Electric cars four years away

Within just four years, most Australians will be able to drive an electric car and recharge it at special plug-in points at home, the office or shopping centres.

The mass use of electric cars moved a giant step closer to reality today, with power company AGL and finance group Macquarie Capital signing an agreement with international group Better Place to provide infrastructure to support the environmentally-friendly vehicles.

Under the agreement, Macquarie will raise $1 billion to build an electric-vehicle network in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and AGL will power it with renewable energy.

Better Place, established by American entrepreneur Shai Agassi, has designed the infrastructure model, which is already being rolled out in Israel and Denmark.

Mr Agassi said under the agreement, by 2012 the three major Australian cities will each have a network of between 200,000 and 250,000 charge stations where drivers can recharge their electric cars.

These are likely to be at home, in businesses, car parks and shopping centres, he said.

In addition, there will be some 150 switch stations in each city and on major freeways, where electric batteries can be automatically replaced in drive-in stations similar to a car wash.

“We call it a ubiquitous charging network across the cities,” Mr Agassi said in Melbourne today.

“It’s a massive infrastructure project … and that means new jobs for Australians.”

Drivers will pay to recharge their cars through various power supply agreements, similar to mobile phone contracts, where consumers choose the rate that best reflects their car use.

Mr Agassi said today’s deal was an integral step, as people would only buy electric vehicles if the infrastructure was in place to support them.

While Renault-Nissan is already manufacturing an electric-only car, Mr Agassi said he hoped today’s agreement would encourage Australia’s car manufacturers to develop their own versions.

The Victorian government has established a working group to examine fuel-efficient vehicle technology with the state’s car manufacturers, with a particular focus on developing the first generation of electric vehicles.

“The Victorian government supports any initiative that will have positive outcomes in reducing emissions in the transport sector and I welcome this innovative approach to help make broad adoption of electric vehicles in Australia possible,” Premier John Brumby said.

Better Place is also in discussion with federal and local governments about the rollout of the infrastructure.

Head of global development, Marshall Towe, said they hoped to strike an agreement that allowed them to install their infrastructure across the country without having to seek permission from each local area, similar to the deployment of the national cable network by Telstra.

Mr Agassi said it was up to Australian governments to determine how they would encourage consumers to turn to electric cars, such as through tax incentives or free power for the first purchasers.

“It’s more a question for the government for how quickly they want the tipping point (towards electric cars) to happen,” he said.

“Every government decides what they want to do. We believe that Australia, looking at all the alternatives, will pick the right mix for Australia.”

Mr Agassi said they would look at introducing the infrastructure in Adelaide and Perth after 2012.

Russians are coming – to race to Hobart

ONE of the world’s great adventurers, Russian Fedor Konyukhov, has entered this year’s Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

Battling the mountainous seas and swirling currents of Bass Strait will be just another challenge for Konyukhov, who was the first person to conquer what he calls the five extreme poles of the planet: the North Pole, the South Pole, Mount Everest (the alpinist’s pole), Cape Horn (the yachtsman’s pole) and the pole of considerable inaccessibility in the Arctic Ocean.

Konyukhov, 57, has had the Sydney to Hobart in his sights since taking refuge in Hobart for repairs during a solo circumnavigation in 2004-05. He will skipper a maxi called Trading Network Alye Parusa – the first Russian entry in the race in 20 years. The boat, currently in New Zealand getting new sails, is due to race the Sydney to Hobart and then head to Cape Horn and the Falkland Islands to train for the 2010 Antarctica Cup Ocean race.

“It is a great honour to represent Russia in such reputable and well known international race as Rolex Sydney-Hobart,” Konyukhov said. “This race can be very tough and I hope that our boat will perform well. There will be 10 young Russian sailors from different parts of Russia … and I hope they will learn a lot from Australian yachtsmen and will bring back home some Southern Ocean experience.”

The Russian entry is one of 10 international applications among the fleet of 100 anticipated by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia for the Hobart race. For the first time in the race’s 64-year history, a Swiss boat – owned by Dario Schwoerer – will race, along with entries from Germany, Scotland, New Caledonia, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

How the American dream could come true for this Australian

“The American dream” is receiving plenty of air-time across the United States in the lead-up to next month’s presidential election, but it is unlikely Barack Obama and John McCain had a Sydneysider in mind when espousing the notion.

Perhaps they should expand their target audience. For few can claim to fill the description as completely as Grant Balfour, who will today line-up for the Tampa Bay Rays in major league baseball’s World Series.

“It’s all just starting to hit home,” Balfour said from Florida yesterday. “They’re ironing the World Series logos onto our uniforms right now, and it just makes you stop and think, ‘This is real’. It’s something you dream of all your life, and to be here is amazing.”

When Balfour takes the mound for the Rays this week, he will become just the second Australian to play in the Fall Classic. Graeme Lloyd, also a relief pitcher, won two championship rings with the New York Yankees in the 1990s but, unlike Balfour, played on big-budget, highly-rated teams.

Balfour’s World Series opponents, the Philadelphia Phillies, have also employed Australian help over the course of the regular season. Central Coast outfielder Chris Snelling and Victorian short-stop Brad Harman both played for the Phillies in 2008 (Snelling hit a game-winning home run against Houston in April), although neither will feature on the team’s World Series roster.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people in Australia over the past week,” Balfour said. “I’d be glad if I can turn Australia into a country of Rays fans. It’s hard for baseball to get attention on top of cricket and rugby league, but hopefully the World Series will make a few people back home take notice.”

The story of Balfour and the Rays resonates not just with traditional baseball fans, but anyone with an affinity for the underdog. Last in the major leagues in 2007, and without a post-season appearance in franchise history, Tampa this season stunned the nation by finishing atop the American League East, thus ending the Yankees’ streak of 13 consecutive play-off campaigns.

The Rays swept the Chicago White Sox in the divisional series, then ground out a 4-3 win over the reigning world champions, the Boston Red Sox, to be crowned American League champions. The “worst to first” team – with the second lowest payroll among major league baseball’s 30 franchises – now stand poised to become the most surprising world champions in living memory, provided they muzzle the Phillies’ potent offense during the best-of-seven game series.

Balfour’s role in the Rays’ astonishing run is attracting ever more attention in the US media. Demoted to the minor leagues at the start of the season, the Kellyville pitcher finished the regular season with a 6-2 win-loss record and four saves, all with the third best earned run average among all major league pitchers with 50-plus innings.

The hard-throwing right-armer continued his dominant run into the post-season, blanking the White Sox over 3 innings and almost sparking a bench-clearing brawl in game one of the AL divisional series, when he tussled with short-stop Orlando Cabrera. Balfour had a less successful time against Boston – tagged for five runs over the seven-game series – but is confident his primary weapon, a 150kmh fastball, will prove effective against the Phillies.

“You’ve just got to get back on the horse,” he said. “I’ve been happy with my year until then, and there’s no point reflecting on the one bad game. I haven’t been too hard on myself about that. We showed how resilient we are as a team. Boston are famous for their come-from-behind victories, and they took us to game seven. But we were able to hold them off.

“I can’t say [winning the World Series] is what everyone was thinking at the start of the season. We have come a long way. The long-term goal of the club was definitely to go to the World Series and win it all eventually, but I’m not sure that was the immediately goal from this season. But the more and more times we beat teams like the Yankees and the Red Sox, it gave us confidence. We knew we could compete with anyone. When you can win consistently against teams like that, it gives you a lot of confidence, and we’ve been feeding off that.

“Everything has changed. You can’t really go anywhere without someone asking you about the story of the organisation and about you individually. There’s 200 media around us today. It’s just berserk. I’m loving it. I mean, how many times in your life are you going to go to a World Series?”

4 Simple Steps to Start the Exercise

The Main Problems
So why do most people have trouble making exercise a regular habit? Well, there are probably a number of factors, but here are the main ones as I see it:

1. Too difficult. People set out with a lot of ambition and enthusiasm, and start out with a big goal. “I’m going to go to the gym for an hour a day!” or “I’m going to run 30 minutes every day!” The problem is that the goal is too difficult to sustain for very long. You can do it for a few days, but you soon run out of energy, and it becomes a drag to do it.
2. Too many goals. Often we set out to do too much. We want to run, and lift weights, and eat healthy, and quit sweets, and stop drinking soda. Well, those are multiple goals, and you cannot focus on the exercise habit if you’re trying to do all the others at the same time. Or we might start with one goal, but then get caught up in another goal (to stop procrastinating, for example), and lose our focus on the first one.
3. Not enough motivation. It’s not a lack of discipline, it’s a lack of motivation. The most powerful motivators, in my experience, are logging your habit and public pressure. There are many others that help as well.

The 4 Simple Steps
So how do we solve those problems? Keep it simple. Here are the 4 simple steps to start the exercise habit (and keep it going). I should note that you can use these 4 steps to start any habit.

1. Set one easy, specific, measurable goal. There are several keys to setting this crucial goal:
   • Written: Write this down. Post it up. If you don’t write it down, it’s not important.
   • Easy: Don’t — DO NOT — set a difficult goal. Set one that is super, super easy. Five minutes of exercise a day. You can do that. Work your way to 10 minutes after a month. Then go to 15 after 2 months. You can see what I mean: make it easy to start with, so you can build your habit, then gradually increase.
   • Specific: By specific, I mean what activity are you going to do, at what time of day, and where? Don’t just say “exercise” or “I’m going to walk”. You have to set a time and place. Make it an appointment you can’t miss.
   • Trigger: I recommend that you have a “trigger” right before you do your habit. For example, you might always brush your teeth right after you shower. The shower is the trigger for brushing your teeth, and because of that, you never forget to brush your teeth. Well, what will you do right before you exercise? Is it right after you wake up? Right after your coffee? Right when you get home? As soon as you take off for lunch? A trigger that you do every single day is important.
   • Measurable: By measurable, I mean that you should be able to say, definitely, whether you hit or miss your goal today. Examples: run for 10 minutes. Walk 1/2 a mile. Do 3 sets of 5 pushups. Each of those has a number that you can shoot for.
   • One goal: Stick to this one goal for at least a month. Two months if you can bear it. Don’t start up a second goal during that 30-day period. If you do, you are scrapping this goal.

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