SA's first electric car

Not very easy on the eye

He does not believe power supply to be a problem.

"Independent analysis of Eskom, the country's sole electricity provider, has confirmed that the South African grid has enough capacity to supply electrical energy to millions of cars without affecting its customer base or requiring any additional infrastructure.

"Eskom has vast amounts of excess energy between 23:00 and 06:00 and this will be the recommended recharging time."

The first assembly plant will be in Gauteng and Joule will be sold in all major cities.
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Yes but what about eroding infrastructure and the resulting power failures.

Still it's a step in the right direction
 
It is an excellant car and I will charge it from solar on the roof of the house everyday but this car is a bit expensive. I do not understand that SA created this car should sell to SA cheap than export to Europe/ Internation, anyway.
 
Uh.. wait.
Doesn't South Africa have a little bit of an Electricity Supply problem?
 
7eviathan said:
It is an excellant car and I will charge it from solar on the roof of the house everyday but this car is a bit expensive. I do not understand that SA created this car should sell to SA cheap than export to Europe/ Internation, anyway.
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I wouldnt worry about that too much. New products and technologies are like that in the beginning of their life cycle. I reckon after time and a good reputation etc,etc the price will come down.

Exciting indeed.
 
7eviathan said:
It is an excellant car and I will charge it from solar on the roof of the house everyday but this car is a bit expensive. I do not understand that SA created this car should sell to SA cheap than export to Europe/ Internation, anyway.
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I hope you've got a LOT of silicon on your roof. You're going to need about 30 kW/h to recharge the battery pack on this thing (guessing) and to generate that using PV takes a moer of a lot of panels.
 
What's the details on the "configurations"? I don't want a car who's top speed is 60KM/h.

And ... at the rate that the price of electricity is increasing ... I recon filling the car could cost about the same as filling with petrol.
 
milano said:
It's South African alright...Total rip-off :sick:
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Dunno how you can say that. You cannot buy a 4 seat highway capable production EV anywhere in the world today. A 2 seater job like a Tesla Roadster will set you back way on the other side of a million before taxes (if you can get one, might I add). If they can pull this off for around R300K then it will be a very big deal indeed.
 
7eviathan said:
It is an excellant car and I will charge it from solar on the roof of the house everyday but this car is a bit expensive. I do not understand that SA created this car should sell to SA cheap than export to Europe/ Internation, anyway.
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You're saying that you think a company should purposely sell its products where it gets much lower returns for them? How odd. "South Africa" (a pile of soil sticking out the sea) didn't create the car, a private company did. Frankly I would rather they get the best returns they can (more power to them, I say), so that they can maximize the company's growth, creating more jobs and expanding manufacturing in the process (and thus improving economies of scale too). If they sold their product at well below its value, then the alternate scenario is poor competitiveness against inevitable foreign competitors and the ultimate death of the company, which would be far worse for South Africa. Anyway I'm not sure I magically deserve some product cheaper than somebody else who is willing to pay more just because of where I was born.
 
StrongTurd said:
Dunno how you can say that. You cannot buy a 4 seat highway capable production EV anywhere in the world today. A 2 seater job like a Tesla Roadster will set you back way on the other side of a million before taxes (if you can get one, might I add). If they can pull this off for around R300K then it will be a very big deal indeed.
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I don't see why it needs to cost that much. Didn't that Palestinian engineer shown on CNN the other day convert a regular car to electric for $2500.
 
StrongTurd said:
I hope you've got a LOT of silicon on your roof. You're going to need about 30 kW/h to recharge the battery pack on this thing (guessing) and to generate that using PV takes a moer of a lot of panels.
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Doubt it, if this is correct ... from the article: "Using a normal 220 volt home outlet and Joule's onboard charger, it will take approximately seven hours to recharge Joule's battery for a 200km driving range, with two packs providing 400km in total" ... still, there'd be some logistics to sort out in charging from solar. Would be interesting to get more detailed specs on the power requirements of this thing.
 
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stoke said:
What's the details on the "configurations"? I don't want a car who's top speed is 60KM/h.

And ... at the rate that the price of electricity is increasing ... I recon filling the car could cost about the same as filling with petrol.
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The Speed is on par with petrol cars, could easily be improved in next models, electric motors are more capable.

Drives 400km between charges, and charging your car battery is more than 10 times cheaper than driving the same with petrol cars. So If you spend R1500 on petrol every month, it will now be 150 per month, this is the cost with the Volt which uses petrol and electric, solo electric is even cheaper.

Oh, and this won't harm electric supply, as your car usually gets charged off-peak.

Chev Volt and Electric Mini looks pretty hot.
 
Turtle said:
Doubt it, if this is correct ... from the article: "Using a normal 220 volt home outlet and Joule's onboard charger, it will take approximately seven hours to recharge Joule's battery for a 200km driving range, with two packs providing 400km in total" ... still, there'd be some logistics to sort out in charging from solar.
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Right, so they're claiming 200km from this car. Let's work on a 80% DOD (depth of discharge). That means you've got to add 20% on top of the total energy required to travel 200km, right? Now, this is my guess but I would say that you'd (conservatively) need around 200W/km for a vehicle of this configuration (probably more). This means that the Wattage required for 200km is 40kW. Add on top of that 20% (80% DOD, remember) for a grand total of 48kW/h.

48kW/h, huh? As you can see, my initial guess of 30kW/h was probably optimistic. So what does it take to generate 48kW/h from solar PV? Well, let's use the following:
Average sunlight hours for Gauteng: 6.5h/pd (according to NASA)
48kW/6.5 hours = 7.38kW per hour
7.38kW/h + 30% total system losses = 9.6kW per hour
9.6kW/h / 200 Watt per PV panel = 48 * 200 Watt PV panels
48 * R12000 (per panel) = R576000

So the question is: Have you got R600 000 for a PV system to charge your car's batteries with? More significantly, what will your payback time be? I would guess that you won't break even in your lifetime, even if you grow very old.

Please note that I'm a complete novice regarding PV systems so my figures might be slightly skewed but the results are definitely in the ballpark.
 
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