What if you drive an electric car into a city full of gasoline heads and miners and film them putting their steel toe boots on the accelerator?
“Fuck me … it’s like a rocket ship,” says a miner who usually spends his time driving V8s or maneuvering a giant coal shovel.
The YouTube and Twitter channel Coal Miners Driving Teslas is the project of 39-year-old mechanical engineer and climate protection activist Daniel Bleakley.
Other responses – heavily spiced with unbridled swearing – range from “It’s like taking off on a plane” to three cowboy-style “Yee Haws” by veteran Australian MP Bob Katter.
Bleakley has a performance version of the Tesla Model 3 that accelerates from zero to 100 km / h (0-60 mph in 3.1 seconds) in around 3.3 seconds.
For non-car enthusiasts, Bleakley’s Model 3 will leave most production Porsches and BMWs behind. The Model 3 is Tesla’s entry-level vehicle and costs between $ 65,000 and $ 90,000 when new.
Most of Bleakley’s videos are filmed in the coal town of Clermont in regional Queensland, where he grew up and where his parents and brother live. The people he lets drive his car mostly work in the mines, driving powerful gasoline cars and pick-up trucks.
But Bleakley wants to convert her and sees the power in showing her unexpected astonishment at the technology.
It is safe to say that Clermont is not the place to find enthusiastic support for electric cars, politicized in Australia as Célèbre by environmentalists.
“The people up here love cars,” he says. “My buddy is a huge petrolhead and has converted V8 engines. His whole family loves cars. When they sit in the Tesla, they are completely overwhelmed. “
Bleakley has worked in the oil industry in Scotland and mining in Western Australia but now lives in Melbourne, where he ran a printing company. But he’s always worried about the climate crisis.
“I thought it was a future problem. But in the last few years I have noticed that it is here and now and that we have to act. “
Two years ago he decided to focus full-time on climate change and environmental activism. In 2019, he stuck his hand to the window of a Siemens office in Melbourne about the technology company’s contract to supply technology to a railway line for the controversial Adani coal mine. The mine is near his hometown.
But seeing your friends go crazy in an electric car “was a real eye opener”.
“Traditional activism is about saying stop or saying no,” he says. “But that means, ‘Here’s an incredible spaceship from the future and you can drive it.’ It’s a future we can all have if we choose to.”
Last week, Bleakley drove a 375 km drive from Clermont to the Charters Towers on a single charge to meet the inimitable Katter – a silver-haired independent MP whose Kennedy electorate spans over 500,000 square miles – an area slightly larger than Spain. (Bleakley arrived with only eight miles remaining and had to sleep overnight with the motel room door open to run an extension cord to charge the car.)
“Yee haw,” Katter yelled three times as the instant torque from the car pinned the 76-year-old into his seat. “It’s so exciting – it’s so exciting.”
Has Katter Converted? Incomplete.
He tells the Guardian that he thought the car was “a bit small” and while the acceleration was “fantastic” he insisted that the big downside was that it took “two and a half hours” to charge (charging times actually depend on the battery, the car and the charging station, but modern chargers can add 175 km or more of range in about 10 minutes).
However, Katter wants to see an Australia-based electric vehicle and battery industry and is working with other independents on a fuel safety bill that will include his ideas – alongside securing oil supplies and increasing renewable liquid fuels.
What became Bleakley’s first video was actually recorded by his brother, who borrowed the car and filmed a work colleague driving it.
His favorite, however, is a video of a childhood friend and “Clermont’s greatest car maniac” who says in front of the camera that it is “like a rocket ship”.
“I’ve known him since I was a child. He owns these incredible high performance V8s. To see how he drives the Tesla and loves the car for me was really something special. That’s when I realized that I was really into something, ”says Bleakley.
Australia is well behind other industrialized countries in terms of the adoption of electric vehicles.
The EV industry in Australia – which accounted for just 0.6% of new car sales in 2019 – blames a complete lack of government support.
In 2019, Prime Minister Scott Morrison claimed that the opposition’s electric vehicle policy would “end the weekend” for Australians who loved towing a trailer, boat, or camping.
Last week, Ford launched an all-electric version of its market-leading F150 truck in the US (it can pull 10,000 pounds or 4.5 tons, according to Ford).
Electric vehicle manufacturers have stated that Australia’s lack of policies to encourage sales means the country is missing out on an ever-expanding range of vehicles as manufacturers target more welcoming markets.
Bleakley says he’d love to get Scott Morrison in his car but thinks the odds are unlikely. Next on his radar is the independent Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie.
“She’s a real person and represents her people,” says Bleakley. “I want to see her move a quarter mile on a drag strip. I want to see how she feels. “
