As money is tight for a lot of people, I thought it would be nice to share some money saving tips. They may not be applicable to you, but hopefully it’s useful for some.
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Get a bike / ebike for small distances. I’m originally from The Netherlands and we use a bike very often. NZ is so different, most people tend to take the car for every trip. I’ve seen people take the car for a trip of literally 25 meter… I’ve bought an ebike to do my daily commute to the train station and it’s awesome. No traffic stress, saves money, and good for the environment. I’ve got a $1400 ebike, The Warehouse recently had one for less than $1000.
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Get an electric car. We replaced our Corolla with a $15k Leaf with 130km range. The prices have gone down, and a similar model can now be found for $11k or so. It saves us about $3.5k / year on petrol & maintenance. We only use it in the Wellington region, and rarely run out of range. On longer trips we use quick chargers, within 15 minutes it’s back to 80% charge. At least every 70km on state highways there’s a quick charger. While I’m against borrowing money for a car, in this case it may be worth it. With BNZ you can get a 1% loan for 3 years.
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Switch electrical provider. We switched to Octopus Energy. $0 daily charge and cheapest. Also good solar buy back, and cheaper nightly rates to charge an EV. /edit : apparently Octopus no longer has zero daily charge on new connections.
Funny, degredation was my main concern as well. If you don’t QC a lot, the battery degredation is not bad. Our soh has dropped less than 0.5% in 6 months.
Even if it depreciates to 0 dollar (unlikely) in 4 years time we’re still almost break even. And it drives so much nicer than an ICE.
There are also options to convert it to home storage and/or replace the battery with a much bigger and better battery. Eg 16 blade which should release this year.
There are also better 2nd gen Leafs for around the 20k mark. They would still degrade, but range is higher. Also, some are still under warranty.
Interesting, thanks. Yeah I’d heard that they were pretty stable with limited quick charging. The main thing holding me back was a lot leafs on trademe are close to or below that 100km mark would be my very maximum daily range.
True about the depreciation and options for second life as home backup batteries though so maybe something with enough range would be alright for a few years then pass it on. Perhaps I’ll take another look.
A 30kwh leaf with 70% soh has about 135km range and I’ve seen them for around 11-12k. On average they degrade about 1-4% per year.
Also good to keep it below 80% charge
Any questions, just ask!
Cheers, well I have to say you got me interested. I test drove a couple of leafs over the weekend, doing the numbers on it and talking to my bank about finance. I’m still on the fence but more so on working out how much makes the best sense to spend for me right now.
Anyway, I wanted to let you know cause your post was what’s got me thinking hard about it.
Awesome, thank you for letting me know. It really made me smile that you took the time to do that.
Great to hear you’re thinking about it! Some tips, it may be cheaper for you to buy online and get it shipped. We’re in Wellington and it was cheaper to get one from Christchurch than to buy locally.
Also ensure you get one with a proper nz charging cable and the dash converted to English.
Any questions just let me know. Cheers.
Hey, so an update. I’ve put a deposit on a leaf - I took yours (and others) advice and looked further afield. I ended up going up to a ze1 as they seem like really good value. I’m looking forward to getting it.
Nice, thanks for the update. Congrats! Yeah, ze1 is nice. I’d probably do the same if I’d buy one right now again.
Think you made a good decision.
There’s one downside I’ve experienced. I don’t enjoy driving in ICEs anymore, too noisy and variable traction :)
Enjoy your ev and all the best!
Hi mate, how is it going? Did your Leaf arrive yet?
Hey. Nah, the ship carrying it is due in the country tomorrow so still a couple of weeks away. I’ll let you know how I get on when I’ve got it though
It’s finally arrived, I’m really liking it so far. Consistent torque, nice stuff like auto cruise control, very quiet. I haven’t got much into the recharging habit so far to compare that with my old ICE car but it seems good - my brain is still acutely aware of the range estimate going down as I drive but I’m sure thatll go away.
It’s a bit of an adjustment having all sorts of menus and beeps and cameras - it’s all a bit sensory overload driving at the moment. My old car was about 15 years old so had none of that haha. Probably more a new car thing than an EV thing
Congratulations on your new car! And thank you for taking the time to let me know.
Yes, range anxiety will become much easier over time, the first time I panicked as well when the range went down. We recharge every night to 80% and it’s more than enough for our daily trips, only on longer trips we charge to 100% and sometimes QC. I also checked the SOH every week or so, and got stressed as it dropped a couple of percent. This can be expected, after a 3% drop in a month it seems to have stabilized at 1-2% per year.
PlugShare is a great app to see all charging locations by the way in case you didn’t know.
Enjoy!