What’s worse for the weekend: Electric vehicles or bushfires?

A Tesla Model 3 owner has posted two simple but powerful images of his electric car in the Australian bush highlighting the devastating impact of the bushfire crisis in Australia this summer.

The unprecedented intensity of this summer’s bushfires in Australia – due to the increasing effect of climate change caused by humans – has sparked a great deal of debate, and misinformation from the climate-denying right wing in federal politics as well as the Murdoch-led mainstream media.

These false claims included the idea that the main cause of the fires are arsonists and the lack of controlled burns (both of which have been refuted by NSW and Victoria fire authorities).

Tesla owner Rob Lang posted the images above on Twitter on Sunday highlighting the extraordinary campaign led by the Coalition government and the Murdoch media against electric vehicles in the lead up to last year’s election, and the impact of the latest bushfires.

Prime minister Scott Morrison, readers will recall, claimed that that EVs would “ruin the weekend” for Australians. To illustrate just how a weekend can be ruined, Lang posts images of his red Tesla Model 3 parked on a track in the bush both before and after it’s been impacted by fire.

“In Australia our coal-loving Prime Minister said that electric cars would ruin your weekend. I took the left pic of our Model 3 “ruining” my weekend in November,” says Lang.

“Since then Australia has burned. I went back today for the second pic. We must stop CO2 release.”

Australia, thanks to a lack of any coherent policy, and a lot of misinformation,  lags behind the developed world in the transition to electric mobility, although the introduction of the Model 3 is starting to increase the pace.

Before its introduction onto the Australian market last August, the number of electric vehicles in Australia numbered around 3,500. Since its arrival in Australia, the number of electric vehicles have ballooned to 8-9,000 with Tesla accounting for around 70% of new electric vehicle sales in Australia in 2019.

While EVs still have a long way to go to achieve mainstream acceptance in Australia, it is hoped that vehicles like the Model 3, which is driving a shift to zero emissions vehicles in Europe and the US, and the imminent arrival of Tesla’s next electric vehicle, the Model Y crossover, will have a similar impact in Australia.