Transportist: September 2022
Electrify your mind, decarbonise your soul
EVs in Australia
The Daily Mail posts an article with this needlessly antagonistic headline: How Australian taxpayers will need to spend BILLIONS to transition from petrol and diesel to electric cars (which start at $47k for a VERY basic model) – as the ACT pushes ahead with a BAN on combustion engines by 2035 .
Contra the headline, and the source, the article itself is not bad.
My quotes:
Professor Levinson estimated the current infrastructure should be able to handle a market share above 20 per cent, given most cars will be charged at home.
‘This is not going to be a sudden crisis,’ he said.
…
Professor David Levinson, an American civil engineer and transportation analyst at the University of Sydney, said the federal government’s lack of commitment to the electric vehicle market was ‘disappointing’.
‘Given the potential abundance of renewables in Australia, this is disappointing, but the government has made few efforts to accelerate EV uptake with tax breaks or higher fuel or petrol car purchase taxes, and the previous government was talking down EVs as recently as the 2019 campaign,’ he said of Mr Morrison’s tenure.
…
Professor Levinson said he expects lower cost EVs to enter the Australian market in the coming years.
‘As the price of batteries drop, we would expect lower cost car-sized EVs to enter the market in Australia as they have in other countries. That will naturally increase market uptake,’ he said.
‘Inflation will raise the cost of everything, but the relative higher price of EVs should diminish, and Bloomberg expects a crossover point in a few years when EVs are less expensive that petrol cars.’
…
Professor Levinson believes Australia need to do more to combat the country’s ‘large share of carbon emissions’ and commit to electrifying its roads.
‘Converting new cars purchases to electric takes out tailpipe emissions. But old cars will remain on the road for years,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘It will take about 20 years to turn over nearly the entire fleet from the point that almost all new cars are EVs (around 2030), without government incentives or mandates.’
Some additional points:
Australia is slow in EV uptake compared to peer nations. Almost all of Norway’s new cars are EVs now (https://cleantechnica.com/2022/05/04/norways-april-ev-market-share-at-84-fleet-share-at-23/). Australia will trail most other developed countries, so lessons learned there can be transferred here.
There are 2600 petrol stations in New South Wales (https://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/~/media/EPA/Corporate%20Site/resources/clm/2008552ServStations.ashx) So long as electric vehicle range is similar to petrol vehicle range, we would expect that public charging stations should have a similar number. But EVs have the advantage that they can slow charge at many people’s houses, so there might not need to be quite as many.
EVs should be defined to include e-bikes, small golf cart sized vehicles, as well as replacements for people’s cars and Utes. So there is already a wide range in price, but, as the price of batteries drop, we would expect lower cost car-sized EVs to enter the market in Australia as they have in other countries. (The Kia Soul EV is available in Norway, e.g., though still more expensive than the petrol version in Australia ) And that will naturally increase market uptake. (Inflation will raise the cost of everything, but the relative higher price of EVs should diminish, and Bloomberg expects a crossover point in a few years when EVs are less expensive that petrol cars).
The infrastructure should be able to handle a market share above 20% EVs, most EVs will charge at home, most EV homes will have rooftop solar, and most houses will have batteries. Particularly as more storage for renewables comes online (for example, Snowy 2 begins to come online in 2025), this is not going to be a sudden crisis. Thus, this is sufficiently gradual (even if all new cars are EVs by 2030, it won’t be the entire fleet until the 2040s), that there will be plenty of time for adaptations and adjustment and learning. Projects like Snowy II will be batteries dispatching renewable “solar” energy at night, going online in the next couple of years. I like the idea of gravity batteries, and hope they can scale.
The transition to EVs which will happen despite government policies not because of them. (Though government could make this easier or harder). As the transition continues demand for fuel will drop, so there should be plenty of market supply available, but a government serious about Net Zero would tax fuel at a higher rate than present to lower demand.
Posts
Research
Wang, Yuning, Lu, D, and Levinson, D. (2022) Equilibrium or Imbalance? Rail Transit and Land Use Mix in Station Areas. Transportation. [doi]
Abstract
Although it is widely reported that rail transit has the potential to encourage higher density development, it remains unclear whether rail transit leads to more mixed urban development across station areas. This article provides rare quantitative analysis of changes in land use mix around the rail transit system in Tianjin, China through an investigation into the spatial effects of a rail transit line which cuts across both highly developed and lessdeveloped areas. By using longitudinal data over a twelve-year period (2004–2016) and by comparing the entropy-based land-use mix index, the study shows that with the operation of rail transit, land use mix has increased in formerly low-mixed station catchments, but the change is not obvious for already highly diverse areas. It also shows that a more balanced development occurs in station areas with higher land use dominance, while the leading functions are intensified in station areas with lower land use dominance. By presenting a clear picture of the spatial distribution and patterns of land use mix changes over time, this article concludes that rail transit leads to more balanced development across different station areas in the context of China’s rapid urbanization. The outcome provides a base for further exploring how the planning of rail transit stations may help tackle the differentiated development in cities.
Keywords Rail transit · Land use mix · Spatial variations · Tianjin
Lahoorpoor, B., Rayaprolu, H., Wu, H., and Levinson, D. (2022) Prioritizing Active Transport Network Investment using Locational Accessibility. TeMA – Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment. 15(2), 179-192. [doi]
This research explores prioritizing network investment to improve walking and biking access in a suburban area with a poorly connected street network. This study’s methods provide a systematic approach to design and prioritize the potential links to improve active travel in the suburban environment. An access-oriented ranking system is proposed to prioritize the contribution of links in two evaluation processes for different travel time thresholds. One of the developing suburbs in Sydney is selected as the case study, and a list of potential links is identified. Results indicate that links with the highest added access per unit of cost are the links that have the highest impact if all links are built. However, the locational network structure surrounding the point of interest may affect the order. For a radial network, closer links lead to higher access, while for a tree-like network structure, connecting branches improve access significantly. Also, farther potential links are significantly dependent on the closer links in increasing accessibility for a specific location. This suggests that in order to utilize the network, there should be a sequence in constructing the potential links. The application of access-oriented network investment is also discussed.
Congratulations to Dr. Bahman Lahoorpoor for “satisfying the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney.”
Miguel Loyola’s paper got featured on a YouTube show. The paper is here.
Resilience Findings launched. If you subscribe to the Findings Newsletter, you will learn more soon.
Surachet Pravinvongvuth & Imalka C. Matarage (2022) A new at-grade transportation network without conflict movement at intersections. Transportmetrica B
Anthony Townsend Announcing the Bus Observatory API
Lai Y, Sun W, Schmöcker J-D, Fukuda K, Axhausen KW. Explaining a century of Swiss regional development by deep learning and SHAP values. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science. August 2022. doi:10.1177/23998083221116895
News and Opinion
Electricity
Autonomy [Subscription EVs] places giant EV order from Tesla, GM, VW, Ford, Rivian, and more
Why we can’t have nice things (Quiet Edition):
Supply from solar generators exceeded that from all NSW, QLD and Victorian coal generation
Swappable batteries for cars in China trucks in China and Japan
Why Arizonans could benefit from swapping cars for golf carts
Committee for Sydney calls to phase out sale of petrol cars by 2027.
Autonomy
Captivity
Connectivity
Safety
Follow-Up
The Labor-Management Conflict on the Trains in Sydney continues.
“Mr Elliott, who earlier said the union had “shat on me from a great height” despite his support for them, told The Telegraph he has “asked for legal advice as to whether I can invoke legislative options that can be used to stop future strikes”.”