Grounded #2 Webinar summary

CEO of Jet Charge and Chair of the Electric Vehicle Council Tim Washington, Electric Vehicle Lead at AGL Kristian Handberg, and Senior Manager of Future Mobility at Hyundai Australia Scott Nargar were invited to participate in the second Grounded Webinar and discuss the future of Australia’s car and transport industry.

The first question centred around the hydrogen fuel-cell versus battery-electric vehicle debate and which was most likely to dominate in the next 10 years. All three panelists remained on the fence when answering this question.

“It would be a mistake to think that anyone is locked into anything at this point,” Mr Washington said.

“The split between hydrogen and electric has simply not been determined right now.”

Mr Handberg said he held a “pragmatic view which is to get the right tool for the job”. 

He suggested Australia has a viable hydrogen market and from a financial perspective hydrogen was better suited for larger vehicles. Meanwhile electrical batteries would be better suited for smaller vehicles. 

However, Mr Handberg admitted the transition from diesel based heavy vehicles to hydrogen ones would be a slow process. 

“It is a very expensive infrastructure investment...and people taking that risk right now, from an investment perspective, that is a very hard road so it will go along a pretty predictable path project, models and trials before it gets to that point,” he said.

Meanwhile Mr Nagar had several exciting announcements from Hyundai. The first was that the first 20 hydrogen cell vehicles had arrived in Canberra. 

“Unfortunately the cars are sitting in storage at the moment. We are waiting for the Hydrogen station to finish,”Mr Nagar said.

“There is only a couple of weeks of work to do but unfortunately the engineers doing the work are stuck down in Victoria.”

The second was in relation to Hyundai and Uber’s commitment to make flying taxis by 2030 and that Melbourne will be a test city for the futuristic vehicles. Mr Nagar is optimistic that the vehicles will be running by the start of the next decade.

“The money that Hyunadai has invested into this program (Uber flying taxi program) is huge. They’ve got whole teams and divisions working on it,” Mr Nagar said.

“Hyundai is an exciting place to be at the moment.”

In regards to the cost competitiveness of electric vehicles, Mr Washington said they would become accessible to more demographics like students by 2025.

“It’s probably going to happen in Europe first and other countries with strong mandates around electric vehicles,” he said.

“In Australia we expect it to happen a bit later because we are a small market and we tend to have less buying power”. 

Mr Washington also provided clarity on what the relationship will be between the electric grid and electric based vehicles.

“At a very basic level the best way to understand it is having more electric vehicles on the road means an increase in demand on the national electricity market,” he said.

“One of the myths is the grid is going to break which is simply not the case. It’s just a question of how efficiently you can allocate the electrons.”

Mr Handberg also reaffirmed there is a “strong latent interest’ in electric vehicles at the moment.

“People have accepted electric vehicles are the future,” he said

“So people are more broadly interested in what is available.”

This webinar covered a lot of ground and provided the audience with an optimistic future for alternative energy sources for light and heavy vehicles.