EV

Sendle and Bonds Couriers have teamed up to deliver Australia’s first solar-powered fleet of delivery vans. As the boom of eCommerce has continued through Covid-19, the ethical import of sustainable shipping and delivery has become evermore salient.

With electric vehicles starting to gain traction, the International Energy Agency’s updated, ten-year e-mobility forecast has suggested geopolitical and economic concerns will trump environmental niceties when it comes to encouraging recycling. But what price ever-cheaper batteries?

The first of six Evie Networks ultra-fast EV charging stations at Caltex/Ampol retail outlets in Victoria and New South Wales is up and charging. The Avernel site is strategically positioned between Melbourne and the VIC-NSW border town of Wodonga.

A high-powered new company has based itself on the NSW south coast with the twin-turbo intentions of driving hydrogen adoption in heavy vehicles and the passenger market, while putting the wheels back on Australia’s decimated automobile-manufacturing industry.

No emissions, low-cost regional flights with just eight other sanitised folk and a disinfected pilot… Yes, Covid-19 is warping our view of the future, but the successful electrically powered maiden flight last week of a Cessna Caravan aircraft, offers the potential for new models of travel supporting wider distribution of commerce in Australia.

New research by digital services company, Accenture, finds global energy-utility executives feeling underprepared for the increasing frequency of extreme weather events caused by climate change. It’s time to expand the definition of reliability.

Perth-based graphite anode producer Talga has allied itself with European lithium-ion battery giant Farasis Energy Group as the market in Europe for sustainably sourced electric vehicles continues its rapid rise.

Australia has certainly demonstrated its appetite for solar power. Now, with the average lifespan of a solar panel being approximately 20 years, many installations from the early 2000’s are set to reach end-of-life. Will they end up in landfill or be recycled? The cost of recycling is higher than landfill, and the value of recovered materials is smaller than the original, so there’s limited interest in recycling. But given the presence of heavy metals, such as lead and tin, if waste is managed poorly, we’re on track for another recycling crisis. A potential time bomb could present itself as an opportunity, however, if the global EV industry showed an interest in the recovered solar products.

Western Australia’s Renewable Hydrogen Strategy is beginning to make moves with the backing of Hazer Group and the Water Corporation to produce hydrogen from biogas, an Australian-first with a technology developed in Australia.

MIT scientists have suggested used electric vehicle batteries could offer a more viable business case than purpose-built systems for the storage of grid scale solar power in California. Such ‘second life’ EV batteries, may cost only 60% of their original purchase price to deploy and can be effectively aggregated for industrial scale storage even if they have declined to 80% of their original capacity.