Why Aren’t You Driving One Of These?
It’s been years now since the fully electric car was introduced to the market place yet despite all the uproar about environmentalism, climate change, renewable energy and the like, we still see petrol guzzlers dominating the streets.
There are a few reasons why they haven’t taken off in Australia and the main one is that local, state and federal governments simply haven’t got behind them. In other countries you see recharge stations on the side of highways but in Australia they are hidden in nooks inside capital cities. You could go into sinister behind the scenes motivations if you want but the fact remains that electric car manufacturers are being left out in the cold despite offering a product that would significantly reduce carbon emissions, something that the current government claims to care deeply about.
Take for instance the Blade Electron. For the price of a decent road sedan you could have a vehicle that saves around $5,000 a year in fuel costs when compared to a petrol fuelled 4 door 6 cylinder family sedan as well as a car that has minimal carbon footprint. If there was a recharge station at every service station you would see these cars flying out of the yard but instead being only able to recharge in their own garages has left owners of this and many other electric cars out in the cold. Sure, you will find the odd recharge station scattered around in the big cities but would it be that difficult for petrol stations to put one at each station? Hell, they could charge for the use of it if necessary. Well unfortunately due to the oversight of legislation implemented by the government the Blade Electron has gone the way of the dodo and with it Australia’s first manufacturer of electric vehicles has stopped producing passenger cars altogether.
Oil companies and as a result car companies have long been rumoured to hold back progress when it comes to environmentally friendly alternatives to the automobile. But in this age of environmentalism surely enough is enough. When a man like Ross Blade spends years of his life trying to and successfully coming up with a bonafide solution to a serious problem we face only to receive little to no support from any facit of government you know something is wrong. A true shame.
