29 January

You have to watch this show. (SBS has it streaming on demand.) Guy Martin is one of the UK’s leading petrol heads, ex-motorcycle racer. Lovely, funny guy. This doco is so entertaining, and shows him exploring the world of electric vehicles (not just cars, he also looks at bikes, buses, earthmoving equipment, supercars). And he works with others to turn an electric VW Beetle into a drag car to try to beat the quarter mile drag record. Everything I post about here with EVs is covered. How the first cars were mostly electric, until the Texans (there you go Scott ;)) discovered oil, and oil cost 3 cents per barrel. That shifted everything to combustion engines, even though they were rubbish by comparison. Martin admits several times how hopelessly complicated and noisy and clunky they are, and even builds an electric motor using a piece of copper wire and paper clip to show just how much simpler electric motors are. All the petrol heads he talks to and demonstrates EVs to in the show are blown away. Nothing comes close to them for instant speed and torque. His VW Beetle smokes a McLaren Supercar. The petrol heads still say they prefer their cars, but not because of performance (they get smashed), they just love the sound of them and the experience of driving them. Some people still prefer horses to cars, too, it becomes a hobby thing. He shows the only limiting factor is range, for long-range driving, because countries haven’t built enough charging stations yet. But for the first 20-25 years of combustion engines, there were no service stations. It will take much less than that to build charging stations. And the average Australian car travels less than 40km per day, so it’s already irrelevant for most people. They can charge that easily at home.