A Dutch man who has driven 89,000km from Amsterdam to Adelaide in a small electric vehicle (EV) said he is proving to Australians that electric vehicles are a viable alternative.
Since March 2016, Wiebe Wakker has driven across 33 countries from Europe to the Middle East to Southeast Asia and finally to Australia in a 2009 Volkswagen Golf, converted to electric.
Over the past seven months, he has continued the journey around Australia from Darwin to Perth, across the Nullarbor to Newcastle, up to Queensland, and back down to Adelaide. After Adelaide, Wakker is to finish once he reaches Melbourne and then Sydney.
“I expected that by this time I would be exhausted and starving, but I’m still having a lot of fun,” he told Guardian Australia from Adelaide. “I’m actually a little bit sad that I’m coming to the end.”
By driving such extreme distances, Wakker said he hopes to bust Australian anxieties over the lack of charging stations and how far electric cars can travel.
Australia has one of the slowest uptakes of EVs in the developed world. In 2016, only 0.1 percent of all new car sales were electric, compared with 29 percent in Norway, 6 percent in Wakker’s native Netherlands and 1.5 percent in China and the UK.
“In Australia the infrastructure for electric cars is still getting off the ground, but it’s already possible to drive all around Australia using charging stations,” he said.
“A lot of people say they are just waiting for the price to come down. Others say the electric car is just not viable for Australia because the distances are so big, which is a bit weird I think. The average daily commute is just 20km or so,” he said.
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS: The US destroyer’s routine operations in the South China Sea would have ‘serious consequences,’ the defense ministry said China yesterday threatened “serious consequences” after the US Navy sailed a destroyer around the disputed Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea for the second day in a row, in a move Beijing claimed was a breach of its sovereignty and security. The warning came amid growing tensions between China and the US in the region, as Washington pushes back at Beijing’s growingly assertive posture in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway it claims virtually in its entirety. On Thursday, after the US sailed the USS Milius guided-missile destroyer near the Paracel Islands, China said its navy and
‘DUAL PURPOSE’: Upgrading the port is essential for the Solomon Islands’ economy and might not be military focused, but ‘it is not about bases, it is about access,’ an analyst said The Solomon Islands has awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to a Chinese state company to upgrade an international port in Honiara in a project funded by the Asian Development Bank, a Solomon Islands official said yesterday. China Civil Engineering Construction Co (CCECC) was the only company to submit a bid in the competitive tender, Solomon Islands Ministry of Infrastructure Development official Mike Qaqara said. “This will be upgrading the old international port in Honiara and two domestic wharves in the provinces,” Qaqara said. Responding to concerns that the port could be deepened for Chinese naval access, he said there would be “no expansion.” The Solomon
India yesterday summoned Canada’s high commissioner in India to “convey strong concern” over Sikh protesters in Canada and how they were allowed to breach the security of India’s diplomatic mission and consulates. Canadian media reported that hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Indian consulate in Vancouver on Saturday over demands for an independent Sikh state, a simmering issue for decades that was triggered again in the past few weeks. Canada has the highest population of Sikhs outside their home state of Punjab in India. “It is expected that the Canadian government will take all steps which are required to ensure the
The US Department of Justice on Friday unveiled spying charges against a Russian who, under a Brazilian alias, studied at a Washington university and then tried to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. The indictment of Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov said it would try to contest his extradition to Russia from Brazil, where he is jailed on identity fraud charges. Cherkasov, 39, was detained at the beginning of April last year by Dutch authorities for using fake identity papers. He arrived in the country as Viktor Muller Ferreira, a Brazilian, to take a position at the ICC as a junior analyst. The
RSS