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“What I get a lot is people talk about electric vehicles and what they say with electric vehicles is that they’re great for people in the city, but they’re not great for the people in the country,” Casey told the 2024 National Renewables in Agriculture Conference in Queensland. “And I always have to remind them that that couldn’t actually be further from the truth. Literally, the more [kilometres] you drive, the better off you are driving an electric vehicle ... If charging purely from the grid it costs us around $9 for a full charge, however with our solar and battery array we are expecting the cost to be closer to $2 a charge and are currently collecting the data to verify this ... One of the most remarkable things we now see in New Zealand is the number of farmers that are adopting electric vehicles because they’re starting to realise that per kilometre cost [of fuelling them is] significantly less than [petrol or diesel]."
Read moreDownload the document hereIn the last Electric Avenue of 2025, we look at the two biggest trends in the world of energy; the Government goes electric for its fancy fleet upgrade; Nick Offerman offers his services to a US campaign extolling the virtues of EVs; Australia shows what's possible in new homes when you add solar, batteries and smart tech; a start-up selling portable solar and battery systems that wants it to be as easy and common as wi-fi; and The Lines Company looks to put some solar on the roof of the Ōtorohanga Kiwi House.
Read moreDownloadWhen it comes to electric farming, "the numbers are becoming undeniable," says Nicholson Poultry's Jeff Collings. With 60kW of solar, a Nissan Leaf as a 'farm quad', electric mowers, an electric ute that can run a water blaster, and even a chicken manure scraper made out of a wrecked Tesla that, as Rewiring's Matt Newman says, looks a bit like something out of Mad Max, "almost everything is electric". There aren't many others in New Zealand who have gone this far down the electric road. And, with his electric Stark Varg, the fastest off-road motorbike in the world, he's obviously having plenty of fun on that road, too.
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