Professor Thomas Braunl, technical director, WA Electric Vehicle Trial, UWA School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering
THIS year, the first Australian Electric Vehicle Trial will take place in WA and the first Australian EV fast-recharging network will be installed in several places in the Perth metropolitan area.
This is a large step forward for the introduction of electric cars in Australia. Ten government and local industry fleets will each take one car. As there are no electric cars on the market yet, Perth companies with experience in the EV sector will convert the cars from petrol to pure battery-electric drive.
Trial management is with Perth company CO2Smart, while the research side will be covered by UWA. At the same time, about 10 fast-recharging stations will be installed in the city, funded though an Australian Research Council Linkage grant and partner contributions involving UWA Engineering, UWA Business School, Murdoch University, WA Department of Transport, Gull Petroleum, CO2Smart, and the Perth branch of the Australian Electric Vehicle Association.
The main goals of both trials is to find out how electric vehicles can cope in the real world, what benefits they bring, and also what problems can arise and how they can be solved, including road side assistance and servicing.
The data collected will allow us to predict future EV infrastructure requirements as well as future electricity demands and grid loads, when a larger fraction of all cars will be electric. Although electric cars are nothing new (they have been around for more than 100 years), we believe that in the next few years, we will see substantial numbers being imported into Australia.
Virtually all large automotive companies have demonstrated EV prototypes and several of them have announced production models within the next few years.
The two EV trials will give us essential experience with EVs on a smaller scale, so we will be ready for the expected larger numbers of them on our roads.