Electric Vehicles

Newsflash: You can drive from Melbourne to Sydney in an electric car

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The Driven

A transition to clean, zero emissions transport in Australia still faces a long road ahead if comments made by former Labor MP and minister Stephen Conroy on Monday are anything to go by.

In a spot on Sky News, Conroy demurely labelled the Coalition’s ludicrous fake news campaign against electric cars in the lead up to last month’s election as “a mess”, as he discussed factors leading to Labor’s loss in the election with Sky News reporters Laura Jayes and Kieran Gilbert.

Conroy noted that with battery development “moving at pace” and the need for adequate charging infrastructure, the case for electric cars in Australia can be made – but he got one major fact wrong.

“It’s going to be great around the CBD, it’s not going to work so well for a while out in regional Australia because there just isn’t the charging stations for long distance,” Conroy said.

“I mean you couldn’t drive Sydney to Melbourne easily on today’s technology.”

Wrong.

It is perfectly possible to drive from Melbourne to Sydney in an electric car, and this fact was thoroughly and swiftly rebutted on Twitter by a number of EV drivers.

To read the full story on RenewEconomy’s electric vehicle dedicated site, The Driven, click here…

Bridie Schmidt is lead reporter for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She specialises in writing about new technology, and has a keen interest in the role that zero emissions transport has to play in sustainability.

Bridie Schmidt

Bridie Schmidt is lead reporter for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She specialises in writing about new technology, and has a keen interest in the role that zero emissions transport has to play in sustainability.

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