Antinuclear

Dick Smith promoting CSIRO’s electric car

the CSIRO test car is designed in such a way that it can be used as a household power source, feeding electricity back into the 240-volt grid, and being charged up again at night when power demand is low.

Dick Smith visits Newcastle CSIRO centre http://www.theherald.com.au/news/local/news/general/dick-smith-visits-newcastle-csiro-centre/2637702.aspx BY IAN KIRKWOOD 28 Jul, 2012   AS an avowed skeptic, entrepeneur and philanthropist Dick Smith says renewable energy is a good thing whether climate change is real or not.

“While I think we could be altering our climate, I think most business people like me are climate change deniers and I think we could be affecting the climate but coal and oil are going to run out one day,” Mr Smith said in Newcastle yesterday.

With his business partner Simon Nasht, Mr Smith was at the CSIRO
Energy Centre at Steel River, Mayfield, to film for a documentary on
renewable energy called, tentatively, Ten Dollars a Litre. When the
Newcastle Herald caught up with Mr Smith yesterday afternoon, he was
about to test drive the CSIRO’s battery-powered electric car – a Blade
Electron, made in Victoria from a retro-fitted Hyundai.

For Mr Smith and CSIRO energy researcher Glenn Platt, cars such as the
Blade Electron are very much the way of the future.

Dr Platt said that by 2020 he hoped that 10 per cent to 20 per cent of
Australian cars would be running on  electricity rather than
fossil fuels.

Even more interestingly, the CSIRO test car is designed in such a way that it can be used as a household power source, feeding electricity back into the 240-volt grid, and being charged up again at night when power demand is low.

Mr Smith and Mr Nasht said their “dick-umentary” would take a month to
shoot between now and October and would screen on ABC-TV next year
with Tony Jones hosting a debate afterwards, as had been the case with
Dick Smith’s Population Puzzle and I Can Change Your Mind About
Climate Change.

July 28, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | energy, New South Wales