 

[Rob c]

Just to clarify my thoughts on electric vehicles, firstly we are at the beginning of the development cycle of these vehicles and in comparison terms one could say the Model T era of their development and the will improve greatly with time. My objection at this stage is that they are being sold to the public as saving the climate, before we have the renewable power production in place to support them. In other words the pollies are putting the cart before the horse. This is not unusual for NZ pollies as most of them could not organize a good party at a brewery.

 

[recce.k1]

Morning, if any kiwi's are online and interested, there's a live feed underway of the "grand opening of the new QAMR Regimental Headquarters and Scots Sqn".

QAMR was live. | By QAMR | Facebook

QAMR was live.

fb.watch

 

[John Fedup]

Just to clarify my thoughts on electric vehicles, firstly we are at the beginning of the development cycle of these vehicles and in comparison terms one could say the Model T era of their development and the will improve greatly with time. My objection at this stage is that they are being sold to the public as saving the climate, before we have the renewable power production in place to support them. In other words the pollies are putting the cart before the horse. This is not unusual for NZ pollies as most of them could not organize a good party at a brewery.

Exactly right on renewable power and I would add in that most local utilities lack infrastructure for large scale recharging of electric vehicles. This is applicable to most nations. Not sure how many jurisdictions are following BC’s plan to phase out all natural gas furnaces and stoves by 2030, that is a significant amount of replacement electricity that will be needed by BC, an anti-nuclear region.

 

[CJohn]

Morning, if any kiwi's are online and interested, there's a live feed underway of the "grand opening of the new QAMR Regimental Headquarters and Scots Sqn".

QAMR was live. | By QAMR | Facebook

QAMR was live.

fb.watch

Curiously in this video I noticed a couple of servicemen carrying Sterling SMG's, to those in the know, is this just ceremonial use or are they still in active service with the QAMR Regiment ?

 

[RegR]

Curiously in this video I noticed a couple of servicemen carrying Sterling SMG's, to those in the know, is this just ceremonial use or are they still in active service with the QAMR Regiment ?

Purely ceremonial. Usually accompanies the regimental banners, in this case QAMR

 

[OldTex]

Just to clarify my thoughts on electric vehicles, firstly we are at the beginning of the development cycle of these vehicles and in comparison terms one could say the Model T era of their development and the will improve greatly with time. My objection at this stage is that they are being sold to the public as saving the climate, before we have the renewable power production in place to support them. In other words the pollies are putting the cart before the horse. This is not unusual for NZ pollies as most of them could not organize a good party at a brewery.

It is the perennial problem for the provision of infrastructure. The justification for the investment in infrastructure must be supported by a sustained level of demand (with an appropriate cost recovery mechanism) and at the same time a sustained level of demand cannot be supported without an adequate amount of infrastructure. One way to reasonably break out of this situation is that infrastructure is funded by the government as a public good even though it will not generate a return on the investment in the short or medium term (or possibly ever).

 

[recce.k1]

Nicked this from the US Army thread.

The US Army has finally chosen a new light tank The Army Just Selected Its First Light Tank In Decades | The Drive However its procurement history is littered with a lot of what ifs and failures to proceed so I am not holding my breath. They've been down this road before with a light tank. This one is C-130 transportable, has a 105mm gun and the hull controls and sensors are based on the latest M-1 Abrams controls and sensors. It has modular add-on armour as well. It is thought that the turret is a remote turret.

If this project goes through (noting previous disappointments) does anyone think NZ Army could be taking an interest? Perhaps as (small) part of the LAV3 replacement programme eg perhaps 20-odd vehicles (or if the unbelievable happens, as a seperate project if a future NZG decided to better equip the Army in these worsening times)? Noting that Cadredave previously discussed the M8 Light Tank as being an option to replace the Scorpion FSV's ... pre-LAV3 selection of course).

Appears to be tailored to support light infantry (which also fits the NZ Army approach) by providing them with direct fire support (not obviously for an anti-tank role a la M1A1 Abrams etc), provides deployable lightweight firepower for our Asia-Pacific region (via sealift or allied C-17 - which can apparently fit two), the 105mm gun would give the NZ Army the firepower to destroy fortifications and so on, and according to some of the article comments the 105mm could potentially fire LAHAT semi-active laser homing guided anti-tank guided missiles, and the turret have space for gun launched missiles.

Reg & co any thoughts? Noting previous discussions of having trained crews available being another issue (which could also impact LAV3 crewing).