An Amazing EV Champion

As we are planning to head out of the safety of Fremantle, towards the charms of Karijini National Park, with considerable trepidation about our Kona EV’s as yet untested capacities away from the highway, we hear of a much bigger project. And I do mean MUCH bigger: a 7.3 tonne electric truck is heaving out of its workshop in O’Connor, on 6 September, to drive right around Australia on National Highway 1, a total distance of 13,600 kilometres.

The truck will be driven by Jon Edwards and a succession of co-drivers, including fellow EV Enthusiast David Lloyd, a long-distance EV road trip pioneer who will join Jon during the Northern Territory and Queensland sections of the trip.

Jon Edwards with THE TRUCK

The route chosen will follow that of another pioneer, Harald Murphy, the current record-holder for the fastest EV lap around Australia (10 days in his Tesla model Y)

Jon Edwards is a mechanical engineer originally from Adelaide, who had a long and successful career in the petroleum and mining industries. ‘In fact,’ he says, ‘I moved to Perth 1995, because of the opportunities in WA’s offshore oil and gas sector, in particular subsea engineering.’

A man of few words, Jon will not indulge in a big green statement about his post-extractive epiphany. But having taken early retirement in his 50s and then built and sold two engineering companies, he bought himself his first electric vehicle, a Mitsubishi i-MiEV. ‘That was nine years ago, and the i-MiEV had a range of 80 kilometres and there was pretty much nowhere to charge, other than the power point in my garage’.

Financial resources he had garnered along the business journey, Jon put into a workshop in O’Connor, where he is readying his all-electric truck for the Big Lap.

For West Australian EV enthusiasts, Jon’s O’Connor workshop is a bit of a Mecca. It was here that Jon invented his waste cooking oil EV charger – which is now a tourist attraction in Caiguna, as well as a practical pitstop for EV drivers along the Nullarbor. It was at his O’Connor workshop, too, that he kitted out his first Tesla as a racing car, which with support from Ampol went on to participate in various national rallies.

Despite the Murdoch media’s concerted campaign against Electric Vehicles Jon Edwards is an optimist about the phenomenal changes in EV technology and charging infrastructure in the decade since he bought his first i-MiEV: ‘Particularly in relation to range, and speed of charging, things are getting better every week! People don’t like new things, so the easiest thing for the media to do is to campaign against new things.’ He doesn’t see a petroleum industry-driven campaign against electric cars – after all, some of them are coming to him for advice on how to change their own practices.

Late last year EV trucks, Hyundai’s Mighty Electric, first became commercially available in Australia. And Jon bought very first one on offer.

‘Its 200km range was not quite enough for me to feel confident going around the top end of WA and Northern Territory, where chargers are relatively sparse still,’ Jon says. So, he added on an another 200 kms of battery power, giving him necessary back-up range.

He won’t be taking any liquid fuel or portable generators on this trip and the aim is to complete the entire lap using existing EV charging stations. If he succeeds, Jon and his Mighty EV will enter the records as the first EV truck to do a full lap of Australia.

‘But,’ I ask, awestruck at all the gizmos in and around the Mighty EV, ‘will truckies need to be trained engineers before your average fleet can be electrified?’

‘Of course not. You just need the Government to meet its commitment to getting chargers every 150 kms. Then smaller electric trucks will become quite manageable.’

‘But the second battery has other uses too’, Jon adds, for the first time showing some amusement at my complete ignorance of all things technological. ‘For example,’ he says, ‘Say, Hurry K and Co-P run out of battery in one of the national parks, where there are no chargers. Well, I could drive over and charge your car from the second battery. That will be a story to tell, right?’

I am not keen on that particular eventuality. But in the unlikely event that we run out of charge in the wrong place and have to rescued by the Mighty Electric Truck, you will be the first to see the photos of the fiasco, if you follow my Hurry Krishnna blog.

* By Hurry Krishna. For more articles by Hurry Krishna on Fremantle Shipping News look here.

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