Why I bought an EV
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- Last Updated: Wednesday, 26 February 2025 14:56
It began with a milestone birthday
I had been following Tesla for some time and as a treat my late wife arranged a surprise visit to see one whose owner who had privately imported a model S plus from U.K. Even better they very kindly offered to let us borrow it for 24 hours.
It was a birthday I will never forget.
We drove our ICE car to their property and met the owners. After getting a charge from their business charger to about 70% we decided to visit a colleague and car nut living in South Auckland. We spent some time traveling on the back roads and All of us decided this was the future of motoring. The power and efficiency was amazing.
On returning to home to Mt Eden I decided to check out home charging. Our garage had no power, so using a long extension cord we plugged into a normal 3 pin house outlet and it begin charging at about 2kW or 8 amps and left it over night - about 8 hours for a total of 15Kwh and another 65km of range, with a cost estimated at a little over $2. With regular petrol at close to $2 per liter at the time our ICE car would have gone about 12Km. Amazing...
Later in the morning I returned it to the owners on the North Shore and swapped back to our own car. What a disappointment - despite being a 2 liter 6 cylinder, it felt completely gutless and very noisy.
I immediately decided our next car would be electric when they became affordable. A Tesla Model 3 became our replacement goal when production began about three years late and they became available in NZ
And so began a six year wait...