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This is great news. Better Place is planning on making Australia the third country to  be setup with its Electric Car Network. Its really exciting as it does something Ive been advocating for many years:

They will setup recharging stations every 40km or so bewteen Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane and have fast switchover modular packs for compliant electric cars. So in town you might just recharge while you are at work, but on a long trip you will just quick swap the packs. The current tech gives about a 200km range between charges. But im sure this will be improved, especially if the Chevy Volt becomes compliant with this tech. Manufactureres have to get onboard and develope a standard for switching the packs and the type of plugs in use. Leadership is needed in this area.

This means you simply pull in (and quicker then you normally refill, ) get a new battery pack swapped in. You will lease this technology depending on how far you drive. The big electric companies in australia are partnering with Better Place to provided renewable electricity to these refill locations.

More from Carpoint:

Australia has been chosen as the next country to pioneer EV infrastructure by US green corporation, Better Place

Green transport campaigner, Better Place, has announced it will build an electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure network Down Under. The announcement from the Palo Alto (California) based company was made in Melbourne late last month, in conjunction with AGL Energy and Macquarie Capital Group.

According to Better Place, Australia is the next cab off its EV infrastructure rank, after Denmark and Israel. It says it will partner with the Macquarie Capital Group to assist the raising of $A1 billion of capital to build and deploy the network, while AGL will provide “zero-carbon” electricity (power generated via renewable means).

 

Better Place CEO and Founder, Shai Agassi, said that Australia had been chosen to prove the organisation’s ideas about EV transportation networks could be scaled. In announcing the infrastructure plans he said Australia could be a test case for networks in the USA and UK.

Thi is a fantastic idea and one of the first steps in re-inventing our transport system away from fossil fuel dependence.

I want this to be my next car but I dont know when its due in Australia. About 1012 opps sorry Ron thats 2012 ! to be optimistic. It will be released in the USA within 2 years. Some pictures have been leaked and i think the car looks great. ( and the guy looks suitable dodgey)

Also

And more here http://www.hybridcars.com/carmakers/production-chevrolet-volt-photos-leaked-24951.html

The Chevy Volt isnt a pure electric car but a Series Hybrid: See the Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vehicle_drivetrain#Series_Hybrid 

Heres and exerpt from the wiki: Series Hybrid

    

Structure of a series hybrid vehicle. The gray square represents a differential gear.

Series or serial hybrid have also been referred to as a Range-Extended Electric Vehicle (REEV); however, range extension can be accomplished with either series or parallel hybrid layouts.

Series hybrid vehicles are much more similar in design to a battery electric vehicle than an internal combustion vehicle or parallel hybrid. In a series hybrid system, the combustion engine drives an electric generator instead of directly driving the wheels. The generator both charges a battery and powers an electric motor that moves the vehicle. When large amounts of power are required, the motor draws electricity from both the batteries and the generator. A transmission may not be needed at all and if it is present it can be far less complex, as electric motors are efficient over a wide speed range. Some vehicle designs have separate electric motors for each wheel. Series hybrids can be also be fitted with a supercapacitor or a flywheel to store regenerative braking energy, which can improve efficiency by minimizing the losses in the battery. The vehicle conceptually resembles aelectromotive locomotive with the addition of a battery.

An advantage of a series hybrid is the lack of a mechanical link between the combustion engine and the wheels…

So basically its far superior to the Prius and new Honda Insight as it doesnt use a petrol motor to drive the wheels directly. Just as a way of extending the range of the batteries when they get low after 50+km of just battery driving. The wheels are only driven directly by electricity. Not by mechanical power from the petrol engine.

As most people drive less than 60km at day on average you could potentially use no fuel over several months until you embark on a decent trip. I love htis car and the idea behind it. Lets hope other manufactures step away from this first generation Prius technology and embrace this technology.

Theres talk that a eurpean version is being built from this platform and drivetrain but will use a small turbo diesel back up motor. That would be fantastic. Imagine the range a small disiel range extending motor would deliver….

There’s been a few interesting green news items this week.

Lets take a look:

The Spanish Government has announced that they intend to put 1 million electric cars on their roads by 2014. This shows that the Spanish government is committed to actually doing something about their emissions and oil dependency.

Imagine if the Australian Rudd Government took a proper approach in addressing our fuel/emission problems here in Australia and committed to something similar.

But no in Australia we get a  b***s**t commitment to subsiding Toyota to the tune of $70 million to build out dated and inefficient camry Parrallel Hybrids . Wow, what a commitment.! Hold the phone. Peter Garrets  warming up for a dance on the PM’s desk to celebrate. Not good enough. 100% better  than Howards efforts, but that’s not a great benchmark in green solutions.

More reading on Spanish efforts at Gas2.org

In other news MIT researches have found a new more efficient way to store energy from renewable sources.
Everyone is touting this as the next big thing for solar, but the reality is that it can be used for any renewable source like solar, wind , tidal etc. It a new method of splitting hydrogen out of water using a closed loop systems. Here’s some technical info from the  CNET article.

The idea is to use the energy from solar photovoltaic panels (or another electricity source) to crack water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Those gases would be stored and used later in a fuel cell to make electricity when the sun is not shining.

The concept is a closed-loop system: running the hydrogen and water through the fuel cell creates water, which can be captured and used again.

and more..

The core scientific discovery was finding a way to break oxygen out of the water with a relatively inexpensive and benign material, Nocera said. The catalyst–made of a cobalt phosphate–can operate in plain water at atmospheric pressure, giving it more potential than existing methods, he said.

So basically it’s a cheaper, and more effective way to use electrolysis to extract hydrogen from water. It means that at night you will have the stored power of the days excess solar or wind power. You might also be able to use the stored hydrogen in your car. You use a small hydrogen fuel cell at night to pump the extra hydrogen into to generate the power.

I think that this is a major development. It annoys me that its being pimped as a solar solution ( where in fact they used grid power to run the tests). When really is a solution to effectively store ANY renewable energy.

I don’t know if it will happen soon though. I mean theoretically once you pay and install this system you will have cheap off-grid power and fuel for your car. I cant see a fully installed system being cheap given the companies that might loose out from this.  Maybe the Chinese will get onboard to mass produce this one day. Also i wonder about safely storing hydrogen in your house but I’m sure that can be resolved.

More news to come