Electric Cars In Across The Grid

NOTE: This guide was written in 2015 and it's now outdated. To find current information go here to ElectricHeaven.nz.

I'd always heard bad things about electric cars. They can't go far. They break down. They pollute just as much as petrol. I wasn't sure if any of that was true but that's what I'd heard. I'd also heard that electric cars were the future. They were going to arrive in New Zealand sometime in the future, though I never was sure exactly when, or what the plan was. Like most people I first saw electric cars doing the job of taxis — like the Toyota Prius (a petrol electric hybrid). Taxi companies kept using Prius's so I guess they must be economical and reliable.



Then I heard strange stories about how Top Gear were caught in a dodgy review of a Tesla. After the battery apparently died all of a sudden they resorted to pushing it off the track, but what they didn't say is that it was still charged. Then they did a similar trick with a Nissan Leaf:

"Last Sunday, an episode of Top Gear showed Jeremy Clarkson and James May setting off for Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, 60 miles away. The car unexpectedly ran out of charge when they got to Lincoln, and had to be pushed. They concluded that "electric cars are not the future".



But it wasn't unexpected: Nissan has a monitoring device in the car which transmits information on the state of the battery. This shows that, while the company delivered the car to Top Gear fully charged, the programme-makers ran the battery down before Clarkson and May set off, until only 40% of the charge was left. Moreover, they must have known this, as the electronic display tells the driver how many miles' worth of electricity they have, and the sat-nav tells them if they don't have enough charge to reach their destination. In this case it told them – before they set out on their 60-mile journey – that they had 30 miles' worth of electricity. But, as Ben Webster of the Times reported earlier this week, "at no point were viewers told that the battery had been more than half empty at the start of the trip."



It gets worse. As Webster points out, in order to stage a breakdown in Lincoln, "it appeared that the Leaf was driven in loops for more than 10 miles in Lincoln until the battery was flat."

How odd. Top Gear was always more sitcom than car show but this was just bizarre.



Meanwhile across the ocean other reviewers started playing the same tricks. The New York Times said their Tesla ran out of juice when, likewise, it hadn't:

As the State of Charge log shows, the Model S battery never ran out of energy at any time, including when Broder called the flatbed truck.



The final leg of his trip was 61 miles and yet he disconnected the charge cable when the range display stated 32 miles. He did so expressly against the advice of Tesla personnel and in obvious violation of common sense.



On that leg, he drove right past a public charge station while the car repeatedly warned him that it was very low on range.

What do these reviewers think would happen to a petrol car if they ran it until it was dry?



With so much misinformation around I decided (a few years ago) to learn more about electric cars and I came across this series that pretty much repeated what I'd learnt so far but in a far more entertaining and condensed way. It's hosted by Robert Llewellyn from Red Dwarf and Scrapheap Challenge. Go on, click the play button. I'll wait.

As the video says there's a lot of changes in car technology, and we need technology changes to deal with Climate Change, but there's also a lot of confusion. For some people electric cars could be a good choice but we all have to learn about this new technology to understand if it's a good idea.

Types of Electric Car

Hybrid aka Petrol Hybrid: This car can't be charged directly but the petrol engine charges a battery which does reduce overall petrol use.

This car can't be charged directly but the petrol engine charges a battery which does reduce overall petrol use. Plug-in Hybrid: This means that the car can be charged directly, but it uses petrol too, as a backup.

This means that the car can be charged directly, but it uses petrol too, as a backup. Full Electric aka 100% Electric: This means that the car has no petrol engine, and it just uses batteries. Simplifies the maintenance too.

New Zealand

In New Zealand as of 2015 there are less than 1000 Full Electric and Plugin-Hybrids cars and there are 8 models of car. I'll only describe 3 of them:

Toyota Prius

$37k new. $20k for a 2012 model. It's a petrol hybrid. Most of them aren't Plug-in Hybrids (though there are a few that are). They have hatchbacks and sedans. They've sold 5 million of these.

Nissan Leaf

$32k new. $28k for a 2013 model. $23k for a 2011. It's a Full Electric. Range is between 120-140km per charge (Nissan claim further but don't believe them). It's a good city car.

Chevy Volt

$85k new in New Zealand, but if you were in the US you would only pay (NZD)$51k so something strange is going on with kiwi pricing (add shipping, GST and we're now at (NZD)$68k -- still far below $85k). I've never seen a second hand model. It's a Plug-in Hybrid.

There's also Mitsubishi i-MiEVs ($22k), and Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-in Hybrid ($65k), but I don't know much about them. There's also the Tesla which isn't officially available here yet (although some people have imported them).

Where to charge



Or at home, which is what most people do. The popular site PlugShare.com lists chargers all around the world, or for a local group look to Drive Electric who are looking to establish fast charge stations across the country.

How long to charge?

For Plug-in Hybrids, and Full Electrics, there are superchargers that take 30 minutes to charge to 80% capacity. There is only 1 of these in all of New Zealand (it's the orange marker on the Plug Share map). Next there are Level 1 and 2 chargers (Level 1 = 120volts = 12 hour charge, Level 2 = 240 Volts = 7 hour charge) which you may install at home.



There's a good 3rd-party market for charging accessories eg Clipper Creek who sell devices for New Zealand.

Are you trying to make me buy an electric car?

No, I don't know whether it's appropriate for you. Aside from the problem of price, there aren't as many choices as petrol cars. Maybe the lack of charging stations in your area makes it impractical?

But there are people in New Zealand who spend tens of thousands when purchasing a car, and maybe they heard the same misconceptions about electric cars as I did. Judging electric cars for what they truly are is the goal.

How many years does a battery last for?

There isn't one answer to this, sorry. Most of them have warranties (especially for the newer models). These warranties will usually say that the battery capacity will last hundreds of thousands of kilometres (e.g. Nissan Leaf's warranty says it will last to 160,000km).

The batteries can be recycled, sold, and a new one for the Leaf may cost about $7k.

Where do I get them serviced?

Official dealers. I haven't heard of independent mechanics knowing much about them. Fully electric cars are cheaper to service because they have far fewer parts than hybrids.

Climate Change?

Well it's happening and New Zealand isn't doing nearly enough, partly due to our farming sector lobby groups. It seems to be true that a lot of the New Zealand economy is based on pollution (privatise the profits, socialise the costs). Here's a good short video about how we've stalled on reacting to the science for over 20 years because it's such a difficult issue, politically.

Are you putting your money where your mouth is?

Yes, we had to budget for it and it was a big decision but my family of soon-to-be 5 bought a Nissan Leaf. We'll have 3 kids so a deciding factor was whether we can fit 3 car-seats in the back (we can!).



We'll be writing about what we've learnt driving an electric car in Wellington, New Zealand, over the coming months. We're hoping to learn what we had to do to make it work for us, problems, costs, and so on. I still don't know if I can jumpstart a petrol car with my electric one so maybe I'll learn that. If you want to subscribe then send an email to electriccar@holloway.co.nz with the subject line 'subscribe'.



Or if you've got any questions just email me and I'll try to answer. Thanks!