ARE WE THERE YET WITH EVs IN NZ?

A friend of mine who is a petrol head hired an Electric Vehicle for a week to test drive it. I have been interested in EVs for quite some time, so I jumped on the band wagon and invited him to my place to hitch a ride. He lives in South Auckland and travelled to my home some 35 kilometres away in West Auckland. He had fully charged his car overnight and by the time he got to my place, the dashboard said that it had 70 kilometres of travel left. He connected his car to my 240-volt power point to trickle-charge the battery while we had coffee and then decided to find a fast charging station in the West. We travelled to six petrol stations hoping to find a charging station. Not one had one and only one petrol station staff knew where could find one. We were frustrated but not surprised. After all they are in the business of selling fuel.

We dashed to the new Nor-West shopping mall and found the charging point in the carpark behind the Farmers Store. Halleuia! I exclaimed. When we got out to charge the car, we found that the plug did not match the car’s power socket. The dashboard now showed “35 kilometers” of travel left. We asked the lady who was charging her car for some information. She said the only other location nearby was in the Kumeu shopping center. So we hurried to Kumeu some 7 kilometres away and found the right plug there. We bought some shushi and drink and sat on the hot pavement and had late lunch while the batteries were being charged. Some 40 minutes later it was fully charged.

My friend had enough charge to head back home after the frantic running around.

Are we there yet in New Zealand for Electric Cars? I asked my friend who is an ex-aircraft engineer who used to fix Jumbo Jets. From the open-air carpark cockpit in Kumeu he responded, “Negative”.