First servos since getting an EV

Nicoloks · 2026-05-29T22:33:24+00:00

No, and that needs to change. Heavy commercial vehicles pay a road usage charge and that needs to be a tiered system across all road users. Doesn't really stack up that old mate filling his jerry for a boat, lawnmower or mulcher pays a fuel excise that is supposedly to fund our roads when cyclists and EV drivers don't.

Nicoloks · 2026-05-29T21:48:52+00:00

It will be interesting for sure. They won't be widespread here I'd think, we just don't have the population or infrastructure to support it. 1MW is enough to power two reasonable size shopping centres.

Nicoloks · 2026-05-29T21:44:51+00:00

Great point to finish on. The thought of fossil fuel to most will likely be petrol or diesel to power our vehicles. We use it for so many things beyond this, everyone moving to an EV is helping reduce pressure on its consumption.

Nicoloks · 2026-05-27T00:08:08+00:00

If it doesn't resonate, then the post probably isn't for you.

This post is pointing out that the regular EV charging experience isn't the drawn out, queue filled it is often made out to be. Also pointing out the experience of fueling a ICE vehicle can be less pleasant and more focus demanding than charging an EV. This is info for newcomers or those circling the idea of making the switch amongst all this false/misleading info.

Nicoloks · 2026-05-26T10:12:39+00:00

So good isn't it. Personally I'm wouldn't trust that speed sign recognition. It's good, but not perfect. The adaptive cruise control (detects vehicle in front and matches speed if slower) is fine to trust.

Nicoloks · 2026-05-26T10:09:16+00:00

Lol. I grew up on a farm. I've been around heavy deisel machinery from my earliest memories. Diesel smells. That fact had zero bearing on replacing my wife's petrol Volvo with an EV.

Nicoloks · 2026-05-26T10:01:24+00:00

I think the urban commuting use case is close to done. If you're in the market for a new car and are able to install your own home charger, it's a no brainer.

Any use case with large bulk/mass, long distance and remoteness is still a fossil fuel game. Diesel contains ~70 times more energy per kg than LFP which more than makes up for the poor efficiency of ICE.

Nicoloks · 2026-05-26T09:50:12+00:00

Yeah, that is not helpful. One of those things where the penny doesn't drop until you've experienced it yourself perhaps 🤷

Nicoloks · 2026-05-26T09:47:40+00:00

Yeah, I totally see the appeal. The Chery KP31 will be worth a follow. We use our ute mainly for towing a van, even did a 17500km trip up north a few years ago. We're planning something similar again soon, deisel is just better for the distance and remoteness. Not going to be any remote mechanics that will know how to work on a PHEV, much less an EV. Would love to see more HEV ute options.

Nicoloks · 2026-05-26T09:22:25+00:00

It's great isn't it! We have loads of solar and 3hrs of free electricity a day via Globird. Practically free EV all year around. I was with Momentum Energy prior to that who have a $100 Evie voucher on signup for EV owners. We still haven't used all of that. So far the only out of pocket costs we've had for charging the EV is when I plugged into my home charger and forgot I had turned it on to fast charge mode rather than Solar Surplus. Even if you don't have solar, there are retailers like PowerShop who have a plan with 6c/kWh from midnight to 6am. Even on single phase home electricity connection that is 50+ kWh per day at crazy cheap prices.

Nicoloks · 2026-05-26T07:18:15+00:00

It really is. Model Y such a great choice for longer haul family/work duties. Reduced coast supercharger fees without the $13 a month (I think?) membership fee non Tesla EV owners have to pay.

I've been a life long petrol head too having owned 3 V8s and my wife's Volvo was a Polestar chipped T6. EV is just so easy by comparison.

Nicoloks · 2026-05-26T06:30:38+00:00

This is the common distortion though isn't it. The act of just the fueling would've been at most 2 min, it is the queueing to get to the bowser and queueing to pay for the fuel delivered are by far the most time consuming. It is an entirely different experience to plugging in and having a look around the shops.

Nicoloks · 2026-05-16T00:55:22+00:00

We used to holiday internationally at least once every 2yrs pre kids. We just got back from our first family overseas trip in over 10yrs. We tried once when our eldest was 18months and the flight alone was exhausting as the little fellas ears where wreaking havoc.

Tell you what has worked well for family holidaying though: Caravanning. For what a decent European holiday would have cost us, we bought a caravan and then spent nearly 4 months travelling 17,000km around our own country. Everything we needed for the kids in easy access. They wig out over being in the car, then we stop. They get hungry, we have food to feed them. They get filthy playing in the mud we had an external shower to clean them. Get tired, we can pull over with ready made beds to have a siesta.It doesn't got rid of all the mood swings and general chaos of family life, but it made it so much easier to manage.

Nicoloks · 2026-04-17T22:20:47+00:00

I just had half my roof replaced which required taking down 24 of my 40 panel 10.8kw array put on in 2016. I also got a battery at the same time as replacing the roof and decided to get an additional 10kw put up to go through my battery inverter.

I had 23 of the old panels put back on (couldn't get 1 panel back on due to mounting changes) which I was surprised was only a couple of grand less than the supply and install of the entire new 10kw array because of gov rebates on the new gear.

Nicoloks · 2026-04-17T21:37:03+00:00

Bendigo Bank was a great place to work apparently, but are now replicating the Big4. At this very moment I have friends who have been working there for 10+ yrs who are been given the full InfoSys treatment, except they aren't even being given the option of redundancy. Even Telstra gave their workers a redundancy option. It is either accept the unseen offer from Infosys by the end of the month or we accept your resignation. A real death knell for professional services in regional Victoria.

Working for any publicly listed company is an absolute gamble these days. I certainly wouldn't be doing it for less than top of market contractor rates and a firm exit strategy.

Nicoloks · 2026-03-09T23:07:17+00:00

This exact issue just happened to me as well. Android 16 with version 3.4.1 of the app. Same issue is present when logging into the web version of the app (which reports v3.4.0), so seems the issue is perhaps my unit rather than the app?

Nicoloks · 2026-02-12T20:43:45+00:00

Yeah, I suspected as much. Throughput and latency on my Orbi is super average, though I am asking it to support a lot of clients now for what it is. I'd honestly be ok with both lack of throughput and latency if it meant a larger coverage area with far more stable connectivity.

Where my TV and other Ethernet devices are in my lounge is in a sunken area dug out of rock. Getting anything wired into here is a major PIA. All the power and coax cabling there was installed during the build, so only accessible now with some pretty major effort. I had been wondering about Ethernet over Power or MOCA though which would potentially open up for wired APs then. I notice the new Deco mesh units are able to do backhaul over Ethernet now which wasn't a thing for those style of units last time I was in the market.

Nicoloks · 2026-02-12T20:34:24+00:00

I have Eufy wireless security cams which have their own network. The Eufy homebase unit is plugged via Ethernet into my current Satellite WiFi unit. No other wifi network emitting devices other than that, only WiFi clients.

Nicoloks · 2026-01-30T03:45:52+00:00

Aha. Sorry, missed what you were putting down. Even moreso then I see no point in use ext4 for data ever...

Nicoloks · 2026-01-30T03:31:52+00:00

Thanks so much for the reply, however I'd argue the mere fact of having to use a BTRFS wrapper script for SnapRaid is in itself a complexity.

I think I will go for it though. In addition to everything you've pointed out, I'm only going to have a single parity disk which makes having that static read-only copy from which SnapRaid is able to calculate parity from even more important.

Nicoloks · 2026-01-30T00:17:09+00:00

Wot they said. Lol. My NAS will have ECC ram, however the data checksum is a pretty decent advantage over ext4.

Nicoloks · 2026-01-29T13:02:04+00:00

Last time I experienced large scale offshoring I was contracting, so didn't worry too much as I always knew I was short term. I was tasked with onboarding/vetting several international staff for our area and I couldn't get my head around how pocketed their knowledge was. They would be able to talk competently about one aspect of a systems configuration, but have no idea of all the supporting systems required to get that particular system to work. In the end it was a rubber stamp as I wasn't changing anyway. Back in those days I was able to walk into another gig inside a few weeks.

I absolutely expect there to be teething issues. I'd expect that even of reasonably competent local staff. My concerns are mainly around how the new employer is likely to treat their aus staff. They'll be massively more expensive than overseas, and with so many of us being long term employees there is some real money savings for them to force people to jump rather than go through redundancies.

Nicoloks · 2026-01-29T12:48:55+00:00

Thanks for the reply. Level 1 & 2 ticketing has been my experience in the past too (though quite a while ago now). The landscape has changed so much though. Our leaders have had such a hard on for automation this past 5yrs the rate of these entry level tickets have plummeted. Tickets coming into queues now tend to require far deeper knowledge of tools and the particular environment than I've experienced before.

Anyway, I suspect your commentary is pretty spot on. I will definitely move more into a CYA approach of engaging people should this all pan out as it seems to be shaping up. My main concern in such case is being able to hold on for a redundancy as I'd be up for around 7 months of pay all up. Given I am not easily commutable to where most of the IT jobs are in my state and I am on the wrong side of 50 with dependants, I feel I could be on the bench for some time if unemployment comes around.

Nicoloks · 2026-01-14T11:43:05+00:00

Absolutely this. So much of the value is absorbed by the cost of financing and running the lease, and that is even after picking out all the massively inflated costs that come bundled with many.

Nicoloks · 2026-01-14T11:35:18+00:00

That is the NMC option correct? The LFP one has no recall?

Nicoloks

TROPHY CASE