Perhaps this is why Suzuki have dropped the Jimny

yakuza wrote:

Running more than half of every car from the power grid here [in Norway] have not had any large consequence on the power grid or generally.

Unfortunately not many countries have both 1) a massive overcapacity of zero-marginal-cost hydropower, and 2) enormous revenues from a state-owned oil industry that can be used to subsidize the EV market and infrastructure.  So, much as the rest of us may envy your situation, I don't think anyone else can draw meaningful conclusions for their own country from the Norwegian example.

Personally, I no longer much care what is under the bonnet now that I am too old for sportscars.  Though I do sometimes wish my Jimny LCV had a frugal little diesel instead.

By the way, not to be pedantic, but Suzuki hasn't "dropped" the Jimny.  They still sell it in the markets where they have been selling most of the units to date anyway.  Europe and the UK were simply never that important for the Gen4 Jimny product line, not worth the investment to come up with a certified engine etc.  The Jimny itself lives on.  

Current generation EVs do 200+ miles on a charge. With the average motorist doing less than 30 miles a day that's just 1 full charge a week.
We often have big surpluses in energy from renewables. With intelligent charging strategies and flexible plans from electric suppliers EVs can actually help to make better use of the energy we are already producing.
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l agree, it probably wouldn't be profitable for Suzuki to electrify the Jimny.

The new Jimny is a bit of a one-off. 

lt's a very popular vehicle partly because there's not that many of them, creating a seller's market. And it looks great.

lt's a fabulous little 4x4, fun to drive and a refreshing change from generic SUV's. Plus it's unstoppable off road, better than my 2022 Defender.

Everyone who knows us loves our 2020 Kinetic Yellow SZ5.

lt's a bit like old Defenders. When they stopped making them in 2016, prices rocketed with talk of over £100,000 for "run out" editions.

After a while prices fell back to earth. There's effectively a new one (4,000 miles and the top specification XS SW) been for sale on Auto Trader for months at £39,950

Good ones are now £15-20,000. The best make £30,000

However
The Jimny is better to drive than an old model Defender, if you're using it as a car. Someone buying one because it looks cool is more likely to keep it.

Busta wrote:

We often have big surpluses in energy from renewables. With intelligent charging strategies and flexible plans from electric suppliers EVs can actually help to make better use of the energy we are already producing.
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I see this sentiment expressed often, but unfortunately the idea that there is a surplus of electricity going unused and that could be economically captured is not at all true.

The following is probably more detailed than you want, but some like to know the mechanics of how things work.  Very long and no Jimny content, so feel completely free to ignore everything I write below!


Electricity is a unique commodity in that it is used in the instant that it is created.  That has implications for pricing.  Power systems are managed so that the lowest cost consistent with reliability is achieved.  In each hour, a plan is created whereby a sufficient amount of power generators are online to meet the demand in that hour.  This "stack" of generating units is achieved by having the generators offer their electricity at their marginal cost to produce it, and taking the lowest, then second-lowest, then third-lowest etc offer until enough electricity will be supplied.

The generators are required to offer their electricity at their marginal cost.  This is critical to understand, and most people don't know it.  Generators with near-zero marginal cost -- like wind, solar, hydro, nuclear -- will always be in the "stack" when they are available.  Then other units where fuel cost is a factor, such as coal and natural gas generators, will be added on top until the supply meets the demand.

When I say marginal cost, I mean the cost associated directly with producing a unit of electricity.  It doesn't matter that your power plant was expensive to build, or that you have a lot of staff to pay.  If your direct cost to make one unit of electricity is a penny, then you offer at a penny, even if you paid a billion pounds to build your power station.

Now here is the other critical thing to understand.  The price in that hour is set by the last unit added to the stack.  Every generator receives the same price, and every wholesale buyer of electricity pays the same price.  And that price is the marginal cost of the most expensive unit in that hour.

Two examples.  Let's say you live in a place where there is a solar array producing 100MW of power at £1 per unit, a nuclear plant producing 200MW at £5 per unit, and a natural gas plant producing at £25 per unit.

1) If the amount of power demanded in that hour is 150 MW, then the solar and the nuclear unit will be in the "stack."  Each will receive £5 per MW for that hour -- a breakeven price for the nuclear plant, but a healthy profit for the solar unit.

2) If the amount of power demanded in that hour is 350MW, then all three plants are used to meet demand.  And the price is much, much higher -- each plant is paid £25 for each MW it produces.  The gas plant is breaking even, but the nuclear plant and the solar plant are making loadsa money.

Most people don't understand this pricing mechanism, because it seems almost counterintuitive.  But it actually works very well.  It creates an efficiency incentive, it forces inefficient generators out of the market, and it puts the risk on generating unit owners and not electricity consumers.

The problem arises when it is suggested that renewables, or overnight power, or offseason power, are "cheap" and therefore we can charge our EV batteries cheaply if only we charge them at certain times.  But because the price changes with demand -- and changes very sharply -- moving demand to the "cheap" times makes those times no longer cheap.  

If I owned a wind generator or a solar farm, I would love to have people buying EVs and setting them to charge when wind and solar are on the margin.  Because if enough people did that, and even a single fossil fuel generator was needed to meet the higher demand, suddenly power prices would leap upwards like in example #2 above, and I would reap very large profits. 

I'm not against profit, just pointing out that most people outside of the power business don't realize that those low-priced hours will tend to vanish with even minor changes in demand from e.g. electric vehicle charging.  In our examples, the difference in power price between 100MW and 101MW is a five-times increase in wholesale power price, and between 300MW and 301MW five times again.

Last point, most rich countries have underinvested in both power generation and grid infrastructure in the last two decades or so.  There are a lot of reasons -- poor financial returns, endless permitting processes, relatively cheap fuels until recently -- but in my opinion we are going to see the effects of this underinvestment very soon.  It is important to learn how these systems work so that we can make intelligent policy choices, and also to recognize that nothing at all will happen without private capital -- it can't be all taxpayer-driven.

But most of all, we need to recognize that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and that EVs are going to be a serious challenge for the grid.

Sorry for the long post, but hopefully it will be interesting enough to someone someday to make it all the way to this sentence.

Since our politicians slept at work, Norway got connected to the EU power grid and now control alot of the price and production thru Acer. We can hold back water in the dams to produce on demand but now the EU and British price dictate the production now that we are connected thru cables across the North sea. Electricity used to be more or less free but now we import the EU and British price. And so make your power grid more stable I guess.

Norwegian oil money is not used for subsidizing. Not allowed. It all go into the pension fund, currently at approx 18 billion euros or 360000 euros for each Norwegian.
The pension fund is now the largest fund on earth.
But as petrol cars are under heavy tax and EV's are not it looks like they are. For a New jimny i would have to pay 25000 euro tax.

Today's average power price in Norway: about 25€. In Germany: 81€, UK 88€. Norway has always been interconnected. But the connections do not at all levelise prices across the region. Norway, a lucky country, still marinates in extremely cheap hydroelectricity. And the benefits are not one-way either: Swedish and Danish power during certain hours reduces Norwegian prices.  You can see this yourself by looking at the Nordpool power flow diagrams each day.

Government revenues are fungible.  The existence of an oil-financed pension fund means that Norway does not need to use tax revenues to meet pension requirements and has more money available to spend on other things.  You may or may not call it a direct subsidy -- although the fund does indeed send large amounts of cash to the budget each year -- but it is unquestionably a subsidy.  (If the fund and Equinor vanished tomorrow, would your taxes and government services stay the same?)  

I like Norway, and I am not criticising your system!  I am just pointing out that a small, rich country with energy coming out of its ears is not really a model for the rest of us.