Hutcho's Blog

Mr Howard, I am concerned about the lack of government policy to enpower individuals to get involved in renewable energy. I have looked over your policy statement on energy reform and find it to be disturbingly lacking in this regard. I do aplaud your rebate on solar panels, however I feel much more can be done particularly in regard to transportation as this is the second most expensive purchase an individual will typically make in their lifetime. As an example, I would like the ability to purchase an electric car, not a Reva, or a quadricycle class car, but a full sized car similar to the SUVs sold in California from Phoenix motorcars. http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/ I don't feel Australia is making any inroads into getting this type of car into Australia. The link below is a graph which compares the Well-to-Wheel energy efficency of various types of cars showing the plug in car to be significantly more efficent. http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger2/1898/4364/320/824338/well-...

Why isn't Australia supporting renewable energy? Another example where the government could do something, but isn't!! Hitting home the true value of solar PV The Stern Review - BBC Summary (Not Howard Stern for you Canadians out there) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6098362.stm Expert responses to the Stern Review http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6098612.stm 26th Oct 06 - PM wrong on base-load solar power http://www.christinemilne.org.au/600_media_sub.php?deptItemID=235 The report concludes that an area of 35 x 35 kilometres could produce Australia’s entire current power demand, and the cost of this electricity may become equal to coal-fired electricity by 2013. "There is no technical reason why Australia could not produce a very high proportion of its electricity from renewable sources, backed up by natural gas as a transitional fuel. All that is lacking is political will."

Interesting Movie, makes me wish Gore beat Bush even more for the Presidency of the USA. The movie makes the facts about human influence clear, but get ready for a lot of facts and figures. Some suggestions on how we can all take action: http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/

About time, they've got rid of that oldsmobile and updated their web site, see it at: http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/

A Californian taxi company has placed an order with Pheonix Motorcars for their EVs and will be using it as taxi transport. Below are some figures comparing fuel and LPG vs electricity costs with reference to the Sydney fleet of taxis. Source for taxi usage figures: http://www.nswtaxi.org.au/public/Taxis_in_NSW/Taxis_in_nsw_statistics.html There are 5,900 Taxis in NSW and over 22,000 drivers. The Sydney Taxi service is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere with around 4,800 cars and 20,000 drivers. 175-million passenger journeys are taken annually in Taxis in NSW. Each journey has an average of 1.8 passengers and is for around 7km. M - Millions, J - Journeys, P - Passengers, T - Taxis 175M PJ / 1.8 P = 97M J 97M J / 5900 T = 16478 J per T 16478 J per T * 7 km = 115348 km per T (Annually) Now, take the numbers for Hybrid and EV and apply to this scenario. Hybrid - 115348 km per year / 100 km * $6.90 per 100km = $7,959 EV - 115348 km per year / 100 km * $1.53 per 100km = $1,764 Savings ...

Well I did a little homework and figured out comparable costs between a leading EV (The Phoenix SUV pictured below) and the leading Hybrid (A Toyota Prius). My numbers are all in Australia Dollars and are based on web research, and km/tank are direct from a Prius owner. Prius - AUD$37000 600km per tank - 36L tank * AUD$1.15 = $41.40 / 6 = $6.9/100km Phoenix - AUD$57000 160km per charge - 35kWh capacity * 0.07c/kWh = 2.45 / 1.6 = $1.53/100km The figures show the EV puts $800 in your pocket every year over the Hybrid! That is the EV Phoenix SUV cost only 22% of what the Prius costs, and the Prius is considered THE most fuel economic car you can currently buy!! Using another example: Say you have a fleet of 50 cars, and want to lease EVs, lets look at fuel savings over a 4 year lease with an average weekly usage of just 300km, which I think is probably quite low. Hybrid - 300km/pw * $6.90 = $20.70 per week * 52 weeks * 4 years * 50 cars = $215,250 EV - 300km/pw * $1.53 = $4.59 per week * ...