Boundless Earth, the philanthropic venture backed by Mike and Annie Cannon-Brookes has invested $10 million in Tasmanian business, The Good Car Company, Australia’s largest importer of second-hand EVs

Firstly, congratulations on your $10million! How did this come about? It’s awesome to have the bonus $10 million! What an amazing change for a small social enterprise from Tasmania! It came about from the philanthropic organisation Boundless Earth, which is backed by Mike and Annie Cannon-Brookes. They reached out to us after learning about our social enterprise and the broader community impact. We’ve been funded to increase the range of affordable vehicles available in Australia.

How competitive was the process? The process was rather grueling in terms of due diligence, and the amount of rigour required to demonstrate that we were capable of scaling and meeting our big ambitions targets. It’s really heartening to know that they believe in us and have chosen us as their first investment.

Have you hung out with the Cannon-Brookes’ yet? No, I haven’t hung out with the Cannon-Brookes’ yet. I’m quietly confident that we will be good friends before too long! I’m hugely inspired by both Mike and Annie and the entire Boundless Earth team and their vision for Australia to be a prosperous, renewable energy superpower and global force towards a decarbonised world.

What difference will the $10million make to The Good Car Co? For The Good Car Co this represents a tenfold growth in our current operations, and opens up the door for greater investment. More importantly, it represents a critical moment in Australia’s history for accelerating the transition to clean transport. This means that as a 100% Tasmanian company, we create jobs and innovation that is exportable to the mainland and the world. It also means that we get a lot more electric vehicles into our beautiful island home that can be powered by our own locally generated renewables. The best thing with a transition to electrified transport is that we keep money locally that would otherwise be spent on purchasing imported volatile fuels from volatile parts of the world. It also means that we will have fuel security in a time when we’ve seen global supply chains, so vulnerable to disruption.

Tell me about your hopes to have batteries manufactured on the island? One of the awesome things about bringing more electric vehicles into the market is that it creates the potential for local manufacture of things like batteries for electric vehicles. Whilst electric vehicles have a good 10 to 15 years of usable life from the batteries in a car and a further 10 to 15 years in a second life of stationary storage, there is still potential to be able to upgrade the batteries as technology improves. This means more electric vehicles with greater driving range at a fraction of the cost of today’s batteries.

How would you say the electric vehicle market is going in Australia at the moment? The electric vehicle market in Australia is growing rapidly, but we’re a long way behind the rest of the world. This is largely because as the rest of the world races on to adapt electric vehicles, we have had almost a decade of federal policy and market failure. The states have been doing a great job but we’re also a very small market at the end of the supply chain. I think we are at a tipping point. It’s not a matter of if we will transition to Electric Vehicle’s, but more a matter of when. With almost every advanced economy in the world phasing out and internal combustion engines, we want to make sure that we don’t become the dumping ground of petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles that the rest of the world rejects.

What about in Tasmania? Tasmania is doing an amazing job in terms of electric vehicle charging infrastructure rollout. We are one of the best places in the country to drive an electric car. We have more coverage anywhere else in the country. We are also powered by 100% renewable energy so that means that we are the cleanest place you can drive an electric vehicle.

What would you say to people who say “I’d love an EV…but even the secondhand ones are way outta my price range”? One of the awesome things about electric vehicles is that the total cost of ownership already puts them at price parity with internal combustion vehicles (petrol and diesel). What that means is that the cost of fuel and maintenance over the lifetime of the vehicle even with a higher upfront purchase price makes them competitive with internal combustion vehicles and this is just the beginning as the price comes down. It’ll be a complete no-brainer to switch to electric vehicles. The cleaner faster, smoother, better quieter and better in every sense of the word, especially once people recognise.

What else is news in the EV/Good Car Co world? We are hiring lots of new staff and developing our platform to be a marketplace not only for decarbonisation of transport, but also for decarbonisation of the home. The reason why this is really cool is that it creates the framework for your homes and your cars to be critical good infrastructure. This means that all of us as individuals get to play a part in shaping a cleaner, more affordable and more efficient energy future.