Electric car plan: ACT set to plug in

Canberra Times
Saturday 25/7/2009 Page: 1

Canberra will become the first Australian city and only the third in the world to support electric cars, with an international company pledging to establish recharge points in the capital's homes, workplaces and shopping centres within three years. Sustainable transport company Better Place, which plans to facilitate electric car travel across the world through an ambitious multibillion dollar scheme, announced yesterday it had chosen Canberra as the starting point of the technology's roll-out in Australia.

The Californian company said Jerusalem and Copenhagen would be the only cities in the world to have the electric car network in place before Canberra. Former Victorian state MP and chief executive of Better Place's Australian arm Evan Thornley said the company would begin work on establishing plug-in points and automated battery "swap 'n' go" across Canberra in 2011, with completion of a basic network within 12 months.

From the outset there would be sufficient infrastructure in place to accommodate the early uptake of electric vehicles. "We'll install enough public plugin points on day one so that the first driver feels they have access to the plug-in points, but more importantly put one in their home and work," Mr Thornley said. He said Canberra had been chosen as the starting point in Australia because of its size, high motor vehicle use, and because it had the highest proportion of garage parking and two-car households.

The electricity will be sourced from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind energy, through ActewAGL in Canberra and AGL around the rest of the country. Better Place predicts it will cost motorists less to run electric vehicles than petrol-powered models, and as petrol prices rise electric cars will be more appealing.

ACT Environment Minister Sin-ion Corbel] said yesterday the Government would not be snaking any capital investment in the project but would help Better Care through planning and regulatory mechanisms. While unable to say how much the outlay in the ACT would be, Mr Thornley said Macquarie Bank had committed to helping Better Place raise $1 billion for the Australian roll-out in 2012.

The company is working on the premise that car manufacturers will mass-produce affordable "plug-in" electric vehicles in countries where there is infrastructure in place to recharge them. Better Place will outlay the initial expense of sourcing the lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, establishing private and public plug-in points as well as automated swap-and-go battery exchange stations.

The company believes the money will be recouped by billing electric car owners either a fixed monthly fee or per kilometre, providing customers with the expensive batteries in the same way mobile phone network carriers operated. Also, the company believes it will need fewer than 50,000 electric cars on Australian roads - less than 0.5% of the fleet - to break even.

The financial and logistical viability of the scheme has been questioned worldwide, as plug-in electric cars and the necessary batteries are not yet mass-produced But with almost every major car company in the world including Renault-Nissan, BMW and General Motors announcing plans to roll out electric cars in the next few years, Better Place founder and chief executive officer Shai Agassi believes petrol-powered cars will soon be a thing of the past.

"An electric becomes an extremely appealing financial proposition for consumers," Mr Agassi said yesterday. The NRMA backed the project yesterday, with director Alan Evans declaring it a big vin for Canberra. "Canberra's urban design is at the forefront of Australian city infrastructure so it makes sense that the city will be the first to have a network supporting electric cars," Mr Evans said.