Victoria Begins Major 5-Year Electric Vehicle Trial
06 October 2010
Premier John Brumby launched the Australian state of Victoria’s Electric Vehicle Trial, with more than 50 organizations and 180 households to participate in the five-year, A$5-million (US$4.9-million) trial. (Earlier post.)
About 60 vehicles will be used in the trial and have been provided by Blade Electric Vehicles, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan and EDay Life. Public charging infrastructure will be supplied by Better Place, ECOtality and ChargePoint; infrastructure for households will come from these companies and DiUS Computing. All the vehicles in the Electric Vehicle Trial will run on AGL GreenPower, which is 100% renewable energy.
Our Government is committed to making this state an electric vehicle friendly place and we understand how important cleaner, greener and innovative travel options are to Victorians. The Electric Vehicle Trial will create real-life conditions by testing how drivers, vehicles, plug-in charging infrastructure and the electricity network will work in everyday situations.
This is a real-world test of how these vehicles will operate in Victoria and that means we need Victorians to use electric vehicles and report back on their experiences. This is an exciting opportunity for people to be part of the development of low-emission transport options as we look for new ways to cut carbon emissions and provide greener travel.
—Premier Brumby
Most of the vehicles will be small passenger cars, placed into households and commercial and government fleets. Some electric light commercial vehicles will be used in freight fleets. The trial will also look at electric two-wheelers , as well as include some locally manufactured electric vehicle conversions.
Households for the trial will be selected through an application process which will run annually to 2012 through the RACV website. Fleets have already joined through an invitation to participate process at the start of 2010. As far as possible, fleets and households will be close to each other so that charging infrastructure is accessible to both.
Roads and Ports Minister Tim Pallas said the trial was about finding new ways of making electric cars more efficient and practical for Victorian families and roads.
The vehicles will rotate between households and fleets for three months at a time, with the trial to look at their experiences and what type of charging infrastructure is needed. We will provide the vehicle charging point and pay for insurance, while the households will pay the cost of electricity, which will be less than you would pay for petrol.
—Minister Pallas
A survey of the trial participants indicates that over the life of the trial 500 new jobs will be created, bringing in excess of A$43 million of investment to the state. As part of the Climate Change White Paper Action Plan, the Victorian Government will also provide additional support to encourage local design and manufacture of innovative electric vehicle technologies.
The trial will look at the overall economic impact of the electric vehicle market in Victoria. It will use lessons from the trial to predict what Victoria’s electric vehicle future might look like. It will also consider what kinds of policies would make Victorians more interested in driving an electric car.
Resources
The Victorian Electric Vehicle Trial Information Paper
Victoria EV Trial website
Good luck Victoria!!
Posted by: Reel$$ | 06 October 2010 at 12:41 PM
Nice, but how much study will be needed after a year or so of mass Leaf and such EVs on the road.
Posted by: kelly | 06 October 2010 at 02:45 PM
Unfortunately this project has been hobbled together for the upcoming election in an attempt to undermine The Greens party and sway voters ,will be mysteriously cancelled after the election
Posted by: john seears | 06 October 2010 at 02:57 PM
Judge Roy Bean said something like there are none so self righteous as those trying to get their respectability back. Victoria has renewed the contract on Hazelwood, the world's dirtiest power station, out to 2031. Only 1.4 kg of CO2 per kilowatt hour of electricity.
This trial has a couple of serious problems.
1) the cars are free
Sure I'd use an EV for shopping trips if someone else paid the $40k sticker price. Otherwise I might stick to the clunker.
2) 100% green energy
What a shame that pesky coal fired electricity is mixed up in the grid. Surely they could eliminate it for the trial, maybe with dedicated transmission lines. Otherwise we might suspect the green energy fraction is tiny and always will be, smoothed over through necessity by the predominant dirty energy.
Posted by: Aussie | 08 October 2010 at 03:52 PM
The purchase of solar electricity is available to almost everybody in the world, but it is affordable to almost nobody. Considering all of the energy used to make and transport and sell the goods that people buy, nobody could ever claim to rely entirely on current solar energy including wind and hydropower.
Not 30 percent, and probably far less, of all of the population of the earth would buy solar power at 100 cents per kilowatt-hour if nuclear power could be had for 10 cents and it can be. All of the remaining radioactive atoms produced by the fission of uranium and thorium for a hundred years could be fit into a single large oil tanker.
If all the energy used by a person in or for his behalf for goods and services in a wealthy country were provided by nuclear reactors, the radioactive fission products remaining after a life of use would easily fit into a COKE can.
I have bought food in glass bottles from India and much more energy than is in the food was used to transform and transport the crops to me. We eat fossil energy, and it would be much more energy efficient to eat glycerine made directly from methane.
Almost all fossil fuels are solar energy of the distant past, and theoretically renewable several times over the next billions of years of the earth life; but solar energy itself is not renewable; hydrogen is converted to helium and heavier elements. Uranium and most elements "heavier" than iron are the result of gravity collecting atoms from exploded dense suns or stars. Hydrogen is the fossil fuel remaining from the creation of the known universe. Some of this energy is stored in the form of Uranium and thorium atoms, and it is very wasteful of the human race, whilst knowing better and pretending to conserve energy, to allow these atoms and their energy to disappear from the earth without using them.
At the same time we pretend that solar energy is of great value, but the earth can only collect one two billionth of it maximum. The sun should be turned off and the hydrogen should be saved until man perfects fusion power plants in a few billion years.
If man does not turn off the sun, it will expand to greater than the size of the earths orbit and produce a very noticable climate warming to millions of degrees.
Most of the energy, and mass, of the instigation of the universe has spread far beyond the furthest known stars in the form of photons of gamma rays of high energy and other photons of lower energy. The stars are chasing the mass of these photons. Every once in a while, these super high energy photons from the instigation of another universe hits the earth in a high energy and intensity gamma ray burst. Visible solid matter that we know and see is the result of processes identical and similar to Pair-Production by gamma rays.
All industry and the wealth of people and nations has depended on cheap energy. Not one person who reads this blog cannot go out and buy a generator and make his own electricity from what ever fuel he wishes. Burning coal cannot be proven to produce more CO2 per useful horsepower hour than burning oil products mainly because of the loss of energy in the production, refining and transportation of oil, but the use of oil products in inefficient automobile engines makes it far worse.
The use of automobiles(ships, planes, trains and bicycles) for "unnecessary" purposes is the biggest "waste" of oil energy. There is no primordial or religeous right to drive to the pub or work; you take what you take. ..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 12 October 2010 at 12:57 PM