Happy World EV Day! Yep, it’s a thing
Rejoice! Today is officially World EV Day. It exists, we’re told, to celebrate electric vehicle ownership worldwide.
Fear not, it’s not weird. After all, September 9th is also Teddy Bear Day, Steak Au Poivre Day and Weinerschnitzel Day. Yesterday was Star Trek Day and Iguana Awareness Day, while tomorrow is, of course, TV Dinner Day. All this while we’re in the midst of Sourdough September.
That little lot makes World EV Day sound perfectly sensible, and it’s certainly served to give car companies and organisations a decent excuse to tout the virtues of electric propulsion for our vehicles.
It’s the inaugural year for World EV Day (www.worldevday.org), an initiative created by “sustainability media company” Green.TV. Largely a social media led campaign to engage consumers around the sustainability benefits of EVs, it claims to be a “global movement, a day of celebration of e-mobility.”
Visitors to the website can write a pledge “to make my next car electric,” and there’s a decent list of those who already have. There’s no mention of whether you’ll be made a pariah should you reneg on your sustainability pledge.
Joking aside, World EV Day has partnered with some big names in the automotive industry, including Hyundai, Nissan, Land Rover, Jaguar, Mahindra Electric, Tata Motors, Polestar and DS Automobiles. All, of course, have plenty of skin in the EV game.
Nissan looks to have most to celebrate today. Coinciding with World EV Day, the Japanese giant said it had delivered its 500,000th Nissan Leaf to a customer in Norway.
The half-millionth Leaf comes as the model – the world’s first mass-market fully electric car – is in its tenth year, and Nissan claims “over 14.8 billion clean-air kilometres have been driven since 2010 (and) Leaf owners around the world have helped prevent more than 2.4 billion kilograms of CO2 emissions.”
Locally, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), Australia’s peak automotive industry body, has marked World EV Day by saying it hopes the day will be remembered as a turning point for electric vehicles in our country.
“The inaugural World EV Day comes at a watershed moment for Australia’s e-mobility,” said FCAI Chief Executive Tony Weber. “Business reports have suggested nearly 60 percent of Australians are considering an EV for their next vehicle. The World’s best electrified vehicles are making their way here, and people are buying them.”
The FCAI revealed that in August 2020, 6694 full electric, petrol-electric and plug-in hybrids were sold, an increase of 114 percent compared to August 2019. It was also the first instance where a petrol-electric hybrid – the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid – was the number one new vehicle sold over any month in Australia’s motoring history.
Some 4825 RAV4s were bought throughout August, with a staggering nine out of 10 buyers choosing the hybrid powertrain over petrol-only models.
In more celebrations, the Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance, in partnership with the Victorian Government, has today announced a new network of electric vehicle chargers for regional Victoria. The network will see more than 20 chargers rolled out across 17 sites in Central and Western Victoria.
So, if you have an EV merrily charging away in your garage or driveway, raise a glass to your zero emissions mate on its big day.
