EVs at Wai Wheels Featherston
Robyn Ramsden - 12th December 2022
I, along with some other electric vehicle enthusiasts, attended the Wai Wheels Featherston fundraising event for our son’s school. There were 7 electric cars; a Tesla 3 Performance, a Tesla X, two Minis in British Racing Green, two Kia EV6s and my little Nissan Leaf. Some had attended many events like this, and had just been to the Go Green Expo the weekend before. We happily paid the small show fee, as it was fundraising for the school, but when we arrived we weren’t lined up with the other cars on display. Instead we were placed adjacent to the other cars, far away in the back corner, because of some nonsense about EVs catching fire. I was initially taken aback; surely they were joking.
I was completely sceptical that it was true, having already done a fair bit of reading about EVs prior to purchasing mine a couple of years earlier. But I took another look at the available statistics, which are not New Zealand based and are based on the number of sales rather than the total number of cars on the road, so already it’s not quite the answer I was looking for.
A USA based auto insurance company had the easiest to find statistics at the time, while I was standing dumbfounded in the schools sports field:
They claim that hybrid cars are the worst, at 3,474.5 fires per 100,000 vehicles, then gas/petrol at 1,529.9 per 100,000 vehicles and finally electric at 25.1 per 100,000 vehicles. Looks like the 150 + Molotov cocktails that made up the majority of the ‘car show’ were more of a danger than 7 electric cars.
So why this instant assertion by the organisers that our electric vehicles were more of a danger than the petrol cars?
About a month earlier a Nissan Leaf had caught fire in Atawai. An accident had been successful in rupturing the battery pack. It’s quite hard to do this, according to the people in the know, and I felt sorry for the owner. But could our first recorded Nissan Leaf fire prompt so much fear? Would this one electric car fire prompt so much fear that it was why we were segregated to the back corner of the fundraiser (near houses and under trees).
How many electric cars do we have in New Zealand?
According to the Ministry of Transport, that number is 61,892 combined BEVs (that’s the technical term for a fully electric car - Battery Electric Vehicle) and PHEVs (these are hybrids - Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles). In Wellington there is only 7,825 EVs (Electric Vehicles) and PHEVs. This consists of the classes Heavy, Light and Motorcycle. The total number of vehicles on the road is 4,754,040. So, 1.3% of vehicles on our roads are some form of electric vehicle.
I’m ready to acknowledge that, once alight, lithium battery fires burn hotter and longer and are therefore harder to put out than petrol fires. But why the hostility?
Moving on.
There were a few questions or rather statements that were on repeat at the show, like “What will we do with all those used batteries?”
Well, for a start, lithium batteries are not the same as acid batteries, and their disposal is different. With that in mind, the government set up the Battery Industry Group (or BIG) in 2019. Their task is to work out how to recycle lithium batteries in New Zealand. The biggest problem appears to be that lithium batteries for cars are lasting longer than expected, and once removed from cars they are being used in more ways than expected. For example, they have been added to solar setups, providing additional energy storage.
Questions around range came up a lot. I heard statements like ‘I want a car that will drive to Auckland without stopping’. How many people in petrol cars drive that far without stopping? Honestly!
My Nissan Leaf 30kWh was the car with the lowest range there. I can go from Featherston to Victoria University, and back to Upper Hutt, before I need a charge to get up and over the Rimutaka hill. If there wasn’t a hill there I wouldn’t even need a top up. My family drove to Napier and back a couple of weekends ago, three stops up and three back - no problem.
The Teslas, Minis and Kias at the show have a much larger range than my Leaf. The Teslas can go over 400 kms before needing a charge. But still that wasn’t enough for some. I remember when I had a petrol car, we still needed to fill up at some point on a long trip, and also stopped often to let the kids run off steam.
When told that stopping to charge was inconvenient, we did talk about what I do while waiting for the car to charge. I nip off to the loo, get a coffee or get in some quality reading time. I chat with other electric vehicle owners who are waiting to use the charger. We love talking about our cars, and mine takes less than 10 mins to charge most of the time.
That brings me to the often cried issue of charging infrastructure.
Most of the time I charge my car at home in the garage using the 3-point plug. I plug in after 9pm, once the evening peak load has finished. If I was driving every day I’d set up the onboard timer that starts and stops the car charging, but I don’t drive often enough to bother with that.
When I’m out going further than the ~120 km range my car has, I use ChargeNet. They have the most charges. Prices are based on how many kWh you draw. For example our recent trip to Napier cost under $30. There are many ChargeNet charging stations these days, and some of the electricity companies have set up chargers too. I’d like for there to be shelters, as it’s not much fun plugging the car in when it’s raining, or sitting in the car in the heat of the day.
I did have someone ask me if I can drive in the rain. Ahh, yes. I also wash the car with water. Funny.
Twice a year I go to the local garage to check my car’s tyre pressure. Spongy tyres reduce your range and driving fun, but this is the same with petrol cars.
I think the main thing I found was that I was disappointed with the misinformation the organisers perpetuated, which resulted in us being stuck out of the way.
So, with the limited range of my Leaf, why did I buy an EV?
Really it came down to the decision we made as a family to reduce our CO2 load. I’d been studying climate change while completing an Earth Sciences degree. I knew we were in for a bad ride when, at the beginning of a paper called ‘Climate change in the New Zealand context’, the lecturer offered us free counselling at the University. I don’t know if anyone took them up on the offer, but that paper really brought home the predicament we, as a species, are in. It’s not just cars, it’s how our energy is made. Anything that is made from fossil fuels is a problem. This includes coal and gas generated electricity, aviation gas for planes, diesel for trucks, buses and trains, petrol for cars, etc. But it also includes things people don’t often consider, like the plastics we make things out of, such as toys, clothing, food wrapping, TVs, phones and cars. We can’t recycle our way out of this mess, and we cannot do it alone - we need governments to make the hard collective decisions. Yet we see the IPCC and COP meetings achieving very little or nothing at all.
I’m sceptical we can actually get out of the mess we have ourselves in. There are too many people holding too tightly to the past, and more and more people wanting lifestyles that will ultimately lead to disaster. I guess in a way Buddha was right when he said that “desire leads to suffering”.