FA & General Banter, page-1223

If you were driving from a southern State, say Vic to Ningaloo, its gonna be a five day trip unless you go around the clock. Not a great time to be had really, until you get there.You will need breaks, thats when you stop 40mins or an hour or 2, charge, coffee, eat, shower, crap etc..

Current chargers/latest EVs are nearly there to a point where you won't have to stop longer than you should anyway on such a trip. Its a heavy duty trip you are talking about.
The technologies, both charging and battery are improving rapidly. Australia has the advantage of having 240v/440 power so we can often charge quicker than in the U.S for example where voltage (at least in homes) is lower.

Older model EV cars still won't make it through the guts of Australia (with a few more changing stations) but almost all the newer models will ,even at this early stage of EV charge station rollout. Have a look at whats on the way from Porche, Volvo, Tesla, BMW its nuts. Even Ferrari is getting onboard with a hybrid with crazy performance. All the cheaper manufacturers are on board too with many models on the way.

Labor proposed a rollout of charging stations over blank spots around the country which was to cost under 500 mill I think but would be a necessary asset that would last into our future. Liberal haven't followed with any direct response to this, many in the party and many of the right wing radio jocks that shape opinion here doubt the EV revolution is happening. They must keep their eyes closed on their european holidays thats all I can think and not see the electric cars that wizz around everywhere on French, German and Scandinavian roads.

Some naively wonder where all the additional electricity would come from to power our transport fleet electrically. Apparently to run our entire road transport sector on electricity would required an additional generation capacity of half a percent of existing generation, i.e. no additional power stations needed. This includes trucks. Remembering an EV engine is over 80 percent efficient and the soon to be totally obsolete ICE motor is less than 30 percent efficient.

Battery pack change over was discussed a fair bit a few years back (Ive been following EVs tech closely for nearly 10 years in cars, and boats, outboards etc).

The idea has lost favour as the packs tend to be heavy and as charging tech and range have improved rapidly so most countries are completely covered charging wise. At least countries that have governments that support EVs.

Its happening, we just need to decide are we a country that wants to lead or at least keep up with the pack, or are we going to be happy to follow as is sadly so often the case.

W.A is all over Lithium, a heap of my friends have jobs in the industry, management,engineers, tradies, I could have myself if I wanted.
Its the new gold over here, but for further development, value adding and adoption of the main end product, electric cars we need not just State governments support but National government leadership, before its another opportunity lost and we just keep shipping off the raw product with not enough value adding.

Lithium is huge, as LTR shareholders we are set up to benefit from the Lithium boom, I would just love to see Australia the nation embrace this opportunity to the fullest as well.

Tretch