Hutcho's Blog

RSS feed is active on this site (Link at the bottom of the page) More Links: http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/07/altair_batterie.html http://www.wrhambrecht.com/sector/nanotech/notes/alti20060724.pdf http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/08/phoenix_motorca.html http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=852 Electric Vehicle Association of Asia Pacific: http://www.evaap.org/ Often updated web site on EV happenings. http://www.megawattmotorworks.com/ Info on Electricity prices in Australia http://www.agl.com.au/AGLNew/At+your+service/Account+enquiries/Regulated+price+plans/VIC+electricity+-+AGL+Electricity+Limited.htm Info about crash testing by DOTARS http://www.dotars.gov.au/transport/safety/road/vehicle/str_offset.aspx http://www.revaaustralia.com.au/revaupdates.htm Interesting article from Honda. Especially the comments. http://kww.autobloggreen.com/2006/11/14/honda-manager-frustrated-with-ev-zealots/ Document about high powered batteries. http://www.al...

Well, absolutely no response from either the SMH emails or from Daily Planet. I was at least hoping for something to the effect of acknowledgement that this was a problem. Well, I encourage anyone reading this blog to post their thoughts and information, pass the message on and perhaps we will get closer to this elusive dream.

Hi Natasha & Jay, First thanks for the great show, but I thought you missed a crucial point in your story on Tuesday night (21-Nov) about the Hydro-powered BMW. When the gentleman who leads the BMW build team very quickly glosed over the fact that electricity is required to split the Hydrogen from the O2 I almost laughed out loud and wondered why such a huge fact was not pointed out clearly? ELECTRICITY IS REQUIRED TO PRODUCE HYDROGEN. Why I ask wouldn't electricity be used to power the car? Why convert the energy from electricity to Hydrogen, then explode it in an inefficient ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) to power the car? The BMW representitive tried to explain that occasionlly a German might wish to drive more than 500km to Hamburg or somewhere, but might not be able to find a Hydrogen filling station on the way, he sounded about as unconvinced as I am. Did anyone mention to this gentleman there is an extensive electricity network in Germany, into virtually every house la...

This was sent to SMH in response to an article posted on their web site today. Articles titled high-tech answers to the fuel crisis , which don't even make a mention of a plug in electric can't be serious; you want a scoop, talk about a true high tech answer to the fuel crisis, plug in electric cars. As the phrase goes, 'please explain' why would a hybrid car be considered over a plug in electric for the price tag of $94K? In California you can buy a true sports car which goes from 0-60mph in 3.9 seconds and has a range of 400km for around the same price, and it doesn't use petrol, and guess what it's a plug in electric and costs around a dollar a day to run. http://www.teslamotors.com/ And that doesn't even take into account the environmental concerns addressed by this type of car. Want to know about a true multi-fuel car? The beauty of powering cars with electricity from the grid is that we can generate the electricity any way we want without changing the...

Excerpt from http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/21stCentElectricCar.pdf The true multi-fuel car The beauty of powering cars with electricity from the grid is that we can generate the electricity any way we want without changing the cars. As we have seen, we can generate electricity with our choice of fossil fuels. We can also use nuclear fuel, or we can generate it with any of a number of "green" sources, such as hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, solar, or biomass. Electricity is the universal currency of energy, and we already have a comprehensive distribution system for it. --- Now my question is, why are the electric companies sitting around letting the oil companies rule the car industry? If every car in the world was electric, then wouldn't they be the richest energy distribution companies in the world, and that is the mandate of a company, right?. So where are the grants, where is the sponsership, when will they strike? Are they biding their time? Are they hiddi...

In my (so far unsuccessful) efforts to find more information about how to purchase an electric car in Australia, I have come across some innovative individuals who have decided that they do not wish to wait for manufacturers to get some balls, and have built EV's in their own garages. The web sites below show in some detail how to build an electric car and how an individual can get it road registered with the appropriate Motor Vehicles registry in Australia. http://www.electric-echo.com/ http://electricyaris.com/ http://www.evconvert.com/ http://www.clevelandelectronicservices.com/ http://www.subaclub.com/MyCar/electric.htm http://www.teslamotors.com/ 21stCentElectricCar.pdf TeslaRoadsterBatterySystem.pdf The more I read about this topic the more I get the impression that the influences at play stopping the major manufacturers in the car industry from producing a plug in car must be enormous. Well, here's hoping a few influential players get some balls and get EV...

I just watched "Who killed the electric car", and I'm astounded. I immediately went online to see if I could buy a plug in electric car in Australia, and the first thing I found was that Australia also appears to be killing inovation and the electric car as well!! Article about an EV being crushed in Australia What is going on in the world where we are crushing electric cars? Is this normal practice for petrol cars which don't meet a safety regulation, wouldn't it be fixed? Looking for a response, I found: Reply from the Minister for transport Search DoTARS for Reva Another comment by the minister My thoughts, if the car doesn't meet full safety standards then fine, but it appears there is very little effort by the minister to even try to find out. Further, wouldn't you think motorcycles are much more dangerous when driven at 100+ km/h through Sydney traffic than an electric car driven at a top speed of 65km/h? I certainly don't agree that this car eve...