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Phil Smith is not just thinking about the future, he is driving the future.
The Far North Queensland man is the proud owner of a Model 3 Longrange Tesla and he is hoping to become only the 14th person to drive around Australia in an electric vehicle.
"Fuel" has cost just $60 so far, to use chargers over a distance of nearly 2000 kilometres.
Charging the vehicle can be challenging away from his coastal home of Cairns, and in very remote areas Phil has to "hypermile" - drive slowly and ensure energy consumption is kept as low as possible but in Queensland, Phil can safely go 400km at the speed limit on a single charge.
An app called Plug Share tells him what charging facilities are available in each town.
On the coast, there are superchargers which charge at 300km an hour but inland the best he can find is chargers running at 11 kilowatts which take four hours. In a pinch, he can use a home plug that runs at 2KW and takes a day to charge.
For long-distance driving, the car has "camping mode".
"At night time I can lay down the back seat, stretch out a swag, put it into camp mode with aircon all night and I can sleep in the back," he said.
"You've got Netflix and YouTube on the car computer and the roof is glass so you can just sit and stare at the stars all night."
The Model 3 Longrange does not come in cheap at $81,000 but Phil says there are game-changers coming into the industry.
"There is a Chinese company called BYD that make lots of electric cars about to start importing into Australia," Phil said.
"These cars have a range of 305km and will sell for $35,000."
The real value comes in that without oil plugs or filters, there is essentially no maintenance except changing the tyres.
Thanks to regenerative braking, when you take the foot off the accelerator the motors slow the car down and puts the power back in the battery, so Phil can get 100,000km out of his brakes.
What happens if he broke down?
"I've taken out full RACQ so I've got 150km range of towing," Phil said.
"But if something did happen you can notify Tesla and they would send out a technician. Apparently, they've got guys in old Model S's cruising around the country, carrying a lot of parts."
Follow Phil's journey on Twitter at Phil's Electric Future.
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