Jaguar gears for electric sports car with big spend on city chargers

Jaguar plans to invest millions of dollars in electric vehicle charging stations ahead of the launch of its electric vehicle range in Australia.

Jaguar's first electric vehicle, the I-PACE will hit Australian shores later this year.

The vehicle manufacturer is planning to launch its fully electric sports car, the I-Pace, and two hybrid land rovers in September and October, and will invest between $3 million and $4 million building electric vehicle charging stations for the new vehicles ahead of their release.

Jaguar Land Rover Australia managing director Matthew Wiesner said it would begin building the infrastructure to support the electric vehicles in the coming weeks.

“This is a real first for us,” Mr Wiesner told Fairfax Media.

Read Cole Latimer’s story in The Age - “Jaguar gears for electric sports car with big spend on city chargers.”

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)

The Country Adopting Electric Vehicles Faster Than Anywhere Else

Since the 14th century, Akershus Fortress has protected Oslo from raids by bloodthirsty Swedes. Now a Cold War bomb shelter in its basement is being repurposed to help save the Norwegian capital from more insidious foes: pollution and global warming. Starting this month, electric car owners will be able to drive down a narrow ramp between rough-hewn rock walls dripping with condensation and plug in at one of 86 charging stations—for free.

The basement of Oslo’s Akershus Fortress has
been retrofitted with dozens of charging stations
for electric vehicles.

The facility will get plenty of use as Norwegians switch to electric vehicles faster than anyone else on the planet. More than a third of all new cars are either fully electric or plug-in hybrids, well over 10 times the proportion in the U.S. With about 100,000 electrics on the road, Norway (population 5 million) trails only the U.S., China, and Japan in absolute numbers. By 2025, the government has suggested, there may be no gasoline- or diesel-powered cars sold in the country. “It’s safe to say that Norway is the first mass market for EVs,” says Sture Portvik, the city official overseeing the Akershus garage.

Read Matthew Campbell’s story on BloombergBusinessweek - “The Country Adopting Electric Vehicles Faster Than Anywhere Else.”