Simon Hackett

Passionate electric car advocate Simon Hackett has smashed the world distance record for an electric vehicle by driving his Tesla Roadster more than 500km in the inaugural Global Green Challenge.

On the fourth day of his 3000km journey from Darwin to Adelaide, Simon, with co-driver Emilis Prelgauskas, drove the fully electric sports car for 501km (311 miles) on a single charge.

Its journey went from Alice Springs in the centre of Australia to south of Marla, across the South Australian border.

This achievement smashes the world electric vehicle (EV) distance record by more than 110km.

The previous world distance record for an electric vehicle was set in April by another Roadster, which was the only vehicle to complete the entire, 388km (241-mile) Rallye Monte Carlo d'Energies Alternatives.

Simon Hackett, managing director of Australian national broadband company Internode, owns the only Tesla Roadster in Australia. The $160,000 Roadster is the world's only fully electric production sports car, delivering supercar performance of 0-100km per hour in 3.9 seconds.

Simon said the Tesla had finished its record run with "a couple of kilometres still left in its batteries".

"We are driving this car from Darwin to Adelaide over the course of six days in the Global Green Challenge, and having a ball doing it," he said.

"We wanted to prove a point about the ability of EVs to drive truly large distances - and we have done so! This ends any contention that EVs aren't practical cars. They're more than that - they are the future of motoring.

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The world record-setting distance for a production electric car on a single charge was achieved as part of the Global Green Challenge (www.globalgreenchallenge.com.au).

Preparation for the record-setting drive included security-sealing of the electric charge port door at departure and full on-road supervision of the vehicle during the drive. The distance will be fully accredited by event officials in due course.

Simon and Emilis drove the Tesla south from Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory of Australia, finishing at a distance marker on the highway, 183km north of Coober Pedy, in South Australia. The car had about 4.8km (three miles) of range left when the drive was completed.

Full details of the event are at http://blog.internode.on.net