By Tyler Wright
Emerald IGA carpark was home to an electric vehicle display on Saturday held by the Dandenong Ranges Renewable Energy Association (DRREA), with owners sharing information on their cars’ maintenance and cost as petrol prices remain high.
“I think people are considering the cost of petrol and the fact that petrol cars are going to get phased out – there were a lot of people seriously interested in seeing electric cars,” Dandenong Ranges Renewable Energy Association President Peter Cook said.
“It was more just people wanting the confidence of talking to other owners and knowing that they were genuinely happy with what they bought,” Peter said.
Three Teslas, four Nissans Leafs, a Volt, a Toyota Corolla and a Mitsibushi Outlander electric vehicle were all on display, with attendees curious about running costs and maintenance of the vehicles, Peter said.
“You’ve got the choice of buying them new, competitively priced… or you can buy a second hand import from Japan and they’re very affordable when you do that.”
“I think more people realize that they can run their car off their solar system on their house or power from the grid.
The more people realize that, the more people will look seriously at getting electric [cars].”
Tony Forster, hills local and owner of an electric 2014 Nissan Leaf, said owning an electric vehicle in a two-car household was a “no-brainer”.
“I’ve always wanted to have an electric car because of the greenhouse gas emissions and [my interest in] internal combustion cars.”
“For every hour of charge you get 20 kilometres of range,” he said of his Leaf.
“It’s about 20 cents a kilometre for petrol, and about five cents a kilometre for electricity.
Three cents of that is the electricity. And two per cent of that is the government tax”
“It would take five hours to plug in in the garage overnight. I have noted the location of some free public charges between where I live in the city. But only once in the last eight months that I had the car have I bothered. “
Tony said he still chooses to drive his Subaru for four-wheel driving and long distance trips as his electric car goes for 100 kilometres from empty to fully flat would not last that long without a charge.
“By and large, people charge overnight and they do their run around shopping on the charge they can get during the night. But if you want to go to Geelong or Falls Creek, then you need extra charging stations to get there.”
