Electric Vehicles

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (15:38): 'First, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze ever increasing in speed and power.' Nikola Tesla, the father of the alternative current motor, could have easily been talking about the electric car. Now, 76 years after his death, his name is on the world's hottest electric vehicle, made by another eccentric figure, the billionaire Elon Musk.

Today, all the talk is about what will power our wheels soon. This week, the Labor Party's shadow for climate change, Mark Butler, sounded the death knell for gas guzzlers. In a promise lacking detail, he wants a national EV target of 50 per cent of new car sales within 10 or so years. National motoring body, the NRMA, wants petrol and diesel cars banned as early as 2025. With only 7,300 on our roads and 1,350 sold last year, that might still be in the realm of electric dreams without sizeable rebates, incentives and infrastructure that would eliminate range anxiety, that draining feeling EV drivers get when they are running on empty a long way from home or a charging station.

In addition, the federal government would have to find a new way to tax motorists for the billions now raised from fuel excise to build our new freeways and maintain our network of roads. There is now a buzz around EVs that appears irresistible. The world's biggest car makers are rolling out models. Volvo says it is ditching combustion engines. Tesla has unfilled orders for 400,000. The motoring world is falling in love with EVs, but we are not talking about something that is entirely of this modern technological age.

People were tinkering with electric vehicles as far back as the 1800s when batteries were first invented. Ferdinand Porsche, of sports car fame, developed an electric car called the P1 in 1898 and the world's first hybrid electric car, powered by electricity and gasoline. At the turn of the 20^th century, EVs dominated car sales and were considered a status symbol. In New York, they accounted for a third of sales and the city had a fleet of electric cabs. They had it over early models of petrol-driven cars—no noise, pollution or the need to crank start them. Charging was not an issue in the big cities with electricity grids.

The future looked bright until Charles Kettering came up with the electric starter in 1912 and they struck black gold (crude oil) in Texas. As the price of petrol fell, sales boomed for the much cheaper Model T Ford, which could travel longer distances and sold for around $650, compared with the EV's $1,750. By 1935, they had all but disappeared. There was a brief revival in the 1970s when oil prices peaked, creating petrol shortages. NASA also did its bit to boost the technology with its lunar rover becoming the first manned vehicle to be driven on the moon in 1971. However, limited performance and that curse of range anxiety saw interest quickly wane.

The next phase came in 1996 when General Motors made the EV1, based on technology they developed in winning the 1987 World Solar Challenge from Darwin to Adelaide with the SunRaycer. This was the first mass produced, purpose-designed EV of the modern era as a result of zero emissions policies in smoggy California. The EV1 was an impressive performer, clocking a land speed record of 295 km/h, but it was cloaked in controversy.

Between 1994 and 1999, GM made only 1,117 units, which were leased rather than sold in a curious marketing experiment. Conspiracy theories of big oil interference erupted when GM reclaimed the cars and crushed them, giving rise to the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? Sixty survived and were donated, minus the essential technology, to museums. Today, we have come full circle. Along with a new breed of EV, there is remarkable research and development happening in several countries, with vehicle-charging electrified roads and rapid wireless charging technology.

In January, a Senate Select Committee on Electric Vehicles recommended Australia develop a national EV strategy to accelerate the uptake of EVs. I have waded through last night's budget to see if there were any incentives for this brave new world of urban travel. Thomas Edison once said, 'We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.' If only that were true.