Electric Commodore does 1800km in a day

The battery-switchable electric Commodore, developed by EV Engineering, has unofficially broken the distance record for a production electric car - 1886km over a 24-hour period.

The car covered a 122km loop - which would leave the lithium-ion battery with as little as 20 per cent charge remaining - but the battery switch system allowed the car to get back on the road quickly rather than waiting to re-charge.

A crew of 16 kept the car (one of seven electric Commodores built by the company) on the loop, which EV Engineering said was all public roads between Port Melbourne and Geelong at normal driving speeds and using the car's heating and other features.

"We just travelled at the speed limits and not getting in the way of traffic, we used the heater and the air conditioning as required, the heater consumes more energy than the A/C, it didn't make too much difference but it draws about 3kW and maybe reduces the range by 10 per cent," he said.

Based in Port Melbourne (near GM Holden's Melbourne headquarters) EV Engineering is made up of a group of Australian automotive suppliers - Air International, Bosch, Continental, Futuris, GE, and recharge network company Better Place.

EV Engineering CEO Ian McCleave said it was a great feeling to see the electric car designed and developed here beat a world distance record. "While our achievement is not an official record, it's a sound validation of our cars capabilities.

"We're happy with the range we're getting out of the car, there was still 20 to 25 per cent charge left which suggests a 150km range, that's pretty good," he said. While Mr McCleave, formerly planning and program management executive director at GM Holden, was unwilling to talk about future plans, the future for EV Engineering's electric Commodore is promising.

"We're winding up phase one and wanted to celebrate the achievements, we're thinking about looking at an official record attempt," he said. The official record is held by the Renault Zoe - which used fast chargers instead of battery swapping - at 1618km.

"There isn't a phase two at this stage, we're in discussions with various parties and it's a bit too early to say how they might unfold - the team has done a fantastic job and we've built a lot of capability here," he said. Mr McCleave said the battery switch technology was critical to covering such a large distance and it shows the age of the electric car has arrived.

"That's what got us across the line ... we were able to quickly switch our depleted battery for a fully charged one, so we didn't have to park and plug in order to recharge," he said. 

The system used to switch the battery is a scaled-down version of the Battery Switch Stations that will be rolled out in Australia by Better Place - Australia is the third market for Better Place, which already has operational networks in Israel and Denmark.

The Society of Automotive Engineers Australasia (SAE) observed the 24-hour trial across its entire 24- hour duration and it has confirmed one electric Commodore covered the 1886km in a continuous 24-hour period.