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Driving down costs

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Rewiring Aotearoa likes to focus on the economics of electrification because that's when things start to change. And the economics of electric vehicles are looking pretty bloody good right now. 

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Cars use the most energy in the household and swapping a petrol car for an EV is likely to be the biggest thing you can do to reduce your emissions. EVs have always been more expensive upfront than fossil fuel cars, but very few people tend to think about the lifetime of expensive juice your internal combustion animal needs to run. When you do that, EVs win on costs in New Zealand, even with finance and RUCs added. 

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Our recent report showed that you can power your electric car for the petrol price equivalent of $0.31/Litre with rooftop solar and $0.64/Litre with electricity delivered from the grid. We haven't seen any petrol stations are offering those kinds of deals recently.

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And the upfront costs are also coming down. The Herald (paywall) rana story about the recent reductions in price for EVs in New Zealand, which have more than made up for the loss of the government subsidy.

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“There are some extremely good deals out there on EVs at the moment. So if anyone is in the market, now is the time to buy,” said James Walker, a spokesman for EV lobby group Drive Electric. “The Nissan Leaf [2023 demo model] is being sold at $29,990. This is the first time we think a new EV has been sold under $30,000 in New Zealand …There are great deals on the Fiat 500E, VW ID range, BYD, Polestar and many other brands.” 

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And for those who say that EV sales are down, there’s a graph for that. 

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In the long run

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Electric vehicles also have far fewer moving parts and air intakes than their fuel and dust sucking friends, which means maintenance is usually much cheaper. And because of their simplicity, they're lasting a looooooong time. 

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A recent story showed that a 2014 Tesla Model S has the highest mileage in the world on public record, clocking in at over two million kilometres, or more than 50 times around the world in less than 10 years. 

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Not surprisingly, there were a few replacement parts required over the years, but with good management, the batteries have lasted well. 

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It's taken four battery packs to surpass the 1.9 million-km mark, which means each battery pack averaged around 480,000 kms.

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Considering the average distance driven in New Zealand in a year is around 15,000km, there's no need to worry about your batteries.

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We like big batts and we cannot lie

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Ever wondered what the world’s biggest battery looks like? You’ll have to keep wondering, sorry, because it has been built yet, but it is planned for Maine and the behemoth is equivalent to about 130 million laptop batteries.

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Or, to use another analogy: “If you could somehow hook Form Energy's battery system up to that electric car, it could travel approximately 31 million miles (50 million km) on a single charge — enough to circumnavigate the Earth 1,228 times.” 

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If you’re looking for more battery chat, The Economist recently ran a story about the rise of grid-scale batteries and how storing all that renewable but intermittent solar and wind energy could become the next trillion dollar business. 

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Stronger with solar

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Along with cost savings, improving resilience is one of the main reasons people get solar and batteries. If the grid goes down, they’re able to keep the lights on and some people we’ve spoken to haven’t even realised their town has been without electricity because their system just keeps on trucking.  Batteries mean it's also possible for homes to generate energy for their neighbours. 

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At a larger scale, more decentralised energy means there’s not just one point of failure and in New Orleans, a project called Get Lit Stay Lit from Feed the Second Line, is offering free solar panels to local restaurants like Afrodisiac so they can help out if there's a disaster.

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As it says in The Guardian: “The restaurant is already a place that’s kind of common ground in the neighborhood. It’s already a community hub,” Gerel said. By equipping a restaurant like theirs with solar power and a battery, “you’re allowing the restaurant to continue being a support for the community when hurricanes hit."

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The idea came from Devin De Wulf, who reckons he helped 200 people during Hurricane Ida with the solar panels on his house. That's big community energy.

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Bits and pieces

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Whenever we hear the word 'gentailer', we feel for anyone named Jen Taylor. But others link that to a very different word, as this letter to the editor in The Otago Daily Times shows.

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