[LINK] Mitsubishi i MiEV electric car in Canberra

[Tom Worthington]

At 08:54 AM 3/04/2009, I wrote:
>Greeting from the briefing for the ... i MiEV electric car ... Canberra ...

After a presentation by Mitsubishi I had a brief test drive of the i 
MiEV electric 
car: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/04/mitsubishi-i-miev-electric-car-test.html>.

The car worked as claimed and would be quite usable for city use. But 
it will cost two or three times as much as an equivalent petrol 
powered car and cause about the same CO2 pollution when charged from 
coal fired electricity.

To make such cars viable there will need to be sufficient renewable 
energy available and a greenhouse gas policy to give incentives for 
its use. What also may help is a computer controlled smart grid to 
optimize the charging the cars.

Smart transport systems would help optimize the use of the cars. One 
example would be to use the cars in a share program such as GoGet in 
inner Sydney and Melbourne 
<http://www.goget.com.au/how-does-it-work.html>. This would maximize 
the use of the relatively expensive electric cars. A bonus of the car 
share system is you get a reserved parking space. ;-)

There were staff of both the federal environment and innovation 
departments at the Mitsubishi  briefing. Hopefully they are not 
considering giving Mitsubishi a subsidy for electric cars in 
Australia. There are better ways Australia could spend money in the 
national economic and environmental interests.

Making a green car is very difficult; making a green public transport 
system and providing incentives for people to use it is a lot easier. 
Some incentives are low tech: it is next to impossible to find a 
parking space at ANU, so I walk or catch the bus. ;-)

ICT can help make public transport more attractive. An example of 
this is the Sydney 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/10/big-red-metrobus-in-sydney.html>MetroBus 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/10/big-red-metrobus-in-sydney.html>. 
Electronic signs were planned, to say when the next bus will arrive 
at the stop. Unfortunately like most Sydney metro planning, this has 
not been implemented.

Another way to use ICT to improve transport use is to provide WiFi 
access, as planned for the 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridgeshire_Guided_Busway>Cambridgeshire 
Guided Busway. This would encourages travellers to undertake longer 
journeys, as they can do useful work, or entertain themselves, while 
travelling <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridgeshire_Guided_Busway>.

Kristina Keneally, NSW Minister for Planning, and Minister for 
Redfern Waterloo will talk on "Planning in New South Wales - 
Responding to the Global Economic Crisis" in the Sunset Seminar 
Series at the University of Sydney, 8 April 2009 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/04/nsw-land-planning-for-global-economic.html>. 
I am going to ask her about integrated land and transport planning.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University