Our first ever 1-click survey invited your response to the following statement: “If I buy another car, it will be an electric vehicle“. You can download a 1-page summary of the results here, but if you’re interested, read on and add to our discussion:
Some of the more poignant and thoughtful comments that wouldn’t fit in the summary report may interest you:
- “I have become a man at last – I love cars for the first time in my 60+ years!”
- “Yes, cost is a factor, in that driving an EV does save me money, but it’s nowhere as near as important to me as them being a pleasure to drive, avoiding GHG emissions and not polluting everyone’s air”.
- “The range of vehicles to cover all requirements at reasonable cost needs to be increased if everyone’s needs are to be met”
- “In ten years’ time EVs will surely be even better than now and they are already better than ICE vehicles for most of our driving”
- “My next EV will probably be a ‘personal’ EV i.e. a single person unit – like the one Tom Qi (Otago Polytechnic) has designed – it’s weather proof, highly visible and perfect for running around doing messages when you don’t have passengers”
- “Increasing uptake of EVs reduces the carbon cost of making them (eg, Tesla building its massive li-ion battery next to a lithium mine: this both introduces economies of scale and reduces the ’embedded’ costs of excavating and transporting lithium)”
- “Instead of buying oil that’s often imported from countries with dodgy environmental (eg Nigeria), human-rights (Saudi Arabia) or war-mongering (Russia) reputations, I am buying Kiwi-made electricity”. Almost all of that Kiwi-made electricity comes from renewable sources (we’re with Ecotricity, 100% carbon-zero, and use fast-chargers provided by Charge.net.nz, which subscribes to the same power company)”
- “EVs require little maintenance, their motors have few moving parts and should last decades, and the battery packs (hopefully) are replaceable. So, in theory, the cars could last a long time, helping reduce a rubbish problem”.
- “The battery packs are first reusable, then 60% recyclable.”
We started with a general issue that shows your overall experience – after all you early adopters are the experts for EV driving in NZ conditions. Next we’ll showcase a marketing question, and soon we will start polling you on ways to make the Flip The Fleet data gathering more user-friendly and accurate. We look forward to your guidance.
I think the concept is vital- we have to get off oil. But I am curious how it will play out socio-economically. For me the statement would read “if I buy a NEW car it will be an electric vehicle”. And really for me it needs a further proviso of “if I EVER buy a NEW car…”. I have only ever in my life bought old cars (small ones mind and fuel efficient) and it has pretty much always been because of economics- up until a few years ago I never had the funds to pay for even the downpayment, nor the job security to get the loans secure, on a new car. -Or even a dealer car full-stop! I imagine so so many are in those same shoes. Of course they pay for themselves if things go well- but how many of us have that security of expecting that things will keep going financially well?