Karen Monks from Masterton got in touch when we were talking about fuel prices to tell us that buying an electric car has changed her life.
“We’ve had our nissan leaf for about 2 years now,” Karen told Indira “we started because we wanted solar panels for electricity and the dream was to buy an electric car to go with it. When we ran the numbers it actually made sense with the savings we would get to get the car first and then the savings would go into installing the solar panels. Two years on, we have reduced our electricity costs in the home and we’re essentially running a car for free!’
The car has minimal maintenance costs, Karen explains “they have no combustion engine, oil or spark plugs so maintenance is minimal, our biggest cost would be tyres!“
“They are fun to drive, because thre’s no gear change and no lag it’s like driving a little go kart, theyre very fast and very responsive, a trip over the remutakas for us is actually enjoyable.”
“Normally we charge at home, it’s a slow charge from any power point at home overnight. Only when we travel long distances do we use the fast charging network across the country, that takes about 20 minutes. We can get about 120kms on a full charge and we get regeneration of our battery going downhill, we’re picking up energy on the way back down.
Some people are worried that batteries from electric cars do degrade but Karen says “It’s not going to just stop working, it just starts to degrade slowly over time, battery swap-outs are available, they are recyclable, when ours degrades we’ll pull it out and use it as power storage for our solar panels!
If you have an electric car get in touch to tell us about your story, email firstup@rnz.co.nz or find us on Facebook.
