Saving money while enjoying the ride
Human impact on the world is clear when you work at a landfill – but that’s not what persuaded Roderick Boys to buy an electric car.
“The main reason was straight out costs,” he says.
Boys and his young family live in Pukerua Bay, north of Wellington. He works 40 kilometres away near the South Coast. Public transport meant at least two hours of commuting and couldn’t take him all the way, so the family car was clocking up at least 19,000km a year.
“Our old car wasn’t the most efficient, so getting to work was costing us over $5,000 a year in petrol,” he says. Two of his workmates had switched to electric vehicles (EVs) and were happy with the results.
“I crunched the numbers and it was a no-brainer. An electric car would be a substantial investment for us but in four years, it would pay for itself in avoided fuel and maintenance costs.”
The family decided on a 2014 Nissan Leaf with a 24 kilowatt
Our old car wasn’t the most efficient, so getting to work was costing us over $5,000 a year in petrol.
battery and 24,000km on the clock. “The most important thing for us was battery health
– I wanted the battery to be good enough to get me to work and back in a single charge,” says Boys.
“We bought from a car dealer who included battery State Of Health (SOH) information on the vehicle listing, so we knew what we were getting.”
It showed 93 per cent battery health, indicating the battery was good enough to sustain the 80km daily commute on a single charge for several years.
“That avoids having to top up at a fast charging station in the city, and EVs maintain battery health for longer with slow charging overnight,” says Boys. It also means he pays the residential off-peak electricity rate to charge – on average this is the equivalent of paying about 30 cents a litre for petrol.
The EV option also fitted with Boys’ principles. As senior waste planner for Wellington City Council, waste minimisation and management is a big part of his life. Working at the Southern Landfill office and Recycle Centre, he’s confronted by the impacts of society on the environment every day.
“Enabling people to be more sustainable is fundamentally what I’m about so I have to walk the talk as well. I offset our vehicle carbon [see www.ekos.org.nz] but driving a petrol car doesn’t model what I want to see in the world. Things need to change quickly for the security of our children’s future.”
He says behaviour change science shows social norms have a strong influence on choices. “If people see others buying into a new way of doing things, they’re more likely to do it to. For me, driving an EV is about doing the right thing. It doesn’t take much to tip the balance when people know it’s good for the planet and it can save you money.”
It’s not a bad drive either, says Boys. “I’ve worked as a truck driver and an aircraft technician, I like performance vehicles and I was bit of a petrolhead. I’ve also ridden an electric bike a lot so I was hoping for the same instantaneous torque and offthe-mark acceleration in a car. Test driving our Leaf, I was pleasantly surprised – like wow, it really goes.”