Queensland to build one of the world's longest electric vehicle highways

Queensland will have a 2,000km network of electric vehicle charging stations that make up one of the world’s longest electric vehicle highways within six months.

 Traffic on the highway between Brisbane and Surfers
 Paradise. Queensland motorists will be able to drive
electric vehicles from Toowoomba to Cairns taking
 advantage of free charging stations along the way.

The state government announced on Thursday it would build an 18-station network stretching along Queensland’s east coast from Cairns to Coolangatta and west to Toowoomba.

The stations, which recharge a vehicle in 30 minutes, will offer free power for at least a year in what the environment minister, Steven Miles, said was a bid to boost the number of electric cars on Queensland roads, currently about 700.

Read Joshua Robertson’s story on The Guardian - “Queensland to build one of the world's longest electric vehicle highways.”

(This Queensland idea warrants some quiet applause, but along with that it is simply wrong - it is a further example of public money being spent to accommodate private enterprise. Rather than continuing with and endorsing a way of life that encourages the expansion of an energy-rich infrastructure (granted the vehicles are electric, but they are contrary to what the world really needs, which is a public transport system that shifts thousands of people at once as opposed to the one person at a time as has been our habit for decades in the traditional private motor industry), we should be developing communities in which people have no need, or desire, to move far beyond, or with any frequency, outside an area which is within an easy cycle ride or a short walk - Robert McLean)