HANNAH, ROOKIE REPORTER: Hello everyone. I'm Hannah, and I'm reporting from the Everything Electric show in Sydney. The everything electric show is originally from England, and it is a chance for companies to show people their electric products for home and transportation. It includes, of EVs, all different shapes and sizes. I'm here to find out more about electric cars and how they are making a difference in lots of Aussies lives.
PROFESSOR RENATE EGAN, UNSW: Hi, I'm Renata Egan, and I'm a professor at the University of New South Wales working in solar energy.
I'm asking Renata whether Aussies will make the change from petrol to electric cars soon.
RENATE EGAN: There... it doesn't make sense to buy another petrol car. So if you're buying a new car, it makes sense to buy an electric car. They are more cost effective, and they last longer, they have way lower maintenance costs, and the cost of fuel is only going to go up with time. So there's all economic reasons, and of course, there's the environmental reason too, in that we've got to stop burning fossil fuels and electric vehicles, as we move to a renewable energy future, mean that we will, even if you're plugging it in from home and you don't have solar, you will be using green energy.
And this is Robert Llewellyn. He's the creator of the everything electric show and an expert in electric cars. How do you tell an EV apart from other petrol cars?
ROBERT LLEWELLYN, PRESENTER: Ahh, that's a good one. What I look for is exhaust pipes... so the tail pipes... and so that's one way of checking if I don't know the car. So say, if I know the make of car, then I know it's electric. But some of them are new, and I don't know and I go, "was that one electric or not?" And what I think is interesting, and I think this is worth noticing, is that the people who make cars used to make a big thing about the exhaust, "there's the exhaust", and you could always see it, it's a big pipe out the back, they we're proud of it. What they're doing now is they're hiding them away so you can't see because they're kind of ashamed that they've got this pipe that pumps out gas that is really bad for you. And so it's harder sometimes to tell if a car is electric or petrol or diesel, but generally speaking, it's the exhaust pipe that is the clue, and then it's the sound.
With lots of people making the change from petrol to electric cars. I'd like to know what will happen to petrol car companies and fuel companies.
RENATE EGAN: So, most car companies are now transitioning so they have an electric option, and they would be crazy not to. Ahhhh, the maintenance of electric vehicles is definitely less than in a petrol car, so there will be less need for that, but then their jobs will transition, like they always do, into something else. For instance, installing new solar panels.
Battery EVs have zero exhaust emissions, so that alone makes them better for our environment than a diesel, petrol or hybrid car. Electric cars also require lower maintenance and improves fuel economy. Soon, our roads and lanes and streets will be filled with EVs and our world, it will be a better cleaner home for all of us.
