BEC LEVINGSTONE COLUMN WEDNESDAY fueling the fire pumped up
standfirst here writes Rebecca Levingstone WITH STANDFIRST
I’ve broken up with petrol.
The fastest moving and potentially flammable relationship of my life.
We are done.
No more scanning fuel station price boards for the cheapest deal. No more thinking about whether I fill up or wait for the cycle to dip.
No more eye-watering pain at the pump when a full tank costs close to $100 for my little hatchback.
I bought an electric vehicle. Honestly, it feels like I’m living in the future. It’s not quite George Jetson’s flying family car, but it does make me marvel when I jump in and press a button before quietly rolling out of our garage.
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A twinkling tune is the only evidence that I’m accelerating so pedestrians know when I’m taking off at traffic lights. I’m still figuring out the internal blips and beeps alerting me to speed limits and lane changes.
The EV I chose was a demo model, cost $34,000 and can drive about 400 kilometres before it needs charging for 8 hours, which I do at home using solar power.
My work is about 13 kms from home and it takes me 30 minutes each way to commute which chews up 7% of the battery on a roundtrip.
I’ve never paid much attention to cars, other than giving mine a name and having a colour preference. This one is called Dolly and she’s purple. Lilac if you want to be more precise.
People keep asking me if I’m used to the feel of an EV, but to me she drives like any other car. Just without delicious scent of unleaded petrol.
Seriously, I like that smell wafting up from the fuel tank. It makes me nostalgic for the fuel stations of my childhood. Our local servo had driveway service where a bloke would walk out and say hello as he filled up the car.
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I remember him chatting to my mum as I sat in the backseat in my school uniform. They’d made small talk as he expertly squidgeed the windscreen while the nozzle pumped unleaded into our family sedan.
Click, a few extra squeezes and the transaction was done. I recall petrol being $49.9 cents/litre. I wonder if that felt expensive in the 1980s.
According to the Electric Vehicle Council, new EV purchases in Australia more than doubled in 2023, compared to 2022. At the end of last year, the total number of EVs on Australian roads was more than 180,000.
So far in 2024, almost 70,000 new EVs have been purchased according to The Driven. I remember when it was still a novelty to see an EV in the wild.
Now you see them everywhere. School drop off, fast food drive- throughs and the beach. When you start seeing some second hand bombs, I guess EVs will really be part of the Aussie vehicle family tree.
Right now, EVs only represent about 1% of all light vehicles in Australia. China has the most electric vehicles in the world. Next comes America followed by Europe.
Last month Norway notched an historic milestone. For the first time, there were more electric vehicles registered than petrol vehicles.The Norwegian Road Federation said that of the 2.8 million private cars registered, 754,303 were electric and and 753,905 ran on petrol.
I wonder what will happen to petrol prices as more people buy electric vehicles in Australia. Will prices drop as more people go electric? Or will they keep climbing?
I guess we’ll all keep crunching the numbers to see what we can afford. What will the second hand EV market be like? Will batteries last and recycle? Will my children’s first cars be electric? Or self-driving?
I still have lots of questions, but I’m no longer asking where’s the cheapest petrol.
