{"id":9415,"date":"2019-04-15T08:31:11","date_gmt":"2019-04-14T22:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/?p=9415"},"modified":"2020-06-20T00:13:46","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T14:13:46","slug":"the-ev-from-down-under","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/australia\/the-ev-from-down-under\/","title":{"rendered":"The EV From Down Under"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"We were all very sad when we got the news that those iconic Australian cars \u2013 Ford and Holden \u2013 were no longer going to be manufactured here and that the factories were closing their doors. However, we can all smile again for the sake of the Australian automotive industry: a new company in Queensland is going to manufacture a car from scratch.\u00a0 Great!<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a slight difference with this newcomer, though. Unlike the gas-guzzling Ford Falcons and Holden Commodores (OK, they were a bit better when driven on the open road but that\u2019s another story altogether), this new company, ACE EV, is turning its eyes to the hot new sector of the automotive industry: electric cars.<\/p>\n

Well, to be more specific, it\u2019s going in for electric vans and commercial vehicles as well as cars. \u00a0And, to be fair, the factory is going to be using some parts that were manufactured overseas as well as a few made here.\u00a0 The idea is to keep the costs down.\u00a0 They\u2019re not out to produce Tesla clones at Tesla prices.\u00a0 Not that there\u2019s anything wrong with Tesla per se and it\u2019s neat to see electric vehicles that have bust out of the boring, crunchy-granola, wimpy image and become supercool.\u00a0 However, a brand new Tesla probably costs more than what I paid for my house. \u00a0ACE EV, however, wants to make EVs more affordable for the typical tradie or suburban family.<\/p>\n

ACE EV stands for \u201cAustralian Clean Energy Electric Vehicles\u201d.\u00a0 Proudly Australian, their logo features a kangaroo on the move.\u00a0 This year (2019), they are launching three vehicles, targeting tradies as well as your typical urban motorist, although they\u2019re only selling them to companies as fleet vehicles at this stage.\u00a0 These are the ACE Cargo, the ACE Yewt and the ACE Urban.<\/p>\n

\"\"

ACE Cargo<\/p><\/div>\n

The Cargo is designed to, um, carry cargo.\u00a0 It\u2019s a van that\u2019s capable of carrying a payload of 500 kg and has a range of 200 km if it\u2019s not carrying the full load. The Cargo is designed to be suitable for couriers and anybody who has to carry gear or people from one side of town to the other: florists, caterers, cleaners, nurses and the people who carry blood samples from the medical centre to the lab for analysis. Looks-wise, it\u2019s broken out of the square box mould of traditional vans, probably for aerodynamic reasons, and resembles a single-cab ute with a hefty canopy.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Ace Yewt<\/p><\/div>\n

Which brings us neatly to the Yewt.\u00a0 The Yewt is what it sounds like (say Yewt out loud if you haven\u2019t got it yet). It\u2019s a flat-deck single-cab ute and as it\u2019s got more or less the same specs as the Cargo regarding load, charge time and acceleration. You\u2019d be forgiven for thinking that t it\u2019s the same thing as the Cargo but with the cover on the cargo area taken off.\u00a0 It\u2019s something of a cute ute \u2013 and the contrasting colour roof is a nice touch.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Last but not least, there\u2019s the Urban, which is no relation to the Mitsubishi with the notoriously weird name (Active Urban Sandal).\u00a0 This one\u2019s still in the pipeline and they haven\u2019t given us the full specs brochure yet (it\u2019s due for release later this year), but this is a classic four-seater compact three-door hatch that looks a bit like a classic Mini but edgier.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly nice to see some new vehicles made in Australia for Australians, especially given that in a recent poll, about half of all Australians in an official survey by the Australia Institute would support a law that all new cars sold after 2025 should be EVs.\u00a0 However, let\u2019s not rush things too much yet.\u00a0 For one thing, EVs are only one of the Big Three when it comes sustainable motoring (biofuels and hydrogen are the others).\u00a0 The other thing is that all energy has to come from somewhere, even electricity, as stated by the First Law of Thermodynamics.\u00a0 This means that in order to charge your EV, you\u2019re going to have to generate the electricity somehow and get it to the charging points.\u00a0 Before we go over lock, stock and barrel to EVs, we will need better infrastructure, and I don\u2019t just mean more EV charging points around town and in our homes.\u00a0 We\u2019ll need some more generators.\u00a0 Otherwise, it would be like setting up a bowser but having no petrol to put in it.\u00a0 If everybody were to try charging their EVs at home overnight, there would be a massive drain on the national grid and we\u2019d be getting brownouts and blackouts all over the show \u2013which means that watching TV, catching up on your emails, having a hot shower and cooking dinner would get rather difficult \u2013 and you wouldn\u2019t be able to charge your EV either.\u00a0 Guess where the power companies will have to get the money from in order to build new power plants \u2013 that\u2019s right: your power bill.<\/p>\n

May I humbly suggest that before you invest in an EV for your commute that you also consider installing a solar panel or three on your home?\u00a0 Or a wind generator?\u00a0 Not one of those petrol or diesel-powered generators \u2013 swapping an internal combustion engine in your car for one in the back yard isn\u2019t better for the environment now, is it?\u00a0 Unless you run it on biofuel or hydrogen. http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-zaim\/joymoney-srochnye-online-zaymi.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were all very sad when we got the news that those iconic Australian cars \u2013 Ford and Holden \u2013 were no longer going to be manufactured here and that the factories were closing their doors. However, we can all smile again for the sake of the Australian automotive industry: a new company in Queensland […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[227],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9415"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11079,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9415\/revisions\/11079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}