Kathryn drives an electric car because she wanted to reduce her carbon footprint.
Speaker
Kathryn was introduced by David Hunt. Kathryn is the Chairperson and Trustee of Better NZ Trust. She works in the IT profession and has two electric cars in her family. Kathryn drives an electric car because she wanted to reduce her carbon footprint. As well as being cheap to run, electric cars are easy to charge at home overnight. The average petrol car costs $17 per 100km. An electric car costs the equivalent of 30 cents a litre. At present, no user charges are included in the running of an electric car. Electric cars require very little maintenance and are good for the environment.
At the end of August 2018, there were 9,700 electric cars in New Zealand. By 2021, the goal is to have 64,000 electric cars which is 2% of the light vehicle fleet.
The warranty on batteries is 8 years with a cost of between $5,000 and $7,000. It is the battery component that is expensive in electric cars. The maintenance of the electric motor is almost zero.
Electric cars can be charged at home overnight. There is an App which shows you where all the charging stations are. Going from 80% to 100% battery charge takes almost as long as going from zero to 80%.
Katherine would like to see electric buses and trains etc. as they are very environmentally friendly.
John Hawthorn thanked Kathryn for her very interesting presentation.
