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Your views: on electric cars, and putting a price on history

Today, readers question the general affordability of electric cars, and urge those who want to preserve historic buildings to offer a vision and viable business model.

Apr 29, 2019, updated Apr 29, 2019
Photo: supplied

Photo: supplied

Charged up about electric cars push

Commenting on the story: Embrace the electric vehicle revolution: Hackett

With all due respect to Simon Hackett and his support for electric vehicles, its very easy for him to support electric vehicles, as he sold his Internode business for $100 million plus.

He is also a substantial shareholder in the “Red-Flow” battery manufacturer.

Thus it’s easy for him to plug his Tesla into his battery-filled garage each night, but what about the poor little punter on $50k-$60k a year salary, a mortgage and three kids who is struggling to pay his existing electricity bill and can’t afford solar panels, let alone a Tesla (or Redflow) battery in his garage?

Then if he decides and can somehow afford to upgrade old his car to a very modest electric one, it’s going to cost him at least $10k more than a petrol driven car.

Norway is not Australia either, and doesn’t have the vast distances we have. As well I understand electric vehicles are massively subsidised there (about 20% plus I believe).

If we are going to go down that track who pays for the subsidies? The poor little punter who can’t afford them of course, as they do now with the solar panels on the roofs of the more affluent.

Henry Ford didn’t rely on Government subsidies to get his internal combustion engine cars out there, so let’s just let the market take care of itself.

If electric cars are priced right and they overcome the current high electricity cost and electricity supply problems, fine, people will buy them, but I for one don’t want to subsidise them.

I am not against electric vehicles at all, but we are struggling to find enough electricity in peak periods now to keep the lights on now – what is going to happen when 50% of our car fleet gets plugged in at night when ‘the sun ain’t shinin’ and the wind don’t blow’?

Then there is the massive capital costs of installing charging stations across the nation, and with each car taking, say, a minimum 10-15 minutes to re-charge at a super fast, extremely expensive charging station, can you even imagine the queue?

What about the long term environmental problem?  What in the world are we going to do with these massive piles of dud batteries from the cars and garages when the expire in 10-15 years?  We are not supposed to put our even our small spent AA+ batteries in the land fill garbage bins, at present!

Finally, the Govt reaps approximately 46c per litre in fuel tax and GST, used for roads, road maintenance, road infrastructure,  with the GST component passed onto the States for hospitals, education etc.

So, how is that cash cow going to be replaced and who is going to pay? I suggest the electric vehicle users. OMG, no, not us!

Frankly I’m tired of these wealthy socialist capitalists trying to impose their dream ideology on the world.  Electric vehicles may be a good idea, but that whole revolution has a l-o-n-g way to go to be affordable and practical. – Douglas Ferrier

(Hackett) asks us to adopt the Greens party policy of 100 percent electric cars, by 2030.

Is this the same party advocating for all coal mining operations in Australia to cease by 2030?

An industry which earns 60 billion dollars in exports for Australia. 

I realise that the coal industry is dying, but lets not hasten its demise, until we have something to replace it with. Mike Lesiw 

Who pays for history to be saved?

Commenting on the story: “We feel conned”: Consultation design showed Shed 26 intact

Shed 26 supporters may well feel conned. However, they have sat around for decades without offering any worthwhile suggestion about a form of use that could sustain and maintain the shed into the future.

I’d like to keep it too, but it is not feasible to just “keep” buildings like that without a purpose.

Of course the SA Heritage Council is going to say it should be kept because it is historic, but where is their suggestion about its usefulness?

 Meetings and rallies on the issue would be reminiscent of those held to keep the Chelsea Cinema.

Ninety per cent of attendees would be embarrassed to admit how infrequently they had been paying moviegoers, yet they insist on keeping it.

Sometimes, keeping a façade such as the Chelsea is worth fighting for, but those people also insisted on no changes inside.

Yes it was a great interior but a dozen people in a massive cinema doesn’t work. What dopey business person should be expected to continue on that basis?

I’m not sure what Shed 26 could be used for with no change inside, nor for that matter what change inside could make it work, but as much as I’d like to see it stay, I think Spiers has got it right.

Unless someone can come up with more than just saying, “when it’s gone, it’s gone forever”. David A Bridges

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