It’s been an interesting week in Australian politics with Prime Minister Abbott hogging the limelight for all the wrong reasons. The farcical notion of an Australian Prime Minister awarding a knighthood to the Queen’s husband has dominated the airwaves and rightly called into question the PM’s judgement.
Not being so highly reported but a story that deserves much greater press is the visit to Tesla Motors by the Minister of Communications Malcolm Turnbull. It is refreshing to see that at least one member of the current government is switched on to the inevitable revolution that is happening in the car industry. To quote from Malcolm’s Facebook entry:
Visiting the Tesla factory in Fremont, near San Francisco, was a great thrill. The all electric cars are being made in a huge factory that used to belong to GM and Toyota. It shut down and then four years ago Tesla took it over and it went from being an industrial relic to the home of what many regard as the world’s fastest and coolest electric car. And many of the workers at Tesla today are auto workers who had been laid off when the old GM/Toyota plant closed. Tesla has gone from employing 500 people to 11,000 in five years. A reminder of how innovation drives jobs.
Walking through the highly automated assembly lines was inspiring, but nothing matched taking a test drive in the latest Tesla S model. This one has a range of 265 miles (about 480 kms) and accelerate to 100 kph in 3.5 seconds. The key of course is the battery technology which is improving all the time both in terms of cost and energy density. Batteries have the potential to revolutionise the energy market, reducing peaking power requirements, optimising grid utilisation of renewables and in some cases enabling consumers to go off the grid altogether. The excitement of technology in the Bay Area is exhilarating…..but not quite as palpable as the jolt you feel when you hit the accelerator!
It’s easy to see that Malcolm ‘gets it’ – let’s hope he can push the idea of incentives for changing our current toxic fleet to a more healthy and environmentally benign one. Well done Malcolm!
When I can put the kind of PV cells on the part-shaded roof of my house that will produce sufficient coulombs to take me around the daily commute circuits I will definitely be in the market for an ev. The challenge is to supply PVs that ‘work in the dark’. (Well, you know what I mean!)
Barrie this is a reality NOW. Over the past 2 years our northerly facing 5kWh residential PV in Brisbane (27degrees South) produced an average of 6036kWh per year. Our average electricity consumption over the same period was 4335kWh per year leaving an excess of 1701kWh. If an average electric car consumes 0.18kW of energy per kilometre (about what a Nissan LEAF uses) then this provides almost 10,000km of free transport from the sun every year – more than enough for most people’s daily commutes. Double your PV array and the distance would be 20,000km. With a more efficient EV (e.g. BMW i3 with an efficiency of 0.13kWh per km) the distance will be 13,000km from a 5kW PV system. In my humble opinion, EVs are a no brainer for city commuters, where I can’t see the ICE having any advantage – add PV and the benefits, financial and environmental, are even greater.
Turnbull seems to be the only conservative to get it. A man with some vision and the ability to enthuse others towards that vision. When will the others realise that Australia does not want to go back to 1950- the last century. There is more socio economic security and opportunity in moving to future technologies than trying to promote protectionism and restrain structural reform to support old and now obsolete business models. Come on Australia. If we want growth it is not in fossil fuel industries.
Absolutely spot on comment. Imagine if the hundred$ of million$ of federal subsidy gifted to GM, Ford and Toyota for nothing had gone to Tesla to support its first southern hemisphere assemble plant. Jobs, future proofed industry and infrastructue, value adding … How can our so called leader be so tunnel vision looking backward ???
“Coal is our future” states our misguided PM. How wrong can he be. Raise the taxes on petrol, lower the subsidies for the coal & gas industries and put the money into EVs. No brainer.
Couldn’t agree more Wayne but the paymasters of the tea party in Canberra are the fossil fuel mob.
“You must be the change you want to see in the world” Mahatma Gandhi.
When we start doing this, we really become powerful in shaping the future. I have never been happier since taking the courage (and it often takes courage) to live authentically to my own values as much as possible instead of waiting for others to make it easier for me.