Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Today Better Place (American Venture Company headed by ex 2IC of SAP) announced that they would be coming to OZ.
In short
AGL provides renewable energy for electricity for cars
Renault provides electric cars (modified Megane)
Maquarie provides banking for AGLs renewable energy, and leasing for Renault's batteries.
Better Place manages it all and provides the magic to make it all work.
So finally I can kick 90% of my OPEC addiction, hooray.
the big ?? Macquaire needs to raise $1billion Aud to fund this. In today's market.
http://www.betterplace.com/australia

nb I'll let the moderator decide if this is for 'sustainable' or for 'general banter'

If I got a electric car it would have to handle the speakers so it still sounded like a car. Its the only problem I see with them.

I find it a bit strange that GM is closing 4 of it's plants in the US and Canada... specifically to "re-tool" for production of electric cars by 2010 (I think, maybe 2012)....

Whereas our government is going to donate large sums of taxpayers money to Toyota to build the hybrid Prius....

Why don't we just mandate that all cars must be electric... and/or zero emission by 2012...

The last time a government introduced a "zero-emmisions" policy.... was in California... and GM produced an electric car within 18 months .... the EV1...

Then the government changed... the board of GM changed, primarily to include representatives of Shell & Mobile....

Result... all the EV1's were collected under legal writ... and crushed.... the zero emmisions laws were repealled..... and GM produced .... the "Hummer".....

On an up note ... Nissan is preparing to import a totally electric car to Australia by 2012...

http://www.goauto.com.au/mellor/mellor. ... DE0000BF2F

You'd think that the government might back an Australian firm... like Holden....

And maintain an automotive industry in Australia....

And for those that think that electric cars are slow, look like crap.. and are limited in distance...



http://www.teslamotors.com/

And everyone should watch... http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/ ... about the EV1

Better Place's slant will be that all the spark for its cars are accounted for by renewable energy.
Their primary backer (an israeli oil company) is also heavily investing in Chinese automobile manufacturer Chery.
My gut feeling is that sooner or later we will be flooded with Chinese electric cars comparable to Corolla or Camry but basically free to operate. I was seriously considering importing a BYD 3E before this announcement, but now I'll just wait for Better Place

Always going to be the problem. We now have 3G mobile phones when the rest of the world is on 4 and 5G. Why is this. Maybe because every G means 30 million new phones that we have to buy. I liked my out digital and it had better coverage.

Next G Rules

I get coverage pretty much every town and major road in WA - I love being able to have the internets everywhere