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It's quiet. It's comfy. And it's fast. Those are the things Sky Ryan loves about the Deepway electric truck, which recently dropped off 123 boxes of cherries to all our MPs as part of The Great Electric Cherry Migration. Her dad Jamie is the general manager of Etrucks, a company bringing lots of big electric kit into the country, and when we talked to her the pair were about to embark on a roadtrip back to Auckland after a successful stint in Parliament grounds. Understandably, she was most looking forward to the multiple ice cream stops along the way and we're pleased to report she got two triple-scoopers.
To many of the young'uns we deal with, cleaner, cheaper electric machines that are run with locally-made energy makes much more sense than smoky machines that are run with imported energy. Baselines shift over time. What's entirely normal for the younger generation may be a confronting technology shift for those living through it. We reckon electric transport is inevitable. But for the benefit of Sky and other kids like her, we hope this transition picks up speed, because we need to do all we can for them.
Could reframing energy independence as a national security issue, rather than a climate one, be our best chance to go electric? The Spinoff collects a range of views from various commentators like Liam Dann, Pattrick Smellie and Joel McManus and shows that it has clearly got the attention of the media and should be getting the attention of our politicians.
Read moreDownload"There is quite a lot of talk about EV price depreciation and resale value, but we are not really talking about petrol car price depreciation. In the next five years or so, we may start to see a big game of petrol car hot potato, first between New Zealanders, and then between other countries." That was Mike Casey writing in Newsroom in January last year but, after the current crisis, it might happen more quickly than expected.
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