Internode managing director, Simon Hackett, has broken the world record distance for driving an electric car on a single charge.
Hackett and co-driver Emilis Prelgauskas drove a Tesla Roadster — owned by Hackett and the only one of its kind currently in Australia — 501 kilometres on a single charge.
Hackett and Prelgauskas set the record as part of the Global Green Challenge — an evolution of the World Solar Challenge designed to showcase the latest advances in hybrid, electric, solar, low emission, and alternative energy vehicles.
Hackett detailed the attempt on Internode’s blog.
In order to gain world record accreditation, the team sealed the electric charge port door before departure and were fully supervised during the drive from Alice Springs in the Northern Territory to a distance marker on the Stuart Highway at a point 183km north of Coober Pedy in South Australia.
It’s only the fourth day of the 3000km journey from Darwin to Adelaide. The achievement smashes the world EV distance record by more than 110km — the previous world distance record for an electric vehicle was set in April by another Roadster.
The $160,000 Roadster is the world’s only fully electric production sports car, capable of 0-100km per hour in 3.9 seconds.
"We wanted to prove a point about the ability of EVs to drive truly large distances — and we have done so!” Hackett said in a statement. “This ends any contention that EVs aren't practical cars. They're more than that — they are the future of motoring."