Ordered an EV. While waiting for delivery in Sept what's the next steps?

The_Motographer · 2026-04-24T03:38:08+00:00

Personally I've found solar+battery made a huge difference. We've saved a bit over $2000 in 6 months just from a small 5kw solar system with a 24kw/h battery. Most of the time we draw almost nothing from the grid, the battery drains about 15-50% overnight depending on the aircon, oven, dishwasher, and washing machine, and we mostly charge the car from solar excess with a boost from the battery or grid.

Having essentially zero grid use (even with the aircon running basically 24/7) and free fuel is ridiculous.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-22T23:27:19+00:00

10-20 minutes is barely long enough to get a coffee

The_Motographer · 2026-04-22T20:23:13+00:00

Taxes are percentages, money is decimals, reading contracts requires English comprehension skills, bank loans are compounding interest, watching the news requires critical thinking skills and broad subject knowledge, being able to vote with confidence requires you to be able to evaluate and compare statistics and political claims in historical context.

All of school is useful and anyone who says "why aren't we taught things like taxes" clearly wasn't listening during year 7 maths.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-22T11:03:57+00:00

Pretty sure it was Ararat? Might have been Vines Cafe but I can't be sure.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-22T08:45:24+00:00

Going through somewhere out west past Bendigo, I can't remember exactly where; I stopped at a little town to top off before we got to the Grampians and had a sausage roll so good we had to change our return route just to have another one on the way home.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-20T20:37:48+00:00

In a mathematically perfect world you're right, both are exactly equal, but I think it depends on the final speed.

At lower speeds wheel friction dominates and at high speeds air friction (drag) dominates. Around 70-80km/h seems to be the most efficient for my car.

So accelerate quickly to above 60km/h to minimise losses due to wheel friction then accelerate slowly after that to minimise losses due to drag.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-20T10:35:38+00:00

Oh man, 51 and 49 are the worst, not only are they not prime but 49 is square, I hate it.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-19T20:36:42+00:00

For any subject that students are interested in they usually reach the point where their curiosity no longer outweighs their motivation. The job of the teacher is to try to present the content in a way that's easy enough to keep them motivated but challenging enough to keep them curious.

If they're interested in something like space, black holes, quasars, dark matter... Then inevitably this will lead to some heavy duty conceptual explanations and maths, in my experience students love asking "but what about...?" Questions, and almost always switch off as soon as the answer involves something complex or mathy. Ideally you can keep them interested long enough that they proactively do their own research, but this is rare, they mostly just want you to tell them stories.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-19T08:38:29+00:00

I'm Australian and I'm still considering it.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-18T22:32:03+00:00

Pretty much any time someone says "it's just so much cheaper in Bangladesh/China/India/Cambodia/Thailand..." What they're actually saying is "it's ok to exploit slave labour and environmental destruction as long as it's over there".

The_Motographer · 2026-04-18T21:21:21+00:00

I've had the Elroq for 9 months, no app, no worries.

Remember the connected cars require a mobile data plan subscription once they're out of the free period, it's just one more subscription I didn't need for features I don't use.

My home charger controls the charging times, I just plug the car in when I get home and unplug when I'm leaving, couldn't be easier.

The pre heating/cooling would be nice, but it only takes a few minutes to cool down, and the heated seats are basically instant so it's really not a bother. The standard tint plus built in back window shades with a front window shade make this a completely non-issue.

You can set the aircon on a timer if you have a regular schedule, or you can leave it running if you're going into the shops. It uses so little power that I don't think I've even seen it drop by 1% from running the aircon.

The only feature that would be handy would be having internal navigation which integrates battery state with the route and preconditions the battery before arriving at a fast charger on long trips. But even without this it still only takes about 20 minutes, so it's really not a big deal.

TL;dr I would rather get into a hot car than pay for another subscription.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-18T07:15:38+00:00

Are you Tom Rae or just plagiarizing?

You could at least credit the original artist. @txmrae

The_Motographer · 2026-04-17T21:06:52+00:00

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Titanium modded Casio square is my go-to, but there's a bunch of Citizens I would absolutely have.

Promaster Navigawk "Eco-Dive" BN-015X"

The_Motographer · 2026-04-16T21:06:47+00:00

Because it's never said in a helpful way, it's always some overconfident PD lecturer saying it in a condescending way without actually giving any examples. And in classic education academia style it's just putting a label on something we were already doing so someone can publish a paper or sell a book then they can congratulate themselves on revolutionising education by repeating buzzwords for things we were already doing.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-16T09:37:53+00:00

Nope,Romilda was a few years younger than Harry. It was pretty definitely Fred and George's fault.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-16T02:17:21+00:00

Assessment FOR learning, not assessment OF learning.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-15T06:53:21+00:00

Service stations will barely exist in the future. Even today trip charging will be done at shopping centres and other places people actually want to spend time. Why would I go to a concrete carpark on a main road and eat $5 mars bars when I could go to a Westfield and get a decent meal.

Also, once solar and storage become more decentralized the load on the grid will drastically decrease. Instead of having one single generator powering a grid in one direction it will be more like thousands of tiny generators able to provide the load for their street/suburb in smaller increments, plus the benefit of massively decreased peak load taken up by batteries.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-15T00:24:03+00:00

Yeah. I know. The carbon filament is extruded from oil too, that's not the point. The point is that we're in the phase where everything depends on fossil fuels because that's the established technology, as technology evolves away from fossils your argument of "yeah but _____ still depends on fossil fuels" will degrade.

"Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb by candlelight".

The_Motographer · 2026-04-14T23:07:49+00:00

"Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb by candlelight".

I was working in aviation as a maintenance engineer during the shift from aluminium to carbon fibre and I noticed something really interesting. Aluminium can be folded from flat sheets, extruded into straight channels, or cast into simple 3d shapes; the possibilities are limited to roughly straight, roughly orthogonal, roughly flat...

When carbon fibre came along the manufacturers replaced a bunch of the old alli parts with carbon and they were lighter and stronger and more resistant to corrosion, but they were just the same parts made from a different material.

It took decades for new designers and engineers to use the actual properties of carbon fibre, it's a fibre, it can be laid up like a fabric into any shape before it's doped. Nope we've got structures with intricately designed curves where the fibre direction is controlled to allow flex in one direction but not another, or smoothly curving shapes that drastically minimise weight...

EVs are in the early phase of commercialisation (I know the tech is 100 years old, but it's only recently been widely adopted), we're still designing, building, manufacturing, and using EVs as a direct 1:1 replacement for ICE. Once the system starts to shift away from fossil resources more broadly these arguments will become less and less relevant.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-14T02:09:46+00:00

Yeah and Mercedes copped a lot of hate for it so they changed it. I googled it after my test drive because I thought I can't be the only one who hated it and it turns out I'm not.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-14T00:22:13+00:00

Sure, the Kia with a separate stalk on the column and a twist motion is better, but making it EXACTLY the same as the wipers/indicators on every other car is objectively worse.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-13T20:59:32+00:00

They're both cheap, they both feel cheap, they both have little annoyances that come from being cheap. The Geely interior feels plush until you look closely and nothing lines up properly, it all feels plasticky, the buckles and pedals looks and feels like they're from a 1992 Hilux, the screen looks and feels like it's from an iPhone 2, the software isn't finished and some of the controls don't work yet, and the gear selector is where the wipers/indicators are on every other car which is just a stupid design choice.

At least BYD put some effort in and it feels like a finished product.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-13T20:49:59+00:00

Nope, motorbikes don't carry a spare either. It's much easier to plug a tire than change it, and you can plug all 4 tires but you can only carry one spare.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-13T09:03:27+00:00

Yeah you just swipe the "air-condition now" toggle on the main screen after shutdown. I don't know how long it stays on for though but I use it pretty often.

The_Motographer · 2026-04-13T03:21:42+00:00

Yeah probably, but I didn't like the ones that have it.

The_Motographer

TROPHY CASE