With the demise of the political party that was going to revive the Australian vehicle industry it has been left to a small but visionary private company to take the baton. The Australian Clean Energy Electric Vehicle Group (ACE-EV) has teamed up with Aldom Motor Body Builders to quadruple the number of EVs on our roads by building15,000 vehicles by 2025 from their South Australian facility. The deal will help the innovative EV car manufacturer establish an assembly line for its flagship Cargo van (below). From there, ACE-EV plans on large-scale export to meet the global right-hand drive. It already has orders for around 100 Cargo delivery vans. The electric vehicle maker will have four models in total, the Cargo, Yewt, Urban and the Sportz. ACE-EV already has orders for around 100 Cargo delivery vans (above). The electric vehicle maker will have four models in total, the Cargo, Yewt, Urban (below) and the Sportz.
Never knew about this Oz designed and made EV runabout!!! The Fonz (Fonzarelli) Meet Australia’s first electric scooter. Amped up in every way. An agile machine designed for cutting through urban traffic. And super-compact, portable PowerPacks you can charge in any standard 240V wall-socket.
@Craig Swanson Your country, then, is standardized on 220V, similar to Europe? 60HZ AC? We are 120V, 60HZ. This means 220 must be universally available to power the larger devices often found in homes, electric range, clothes dryer, water heater, air compressor, welder. Frank
Now our miners are getting in on the EV act. The heavy-duty Bortana EV, which has been developed by Australian mining safety product company Safescape, in collaboration with 3ME Technology was unveiled this week. A comparatively “small” vehicle (compared to the heavy loaders and massive trucks typical of Australia’s mining industry), the Bortana is considered a game-changing electric vehicle (EV) for the industry. It will have a 150km range, with a 50kWh battery, 135kW output motor and 320Nm torque, and has the potential to significantly reduce the industry’s energy usage and vehicle emissions.
Scientists from Australia's James Cook University have uncovered the geological origins of rare earth metal Dysprosium and identified ways to find new reserves of the mineral. The metal is viewed as a strategic commodity needed for EV batteries and motors. Australia is currently the largest exporter of lithium in the world and with this new discovery now has deposits of virtually all the materials needed for EV batteries and motors.
What I read about Tesla charging stations was that the charging stations would be run by solar power, so they could be anywhere, and would convert enough solar power to charge up the big battery in the charging station, and that would then charge up the car batteries when people stopped at the Tesla charging station. My daughter’s Mini Cooper is a hybrid vehicle that runs mostly on the battery power, and she can charge it up overnight at home , or at a charging station when she is traveling for work. Most major hotels now have parking for electric vehicles, so the traveler can just plug the car in overnight and it is ready to go the next morning. If her battery gets low while she is on a road trip, then it switches over to burning regular gasoline, and also re-charges the battery as she is driving. One of the most interesting things that I read recently (and started a thread about) , was the use of ethanol as a fuel for vehicles, way back in the early 1900’s. Henry Ford designed his vehicles to be able to run on either gasoline or alcohol, depending on which fuel was available to them, and the driver only had to flip a couple of switches to change over from one fuel to the other. Since the methanol can be made by fermentation of just about any plant-based substance, we would have always had plenty of fuel from using leftover products from farming or ranching, and not have had to be using near as much oil to make gasoline. We would have probably still been doing this, except for Rockefeller, who owned huge stocks of Standard Oil company, and he almost forced the United States into making alcohol production illegal. We are usually told that prohibition was all about drinking alcohol, but the truth is, the largest affect of prohibition was stopping vehicles from using it as a fuel.
Approximate facts about ethanol. It takes 70% more energy to produce a gallon ethanol than is in a gallon of ethanol. A gallon of ethanol contains only about half the energy as a gallon of gasoline. Ethanol from corn costs about $1.74 per gallon to produce, compared with about 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline. Draw your own conclusions.
I think electric cars will be great, when battery life and capacity are greatly improved and the stationary grid is more fully supplied with green energy. Right now , they're ahead of their time as are most of the green energy sources. When green energy becomes economically viable without government subsidies, we'll be ready for electric vehicles.