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Top Gear Australia (magazine)
Photos: Thomas Wieleki
Andrew Chesterton
July 1, 2009

Cars will become plug-in. It won’t be fuel, it won’t be gas. It will be electric.
How a cattle farmer from Armidale is saving the world, one car at a time.

Phil Coop is going to save the world. Not in some namby-pamby way, like enschewing plastic bags or not eating whale burgers. Nor in some flashy celebrity fashion, like hosting a turgid telethon or kidnapping an African kid, or two.

Nope, Phil Coop is literally going to save the planet, which, when you think about it is a pretty decent claim to fame for a 50 year old cattle farmer from Armidale in rural NSW. Why? Phil builds electric cars, and pretty bloody good ones at that. But we’ll touch on that in a moment.

Firstly, how does a regular country boy make the jump from cows to conduction? It all started a few years back, when the price of a litre of petrol was roughly comparable to the cost of a functioning kidney on the body bits-black market. Phil, like most of us, got sick of being screwed at the pump. And he decided to do something about it.

But while most of us where busy waiting for some big car firm to pump out an affordable, environmentally friendly option that doesn’t make us what to stick our heads in a medical waste bin, (sorry Toyota), Phil took a distinctly country approach; he decided to solve the problem himself.
So he sourced an old ute, powered by dozens of lead acid batteries, to use for short trips and to get around his property. Sadly, the ute had less grunt than your average calculator and needed constant recharging, but Phil wasn’t deterred. He set out to make it better.

“The last time fuel prices were up, we bought an old battery powers Suzuki Mightly Boy,” he says. “If you were only going to travel short distances , it would do it; very badly, but it would do it. We knew then that there was something in this. And that we could make it better. So I organised a team to take around the world with me to look at the best technology available. And when we came back, we decided that this idea could be a goer.”

Five years, more international research tours and $2.5 million of his own cash later, the evMe was born. Based on the Mazda 2 shell - though the technology will fit into pretty much anything you care to name - the evMe has 96 lithium-polymer batteries stored under the back seat, each one as thin as a pizza tra like device you can see Phil holding in our photos. It takes 10 hours to charge and, fully juiced, will travel about 200km.

The electric motor generates 89kW - 123 more than the standard Mazda 2 - and it will sprint to 100km/h in 10 seconds when tuned for range over power. With a few quick turns of a spanner - or what ever the hell you use on an electric engine - that time falls to around under 6 seconds. That’s Golf R32 territory.

But even without the turning, this is a handy little car. One of the electric propulsion’s key advantages is that you can access all of the motors torque instantly, and 220Nm is plently to snap you smartly away from rest. Despite the 200kg of extra weight from all those batteries, the evMe still feels nimble and light on its feet. And because the gear box has only two choices, forwards and backwards, there is no time spent hanging around waiting for those old-fashioned gear changes.

So the car is a success then, but surely there were times when Phil, or at least his family, questioned his decision to sink $2 million into a concept that for years was met with sniggers by his neighbours. “People believe cars will become plug in,” he says. “It won’t be fuel, it won’t be gas. It will be electric. And I agree.

“People are convinced that electricity is the path of forward innovation for the world of motoring. And batteries are going to be the fundamental technology we use.”

Think of the evMe as the United Nations of cars, with bits bought all over the world; the shell is from Japan, the batteris are shiped from South Korea, the motor an electrics are built in Switzerland, while the battery management system is flown in from Poland. But technology is like a politician’s promises; it’s forever changing. And even as Phil puts the finishing touches on the first of his fleet of cars, new and better products are becoming available.

“This is the finest technology of its kind in the world,” he says. Put we’ve still got some problems. We’re now looking at a new battery management system out of Germany.”

So what of our bold claim that Phil and his team will save the planet? That was no hyperbole, and this is no backyard operation. After five years of hard graft, Phil company, Energetique is currently ploughing through a backlog of about 100 orders for conversions - including Fiestas, VWs and even a Lotus Elise - while Phil and his team have just returned from a trip to Europe where they met with manufacturing arms of major car firms, including Ford.

Not bad for a boy from Armidale huh? Actually, while we’re on the topic, why the bloody hell is the firm still based in Armidale? Surely Sydney or Melbourne would be easier?
“I’m just a grazier” we run a cattle property,” he says. “I have an intrest in technology but I am not necessarily qualified. But I enjoy bringing the right people together.”
“It makes no sence to have this project in Armidale, but we love the regional lifestyle. It probably cost us between 40 and 60 per cent in extra transport costs on every product. But we’re comitted to the region. Regional areas have to do something, or they’re just going to disappear. And innovationcan happen here. It isn’t easy, but I hope regional areas will have their own heroes who can bring innovation forward.”

Phil, if you were any more of a hero, you would need a cape. More power to you.