A plug for the pleasure of driving an EV in 2019
What has our year in an electric BMW been like – and what does the Kiwi EV landscape look like for 2019? David Linklater reports.
Twenty eighteen is over and done with and so is our time with the BMW i3. The white car you see here is one of two we’ve run as long-term test vehicles back-to-back. The first was a fully loaded i3s; this one’s a more humble entry-level model, with slightly less power and more comfort-oriented suspension. But still not exactly basic transport at $77,200.
Both were battery electric vehicle (BEV) versions of the i3; no fossil fuel for us, thanks.
If you’d told me five years ago that I’d spend 2018 in a pure-electric car as daily transport, that would have been hard to get my head around. As would the fact that we here at Stuff Motoring have road-tested 10 different EVs this year.
It was interesting to have been part of what’s been a very big conversation happening around EVs in New Zealand in 2018; they were a hot topic.
It’s partly due to the novelty of this relatively new technology, climate change and volatile fossil fuel prices, but stories about plug-in cars were keenly read and opinions plentifully expressed.
For my part, I’m on board. I loved having an i3 as ‘‘my’’ car – with its exotic carbon fibre reinforced plastic construction and rear-drive configuration, it feels like a proper driver-centric BMW.
The range is modest at around 200km (real-world, based on our average power consumption on test) but fairly typical of vehicles of this type.
Newer models from this and other brands will have bigger and better batteries (Hyundai’s new Kona Electric easily cracks 400km, for example), but I don’t really buy into the argument that range is a huge drawback.
Average mileage for a Kiwi motorist is still less than 200km per week, so an EV could suit most of the people most of the time.
You do have to think differently about fuelling – sorry, I mean charging. You ‘‘graze’’, plugging in whenever possible, instead of draining the tank and then filling when it’s empty like you do with a petrol car.
I mostly used DC fast chargers during my time with the i3, because they could get the vehicle pretty well powered up in half an hour. I rapidly (excuse the pun) went off the free chargers being supplied by some power companies in my area, because the behaviour of other users sometimes made visiting them an unpleasant experience. People get weird when they’re waiting for their turn to get free stuff.
So I tended to charge at a paid DC station (about $15 per 200km) or at home (slower, but roughly $6/200km). Any way you look at it you’re winning on running cost, because EVs don’t pay road user charges and won’t until at least 2021.
The charging infrastructure is actually pretty good now too (although there’s much more to come). You genuinely can drive New Zealand tip-to-tail in an EV, providing you do a little planning.
So why isn’t everybody running to buy an EV? Progress is being made – for the past five years, EV registrations have doubled each year (the national fleet comprised just 229 plug-in vehicles in 2013). But the
current plug-in car park of just over 11,000 vehicles is still inconsequential in a national fleet climbing towards 4 million.
If we’re going to reach that stillmodest target of 64,000 EVs by 2021 (set by the National Government in 2016), 2019 will have to be a boom year. But I’m not sure that can happen.
Without massive subsidies on EVs and/or massive taxes on petrol vehicles (they have both in Norway, where EVs are now 30 per cent of new-car sales), high capital cost is an issue. The cheapest new pure-EV on the market (and the biggest seller) is the Hyundai Ioniq, and that starts at $59,990. There are cheaper plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (which still have a combustion engine) like the Toyota Prius Prime at $48,490, but really, the focus for the future is on battery-only vehicles.
Three-quarters of the total New Zealand EV fleet is comprised of used imports – mostly Nissan Leafs. With global sales approaching 100,000 per year, the pre-loved Leaf is still The One for an EV market that’s thirsty for affordable choices.
Getting more mainstream EVs into the new-car market is a must, but the potential choices are few. Ironically, the most significant new model for 2019 will be the latest Nissan Leaf, which will join the brand’s New Zealand new-car lineup this year. Price yet to be announced.
In the bigger picture, getting new EVs into company fleets will help feed the used car market for the future; some businesses have taken the plunge, but the reality is that more individuals currently own New Zealand-new plug-ins than companies (1627 versus 1061).
Advocacy group Drive Electric reckons more incentives are needed to get businesses buying electric. It proposes a tax break called Project Switch, which would see new EVs attract the lower fringe benefit tax rate of the petrol/diesel vehicles they were replacing.
That, combined with high secondhand values (a 2018 Meridian Energy case study shows EVs retain a high residual value of 87 per cent after 14 months, compared with 70-75 per cent for the internal combustion equivalent) would encourage companies to turn over vehicles more frequently – providing more affordable near-new EV choices to private buyers.
But as it stands, 2019 will still be an uphill struggle for real drivers wanting a choice of real-world EVs.
For premium buyers it’s a different story: We’re going to see an influx of amazing EVs, from the much-talked-about Jaguar I-Pace, to the Audi E-Tron and Mercedes-Benz EQC. They’re all SUVs, which is so 2019.
There’s also the long-awaited Tesla Model 3 (gasp – a sedan), and a little further out into 2020 a pureelectric version of BMW’s X3 SUV and the very sporty Porsche Taycan.
Average mileage for a Kiwi motorist is still less than 200km per week, so an EV could suit most of the people most of the time.