Outsmarted!

There it suddenly was! The car I spent all of last year trying to hunt down.


I was at the Smart Energy Expo in Darling Harbour. Hyundai was there, showing off its Ioniq range of electric and hybrid cars. My old car was on its last legs last year, and I'd been extremely keen to try out the plug-in hybrid version.

It was much touted as the first 'affordable' such car. The (smallish) battery gives it a range of 60km or so using (perhaps free solar) electric energy from your home power point. This covers most journeys you normally do. You don't need to worry about the limited range though, as it also has a hybrid petrol engine, so you can happily set off on long journeys too.

The trouble was that it was always a few months away from being launched in Australia. The date kept getting put back. Replacing my old car was becoming daily more urgent. Eventually I had to settle for a rival Toyota Corolla.

So I asked the Hyundai salesman whether his car was indeed available now. Guess what? It's still a few months away! The story was that the right-hand drive versions are so popular in the UK that they're struggling to service that market, and we just have to keep waiting.





I was at the expo to help out with the Solar Citizens stall. Solar Citizens is a voluntary community group of solar energy users and enthusiasts. They mount campaigns such as the 'Fair Price for Solar' one which had some success last year when electricity companies were persuaded by the regulator to increase the feed-in tariffs they pay. There's pressure to reduce them again now, I heard, because wholesale electricity prices have been coming down, thanks in fact to the massive take-up of household solar! So the campaign goes on.