Australia has not been marked out as a country that embraces electric vehicles. VW won’t come here as they don’t see any enthusiasm for the technology and there are no incentives for zero emission vehicles. Having said that EV Fast Charge stations are being built around the country – one in Western Australia thanks to local government support and the RAC to be called the RAC Electric Highway. Another is being built on the eastern seaboard linking Sydney to Melbourne for the exclusive use of Tesla owners. A third is being put in place in Queensland thanks to world leading Tritium with their Veefil fast charge technology. So despite the lack of support from government and the limited number of EVs models available, progress is slowly being made.
The sad fact is however that Australia is missing an opportunity to get on board this new technology and carve out a slice of the growing market. It’s not through a lack of local expertise – Tritium, the Queensland based Fast Charge manufacturers recently won a global contract with Charge Point (the biggest EV charging network in the world). The General Motors Bolt, star of the Detroit Motor Show in 2015, is due for production at the end of 2016. It will travel 300kms on a single charge, cost around $37,000 in the United States and the concept model was designed and built in Port Melbourne. On top of that the students at the University of New South Wales last year smashed the world record for a solar powered electric vehicle, the SunSwift eVe, travelling over 500kms at an average speed of 107kph. They are making eVe street legal this year.
Let’s compare our current government attitude to that of some of our neighbours. China for example has increased the incentive payments for EVs over the past year and the uptake of these vehicles is rapidly increasing. China is now in to its 3rd summit of EV/PHEV technology. Meanwhile, a report just out today in Thailand’s Bangkok Post states that the government is gearing up to make Thailand a global production hub for EV technology with a five year plan in place.
What is our local Federal Government doing or what is it not doing. It’s not prepared to offer incentives despite the pleas of BMW, GM, Nissan etc. but is prepared to subsidize and promote coal as the energy source of the future. Am I living in some sort of dream where the leaders of this country see an 18th century energy technology as the saviour of humankind and refuse to lift their eyes to the sunrise technologies of the world that will disrupt coal and oil over the next 15 years? Is someone asleep at the wheel?
It happens in every field of endeavour in Australia. We should be at the forefront of any new technology – but I suffer from the same reluctance on the part of governments and universities to even look at my forestry research that enables degraded agricultural land to be recovered remarkably quickly. It is amazing that we do survive!
Great article, one correction, your suspicion we are living in a dream is almost right, but it’s a nightmare. Here’s hoping the PMs ICE task force gets it wrong and starts eliminating fossil fueled cars instead
Great article – when there is a lack of action at the top, you need to start at the bottom, find like-minded people, and let it filter up. Tomorrow I have an EV display organised of eight EVs at the University of the Sunshine Coast to raise awareness of EVs in the general public http://www.wed.org.au I’m also on a Community Solar committee, and we hope to have a project underway this year. At my school, I’m trying to get an energy efficiency project launched. I think that there are some great things happening around the country, especially at the local government level. Eventually, I do believe the Federal Government will start to catch up with the Australian people, although we are losing many opportunities for jobs and exports of smart cleantech in the meantime.
Yes the Australian Government is sleeping and all the while loosing wonderful opportunity to be at the forefront in research and manufacturing (that means Australian jobs). Even conservatives in other parts of the world see the shift and have some vision for a better future, but not here – its the same old unquestioned 1950s business models and technologies. David Cameron, himself a conservative, has stated “The economies in Europe that will prosper, are those that are the greenest and most energy efficient”. I agree with Liz, without any leadership or vision it is up to the grass roots movements to show the way. I love the conversions that take place when I give sceptics a ride in our new EV. And the energy it uses is almost exclusively offset by residential photovoltaics. Solar and EVs are breaking the nexus of the petrol era. Really most people are not only completely unaware of the cleaner and cheaper ways of the 21st century, they seems to be totally habituated to the pecuniary penalise of petrol, including our prime minister.
In 2012 the Sydney Morning Herald stated that the Gillard Government had pledged $5.4billion to rehabilitate employees displaced as Australia’s car manufacturing industry closed down. That figure may have changed by now. But where is the optimistic vision? As we still have car manufacturing plants and the workers who are loyal to them around the country why are we not retooling for the all electric era? And if the market is still a little indifferent, why not provide free of charge 2Kw of solar cells for the roof of every new electric car buyer as they trade their old car in? The transformation to the electric car age would be the most profitable move we could make – for every one.
This Jaguar is really a fundamental new development at the coal face, or should I say the Lithium face. All things of importance have been more than adequately covered except one. This is range. Let’s see what is involved here. If you use the car to go to work and back, no problem. Your work place is rarely more than 100 Km away from home. One full charge will give you two-three days back and forth to work. Also the timing works well. as the car would be charged overnight, if it took 8-10 hours to fully charge the battery. Costs (electric) are (at 40 cents/Kwh off peak) around 90Kwhx$0.40 = $36.00 (maximum range). This is for 390Km. Cost of petrol to travel 390 Km at 10 litres per 100 Km, = 39 litres X $1.40= $54.60. These are averages, Electricity may be cheaper if solar cells are involved to offset power use by utilising feed-in tariffs, and petrol can vary from $1.20 to $1.6 per litre. So essentially the car costs 36/54 = 2/3 to run on electricity as against for petrol. (Hope you didn’t think it was free). The pros are – no pollution (zero), but keep in mind the power stations could be burning coal to produce 90 Kwh, so they must use renewable energy to get to the no pollution gain. Also, electric motors if looked after, hardly ever wear out, especially if they use brushless motors. They could last up to 50 years before major maintenance is required. The major problem is longer trips than say 350 Km. (you must be sure you start out on a fully charged battery, the last thing you want is for the car to stop on a freeway in 100 Km/hr traffic at peak times, and even if you made it to the safety lane without causing a major smash, you’ll be stuck for hours waiting for the nearest tow-truck. If you are headed say to regional Australia, you would be lucky to find a service station that boasted a fast charger within that 350 Km band. Even if you did, you would need to wait at least an hour to fast charge your batteries to about 1/2-3/4 full. Fast charging is no good for your batteries as they severely shorten battery life. The only way to overcome this limitation at present is two fold: All service stations must provide for fast charging electric cars. All batteries need to improve their capacity/output and be made smaller. Batteries must be made removable, so flat batteries can be swapped for charged ones at all service stations. As the batteries are huge and heavy, the service station needs heavy shifting equipment to swap batteries.. If this becomes the norm, how do you know your brand new battery in your new car is replaced by an equivalent one? What if it’s been trashed and gives you a limited range? You can’t just return it, as you get another battery at the next station. What if the next station refuses to change your battery, as it is not performing? You’re stuffed either way and stuck 500 Km away from home. If you order a fresh new battery, hope you have $8,000-$10,000 in your bank account. So this limitation needs a solution. The only way to overcome these issues at present is to have a hybrid, and there goes all the advantages of a pure electric car. The alternative is to limit the car’s use to a residential/major city sphere of operation. Don’t despair, there were huge problems with the first horseless carriage, but it took 30 years for development to make the modern petrol powered car safe and dependable. Mutter, mutter, JoJoZep!