BMW Mini Electric Urbanaut

United States Will Lead the Push into EVs

Hyundai will make flying cars for Uber’s air taxi service

Like the Porsche in Your Rear-View Mirror, They're Almost Here

Recently, Hyundai released a flying car concept that it was bringing to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The full-scale prototype was then displayed at CES. Now the South Korean automaker has upped the ante.

Not only will Hyundai mass produce these electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, but it will also deploy them for Uber’s promised air taxi network.

Uber announced its aerial ambitions back in 2016 with a white paper that outlined a future “Uber Elevate” project. The ride-hailing company has said it wants to perform its own test flights in 2020, and plans to launch some version of an air taxi service in 2023, starting in Dallas Texas, Los Angeles, California and Melbourne, Australia.

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Electric Vehicles and believe that they're a future that's arriving rapidly.

Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so.

If you'd been asked just a few weeks ago "What is the most valuable car manufacturer in the world?" (as measured by stock market valuation) the answer would have been Toyota.

Now it's Tesla.

In fact, Tesla is now worth more than the next five car manufacturers combined!

I believe that there are three primary criteria for an electric vehicle to become mainstream in Australia.

1. Cost

On the road cost to be less than $50K. Closer to $40K would seal the deal.

2. Range

A range of at least 400 km. Closer to 500 km would be better.

3. Charging

There's a lot to like about the 2019 second-generation Nissan Leaf. But is it enough to convince an Uber driver to swap to an EV?

2nd Generation Nissan Leaf

To me, one of the most attractive things about the new second-generation Leaf, Nissan's latest venture into the EV market is that it doesn't look like an electric vehicle.

It doesn't look like its design criterion was to come up with something that looks really quirky and your colour choices aren't restricted to hot pink or fluorescent green. In fact, it looks just like an attractive, up market, highly spec'd, regular hatchback that just happens to be a totally quiet high performer with zero emissions.

But is it enough to convince you to switch from internal combustion to electric?

There's an EV in Your Future

Like it or not, there's an EV (Electric Vehicle) in your future. Perhaps your very next car, perhaps the one after that.

For EVs to take off in Australia, we need at least two of these things to happen:

A car to arrive, almost certainly from Japan or Korea, that fires our imagination and that also has a range between charges of a comfortable 500 kms.