The Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars podcast – Episode # 117 – You just bought an EV? Everything you need to know!

This week, an episode for people NEW to the EV world. Did you just pickup your new Electric Car? Want to know how to charge?

What apps to download? How it drives differently?

Stephen and Trevor break it down with their knowledge and experience thanks to NRMA Insurance and Uniden Dashcams

Full AI generated transcript below

[00:00:01]  Trevor Long: This is Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars with Steven Fenech and Trevor Long. Thanks to NRMA Insurance and Uniden. Thank you to Uniden, NRMA Insurance. NRMA Insurance helping Australians protect what matters most for 100 years or more, and they’re also one of Australia’s largest insurers of electric vehicles. And Uniden smart dash cams— get yourself a dash cam, give yourself peace of mind, whatever car you’re driving, especially if you bought a brand new one. Steven always says get yourself a rear camera, that’s the one with the R model.

[00:00:29]  Stephen Fenech: These are award-winning cameras, award-winning dash cams front and back. You want, you want coverage in all directions.

[00:00:35]  Trevor Long: Great peace of mind. We appreciate their support of Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars for the 2 and a half years we’ve been doing this show. I mean, and we appreciate everyone, our new, new listeners too. We appreciate that. And with this, this episode is dedicated to those new owners of electric vehicles. Now, so you’ve just bought an EV, you’ve just bought an EV, congratulations, well done. Yeah, round of applause for the Two Blokes. Um, if you already own an EV, a lot of what we’re talking about today you’ll already know, but you never know, there might be a little refresher in there for you. But we talked about doing these shows. We did one last week about if you’re about to buy a car. This is all about you’ve just bought and just pulled the trigger.

[00:01:11]  Stephen Fenech: Here’s what you need to know.

[00:01:12]  Trevor Long: So let’s start with that, that first moment you’ve, you’ve taken the ribbon off the car, the salesman’s walking you through it, and you’ve got the keys and you’re now on the road. What do you do? I think the first thing to do is get it home and plug it in. Yeah, because that’s That’s a mentality thing about just knowing that when it’s at home in the driveway, plug it in. It’s, it’s a really simple thing to do because when you plug it in, also a bunch of things happen in the car. The interface, the screens will light up and show you that it’s charging. So you’ll learn very quickly where it tells you about the charge limit. It’ll estimate how fast it’s going to take to charge, and that’ll allow you to do a couple of things because what you also want to do there, and it may already be factory set like this, but just check that it’s set to the right percentage limit. You don’t wanna set your car to charge at 100% every single time. It’s possible that your dealer says that’s not an issue and a lot of battery technology today, it doesn’t matter. But it’s a good habit to get into because, not because of battery technology, not because of battery health, but because of time. The 80%, that last 20% takes a lot longer to do.

[00:02:16]  Stephen Fenech: I think it’s the other mindset you gotta get into, speaking about percentages is that, have what you need. Like if you’re going on a long road trip, of course, go to 100%. If you’re just going to be driving around town, then having 80% charge or less or 70% is fine.

[00:02:34]  Stephen Fenech: That’s going to get you around and maybe last you for a couple of days before you even need to consider it. So I think it doesn’t take long to get used to that charging process, used to what you need to drive around.

[00:02:34]  Trevor Long: Totally fine.

[00:02:48]  Trevor Long: And we’ll talk charging in more detail in a moment. But we’re in this first 24 hours, what that plug-in ‘In’ will do, will teach you all the things you need to know about where the charging port is, how it plugs in, where to keep the charger in the car, and all those different things, the basics. Then you want to set your car up so it’s able to connect, if possible, if it allows this, to your home Wi-Fi. When you pull into the driveway, the garage, if it’s on your home Wi-Fi, any over-the-air software updates that are available will be available there. If your car doesn’t have a SIM card in it, it might also allow you to connect remotely to the car through apps. So that’s a really useful thing to do.

[00:03:21]  Stephen Fenech: The app, the app. Yeah, that’s another thing too. Download the app, set up the app, have an account. And ’cause you can do things like on my Merc, I’ve left my doors unlocked. I can lock the doors through the app. I can open the doors. I can set the climate. It gives me notifications, what things that are happening with the car. You may have that too with yours. You might be able to, you might be able to, maybe it’s a hot day, you might turn the aircon on before you head out or things like that.

[00:03:47]  Trevor Long: So the last thing I think is really important in that first day is the range estimate. Now the thing is, don’t panic about it, okay? It will change for years. It’ll always change. If you were to charge your car to 100% every day, for example, the driving that you do actually determines that range number. And every car does it differently. Some cars actually have a toggle, I’ve noticed, of a dynamic range versus a fixed range, which is basically a way of saying, do you want me to use my— this is the car speaking— do you want me to use my brain of what I was taught to know about the range of this car, or do you want me to use what I know about how you you’ve driven it for the last month. And that’s really critical, ’cause when you get our Kia EV9, for example, 512Ks range or something like that. So out of the factory, 100%, there it is, 512Ks. But right now, if I charge it to 100%, so just before we go on a road trip, it might say 600, it might say 590, it might say less, but it does that based on how we’ve been driving it.

[00:04:43]  Stephen Fenech: So you’ve been driving around the city a lot.

[00:04:45]  Trevor Long: All we do is drive that car around town. So it’s gonna go, “Hey, you’re gonna make it a long way.” Don’t panic about the range estimate. But just know it, know what that is, and that’ll help you understand, you know, what’s coming up for you. And I think that’s a really nice thing.

[00:04:57]  Stephen Fenech: You’re both getting to know each other still.

[00:04:59]  Trevor Long: Yeah. So you’ve had— you’ve got your cars in the driveway, you’re happy, you’re probably going to drive to your friend’s place and show them off. That’s cool.

[00:05:06]  Trevor Long: The next thing to think about over time is charging. And this is really, really important because I don’t think any dealer can truly explain this to anyone at handover.

[00:05:06]  Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:05:15]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, because everyone’s different. Everyone’s different how they charge, when they charge.

[00:05:18]  Trevor Long: There’s a lot to learn.

[00:05:19]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:05:20]  Trevor Long: There is. Don’t you think one of the things that a lot of our callers on this show have said is, I didn’t realize that, I didn’t know this?

[00:05:25]  Stephen Fenech: Definitely. I think, well, that’s something you should consider, obviously charging, where you can charge it, when you can charge it. That’s probably something you considered before you bought the car. I know a lot of our listeners can charge at home. 95% of drivers charge at home.

[00:05:39]  Stephen Fenech: All the time.

[00:05:39]  Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:05:40]  Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:05:41]  Stephen Fenech: But there’s also other drivers that maybe have the option to charge at work and so charge on the way to where they’re going.

[00:05:47]  Trevor Long: Something we talk about a lot is we call them a granny charger, the trickle charger. This is the charger that comes with nearly all cars. That is, it looks like a big chunky power brick on one end, which is what goes into your car, but at the other end it’s just a normal power point. It’s just a normal Aussie power plug. Now, using that is totally fine. It’s a totally acceptable way to charge your car forever. You could do that, no problems. It is the slowest way to charge your car. Yeah, and it will freak you out the first time you do it at a low number. So if you’re at 18% battery and you get home and you plug it in and you go, I want to charge to 100% or 80%. It’s going to take 20, 30, who knows how many hours. Yeah, because it is slow. This is the slowest way.

[00:06:30]  Stephen Fenech: Is it 2 kilowatts?

[00:06:31]  Trevor Long: 2 to 3 kilowatts. It’s not much, right? It’s the slowest possible way to charge. And that’s fine because the average person drives less than 40 kilometers a day. And so if you’re doing that, that’s a few hours overnight while you’re sleeping. Your car is fine. You probably get—

[00:06:46]  Stephen Fenech: you probably put back on the car what you used the day before easily.

[00:06:49]  Trevor Long: Yeah, right. And that’s what we think is the best mechanism. So in that first day you plug in, the reason you do that is so you get in the habit of every day when you get home, plug it in. That’s a really critical thing. And then we talked about, you know, why, why to set it to 80%.

[00:07:04]  Trevor Long: I want to just come back to that for a minute. If you set your car to charge at 80%, the reason is when you go to a fast charger on a holiday, for example, When we drive down to my mum’s place, yeah, I only go to 80% because I know that it might take me 15 minutes to get from 40 to 80. Yeah, but to get from 40 to 100 could take 35 minutes.

[00:07:04]  Stephen Fenech: But it also—

[00:07:26]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:07:27]  Trevor Long: And, you know, dealing with my family going, well, this takes longer.

[00:07:29]  Stephen Fenech: So the additional— it’s like, it’s like an upside down pyramid. So that part easy to charge to here, then that bit between 80 and 100 takes a bit longer.

[00:07:40]  Trevor Long: It takes longer because it’s about safety. It’s about keeping the battery safe and doing the right thing by the charger. This is— so that’s the fastest of charging. And then there’s the slowest of charging, the trickle at home. And the in-between is having what we call a wallbox. But that’s, that’s a brand. But it’s also just a style. You know, car dealers will sell them to you. There’s brands called Zappi. There’s brands— you can buy them at Bunnings for crying out loud. You need an electrician to install them. But these ones, there’s no power point involved. It’s just the plug that goes into your car.

[00:08:09]  Stephen Fenech: But it needs to be installed by an electrician into your board and all that. But this— they range, I think, speeds of between 7 kilowatts. 11 kilowatt, 22 kilowatt. Yeah, mine’s capable of 32, but it’s not going to get anywhere near that unless the car can handle it.

[00:08:25]  Trevor Long: And I don’t think there’s any car that does AC 32 charging, right? There are a couple that will do AC 22 charging, but very, very few. But that’s the in-between and that’s what we’ve opted for because sometimes I do drive a bit of distance in a day or a week and we also have 2 electric cars. So sometimes I don’t have the ability to charge mine every day, so it just gets a weekly top-up and that’s the job done.

[00:08:47]  Stephen Fenech: So talking about This is talking mainly about charging at home. Yes. What about when you get on the road?

[00:08:53]  Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:08:53]  Stephen Fenech: A lot of people think, okay, I’m going on a road trip, I need to know where the chargers are. So this is where there’s a bit of planning you might need to do. You might be driving up to, you know, Trevor drives to Young. He knows exactly where the chargers are on the way. You might be going up the coast. It’s handy to know that if you do need to pull in and use a public charger, where it is, what type of charger it is, the speed of that charger. And this is usually on the road. These are normally fast chargers. They want to get in, people in, charge fast.

[00:09:23]  Trevor Long: And but what’s really interesting is just looking on any map, and we’ll talk about apps in a minute, but talking about on any— just pulling up to a charger, if it’s at a BP, an Ampol, or wherever it might be, they’re all different. And there’s a couple of really important things. Speed is one of them. So a big box which looks like a fast charger might only do 50 kilowatt charging, which sounds amazing compared to what you’ve got at home. Yeah, but there’s others that do 150. Yeah. And that’s— that does make a vast difference in how quickly you get that juice. So you, you will learn over over time which ones are the faster ones, and you can normally see it within the apps and things. But also be wary of this, and I notice this with when I go to the Ampol. At my local Ampol, there’s one charger, but there’s two plugs. Very cool, right? You think two cars, excellent. But the number of times I notice someone pull up in a Tesla and try and pull the other plug out, which is a different style of plug. There are actually two types of plug. There’s what we call CCS and CHAdeMO. So basically Every car except a Nissan Leaf, and there might be one other now that still has CHAdeMO, uses the standard same charger. So CHAdeMO is getting very hard to find and they’re not installing new ones. But you may come across, especially in regional and highway areas, you may come across a single charger with two plugs and there’s someone already plugged in. The other one might not fit your car. Yeah. So be wary of that when you’re looking at maps and things. How many Type 2 or CCS chargers are there? Because CHAdeMO will not charge most cars.

[00:10:51]  Stephen Fenech: And are there— can you buy adapters? Aren’t there adapters you can buy?

[00:10:54]  Trevor Long: I wouldn’t recommend it even if there are. Like, it just sounds dangerous to me. It sounds like the kind of thing that could literally blow up in your face.

[00:11:00]  Stephen Fenech: The other thing too, we should mention in the charging space is that there are some chargers that don’t have a cable. Yes, there are some chargers that are just a plug. And usually the car comes with not only the granny charger, but also a cable to connect the charger to your car.

[00:11:18]  Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:11:19]  Stephen Fenech: So it’s got the two-ended cable. So check that the charger that you’re going to has a cable built in. If not, you’ll need to BYO cable.

[00:11:30]  Trevor Long: Yeah. If you’ve got a car that came with a charger, it’s probably a granny charger. If you bought a Mercedes, they might give you both. Yeah, you do get both. But most likely your car only came with one cable. But I’ve had cars that only have the public charger cable. And they don’t have the granny cable. So what I did was, in fact, I think in the Cooper and the Kia they were the opposite. But what I did was buy the cable so that in each of my cars I have two cables. One of them is for public charging. So it’s, it’s your big electric vehicle charger plug on both ends, CCS, but it’s essentially male to male so that the plugs on each end work in the wall. And the other one is for home or normal power points. It’s a normal power plug. Granny charger into your car. If I’m you and you’ve just bought a brand new electric car, check, yeah, check what you got and get one of each. Head to Bunnings or Harvey Norman and find a cable because there are good brands out there.

[00:12:23]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, sometimes you come up to a public charger, maybe the only one available to you, and there’s no cable. You need to have that.

[00:12:29]  Trevor Long: A lot of local shopping centers have these chargers. Taronga Zoo, I was at Taronga Zoo last week and they’ve got 4 Chargefox chargers but no cables.

[00:12:37]  Stephen Fenech: No cables.

[00:12:38]  Trevor Long: So the second time I went there, I went, I’m taking a cable.

[00:12:40]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s a good tip though. Make sure you check you got the the cable required.

[00:12:45]  Trevor Long: Absolutely. Buy cable because it’ll make the difference. Now, one, one thing about public charging is they’re not always working. Yeah, that’s not a— that’s not because there’s a massive failure of the system. These are complicated pieces of both electronics and computers, especially when they’re in the vast remote areas. So be cautious to know how to understand if it’s going to be there and reliable. So what I always say is don’t rely on any one charger on a road trip. So my trip again to Young, I can, in my head, I can tell you right now I pass a charger at Pheasants Nest, an Ampole, Maroolin, a BP, Goulburn, there’s a Tesla, a Chargefox, and another Chargefox. And at Yass, there’s an NRMA Chargefox and a Tesla, right? So I know all those chargers I drive past. I aim to go to the Tesla because it’s the most number of bays, it’s the fastest, and it’s the best in that sense for me. But if I was going, okay, I’m going to go to to Yass and go to the NRMA Chargefox. It’s one box. If it’s broken or faulty for any reason, if I was relying on that, that could be the end of my road trip. So it’s good to know in advance. So one of the things I recommend, and we’ll talk about apps in a minute in detail, but there is an app called Plugshare. Yeah. Which allows you to just see a map. I’ve been using this for years.

[00:14:01]  Trevor Long: You see a map, you can see chargers in any area and you can zoom in on them. But the critical thing is when you click on that charger, you can then see other people’s experiences. Now it’s not a requirement of owning an EV, but I would highly encourage encourage you to be part of the community that contributes to Plugshare. So what you do is you say, I successfully charged today.

[00:14:01]  Stephen Fenech: This is great.

[00:14:21]  Stephen Fenech: Yes.

[00:14:21]  Trevor Long: So if I see it and it says someone failed and there hasn’t been a successful one after that, yeah, I’m cautious.

[00:14:27]  Stephen Fenech: You can check it. But also too, what I love about Plugshare is not only you find the charger with the location, but also where in that location. Often the Plugshare, the chargers might be in a car park or a shopping center and it tells you it’s on level 4 and up here and photos. Otherwise it’s hard to find.

[00:14:44]  Trevor Long: Yeah. So I highly encourage you to use Plugshare and contribute, especially in public chargers in remote areas. Very useful for people to have and do. And if anything’s broken, please report it.

[00:14:56]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, exactly.

[00:14:56]  Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:14:58]  Stephen Fenech: If you do that, it’ll probably expedite the repairs. They might not know it’s down.

[00:15:03]  Trevor Long: Yeah, that’s true.

[00:15:04]  Stephen Fenech: But yeah, and I think the speed of charge, that’s sort of one of the misconceptions of EV charging is that it takes hours and hours. That’s not true. On a road trip, by the time you go to the bathroom, buy a coffee, get a sandwich, eat it, you’d be ready to go.

[00:15:18]  Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:15:19]  Trevor Long: And again, that comes back to that really important thing. We’ll touch on it again. The 80% rule, right?

[00:15:19]  Stephen Fenech: Like you would.

[00:15:24]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah. You don’t have to charge to 100% on your—

[00:15:27]  Trevor Long: And it’s a fun thing to do on that screen. The first time you go to a public— if you’re at 20 or 30% battery and I do recommend you drive, drive, drive your car to get to like 20% or something, right? Yeah. And then go to a public charger and then on the screen of your car, set it to 80% and it’ll say reaching target in 23 minutes, right? Let’s say something like that. And then drag that little, little target up to 90% and it’ll say 37 minutes. And then drag it to 100 and it’ll say like 47 minutes. And you’ll be like, wow, that’s a lot of— that’s like double the time.

[00:15:56]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:15:57]  Trevor Long: And it’s a good thing to help you understand why it’s not actually important to get to 100%. You get to what you need. So again, I’ll go back to my road trip. I’m in Goulburn. I’ve only got another 150 k’s to go. Yeah, but I also need to charge when I get there and I need to have a bit of buffer zone. So I want to be at 250 km. I want to be able to come back as well. So I go to 80 and is that enough? And it’s critical because 80 is probably going to be enough.

[00:16:23]  Stephen Fenech: I think that’s important to discuss. That’s sort of part of the etiquette of EV charging. So there’s EV charging etiquette where if you want to charge to 100% and you don’t need it, you’re just wasting your time at that point. Point and potentially wasting the time of someone else who’s waiting to charge.

[00:16:40]  Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:16:40]  Stephen Fenech: So I think it’s a, it’s a good idea to take what you need. It’s like topping up your fuel. You’re not going to fill her up, you’re just going to put $20 in and that’s going to get you there.

[00:16:50]  Trevor Long: I’ve been, I’ve sat at 80% on a road trip on my own and gone, I’m in no rush, I’m going to take it to 90, I’m going to take it to 95. But if someone pulled up and I was at the only charger and I didn’t need the extra, yeah, what you do is you go stop stop, pull out and go. It’s etiquette. It genuinely is important to respect other drivers.

[00:17:07]  Stephen Fenech: Part of that is that respect is something you’ve got to learn as well. But also too, once you’ve finished charging, don’t sit there. There are some chargers that charge you an idle fee. So I think that that’s to encourage people to get out of there once you finish your charging, clear the space up for someone else.

[00:17:27]  Trevor Long: So the final thing on charging, and this is probably— we could have said this in the first 24-hour thing as well, right? The first thing you do when you buy an electric car, but you can do beforehand as well. Download the apps. Well, on an iPhone or an Android phone, it doesn’t matter, all the apps are available. Create a folder called charging and you download NRMA, Chargefox, EV Tesla, yep, and Plugshare. Put them all in there. BP, those are your core ones. You might hear of others and there are definitely some smaller ones around, but those ones are going to do your big-end charging. And you download them all, but don’t just download them log into them, create an account.

[00:18:03]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, put your credit card details, set up a payment card.

[00:18:06]  Trevor Long: Yes, very important. And I will say it’s a touch on the nerdy side, but it is very, very easy to do if you have no— know anything about NFC, um, or you join the Australian EV Association. You can order a card, a single— looks like a credit card, a single tap-and-go card, and it has a number on it. And on some of these apps, EV and Chargefox, you can actually put that number into the app. And so that card, you can just tap on the charger to initiate the charging process. And that, that’s a game changer. So you don’t have to use your app.

[00:18:38]  Stephen Fenech: I thought I had it, I thought I had it with me.

[00:18:40]  Trevor Long: Oh, you don’t have it? Um, and so it doesn’t work on every charger, the tap and go, but yeah, it, it could be a, an easy way to charge at some points. There are others. So EV, for example, has a thing which Tesla’s had forever with Tesla cars, but on some of their chargers, probably 50 to 60% of them, if you set up an auto charge, it will recognize your car and you won’t need to even use the app. Just plug it in. It doesn’t work on all cars, but it’s a very cool thing.

[00:19:07]  Stephen Fenech: Good idea to sort of pre-register.

[00:19:09]  Trevor Long: Pre-register, get ready.

[00:19:10]  Stephen Fenech: You turn up at the charger and think, oh, I gotta put all the info in.

[00:19:14]  Trevor Long: Well, when I turned up—

[00:19:15]  Stephen Fenech: It saves you a bit of time.

[00:19:17]  Trevor Long: At Taronga Zoo, I was with someone else and they were charging their car as well. And I went, what are you doing? They go, I’m downloading an app. Haven’t you got Chargefox? And they go, this is Jet Charge. I went, oh no, that’s the company that built it, but it’s actually on the Chargefox network, so you don’t need it. And so having the app, being logged in, and setting up the payment authority straight away means you’re going to have a breeze. And go and do it. Don’t wait till your first road trip to publicly charge. Yeah, just go for a coffee somewhere.

[00:19:42]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, do it.

[00:19:43]  Trevor Long: Yeah, go to Woolies and charge, you know, go somewhere and learn how the app works.

[00:19:48]  Stephen Fenech: So once you’ve done it the first time, I think people are a little bit nervous. You do it once and then it’s no problem. It’s easy after that.

[00:19:55]  Trevor Long: Absolutely. That’s what they all say. Absolutely. Once you get it out of the way for your first time. Charging is very easy. Don’t let it struggle you or stress you out at all. Now, the third thing we want to talk about is the difference in driving. The drive.

[00:20:10]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:20:10]  Trevor Long: And mate, I’ve said a million times, I didn’t buy an electric car to be green. I’m excited that I’m doing my bit for the world.

[00:20:17]  Trevor Long: But I’m doing it because because they’re great to drive. I love the sound, I love the fact that it’s a quiet drive. I don’t miss the revving of an engine. I didn’t have a V8, so I didn’t know.

[00:20:17]  Stephen Fenech: Yes.

[00:20:26]  Stephen Fenech: That’s one thing when I got my first EV many years ago, that was one thing that took a little bit of time for me to get used to was how quiet the car is. And because there weren’t many other EVs on the road, you’ve got to be very careful about other people.

[00:20:40]  Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:20:40]  Stephen Fenech: Because like I’d be driving in shopping center car parks, there’d be people walking in front of my car.

[00:20:44]  Trevor Long: Yeah, we had that yesterday.

[00:20:45]  Stephen Fenech: Big red Chevy.

[00:20:46]  Trevor Long: You can’t hear us, we’re about to go on gravel here, right?

[00:20:47]  Stephen Fenech: Tooting your horn’s a little bit aggressive, so you just to be really mindful that people might not be able to hear you.

[00:20:53]  Trevor Long: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now there’s a thing called one-pedal driving, and I want to be clear, this is not— this is not in every car. Yeah, something you could ask at the dealership or while you test drive. For some cars, it’s the default. So Nissan Leaf, for example, it’s like the default, and it’s, it’s a gear shift. For other cars, it’s a button. For some cars, it’s a part of the regenerative braking settings, and we’ll talk about that in a minute. But basically, it needs to be turned on. The idea of one-pedal driving the best example I can give is Scaletrix. If you ever drove Scaletrix, you know, the cars on the racetrack, you squeeze your trigger and the car’s going zzz, and as soon as you take your finger off, the car stops.

[00:21:26]  Stephen Fenech: And then that slows down, yeah, yeah.

[00:21:26]  Trevor Long: Right, it doesn’t slow down, it stops. As soon as you take your finger off the trigger, the car stops. If you do that in a one-pedal driving car, if you’re going, like, if your foot’s at 30% acceleration and then you take your foot off, your car will very promptly come to a stop.

[00:21:40]  Stephen Fenech: It’ll slow down, yeah, that’s right.

[00:21:41]  Trevor Long: It won’t, it’s not like slamming on the brakes, but it will very promptly stop. You’ll notice the idea of the one pedal is to take you to a complete stop so that you’re only using the accelerator to drive the car. You’ll obviously use the brake in emergencies and when you feel like you need to stop even more promptly, but it’s actually a brilliant thing because— and we’ll talk about this— but you’re using the brakes less, so it’s saving you money in the long term. Yes, but one pedal driving is sensational.

[00:22:07]  Stephen Fenech: The idea for the recuperation, what, what, what brings the car, what slows the car down is the motors going into reverse.

[00:22:14]  Trevor Long: So I don’t think it’s the motor going into reverse. It’s the technology of the entire car pushing the power that it’s able to regenerate.

[00:22:24]  Stephen Fenech: But it’s the regeneration, sort of the reversing of the motor, recovering the energy.

[00:22:29]  Trevor Long: It’s the reversing of the energy flow.

[00:22:31]  Stephen Fenech: The difference is that, yeah, so it’s basically putting that energy back in your battery.

[00:22:34]  Trevor Long: That’s it.

[00:22:35]  Stephen Fenech: And if you do it enough, if you’re on like a downhill run, on, you may see the percentage of your car increase by 1 or 2%.

[00:22:42]  Trevor Long: Well, I think the bigger example is when you drive somewhere. So let’s say Sydney people, you drive from Sydney to Bathurst, you may drive there and go, I use 60% of my battery to get here. On the way back, you’ll probably only use 30% because it’s downhill.

[00:22:56]  Stephen Fenech: Downhill.

[00:22:57]  Trevor Long: So that’s— it can be a huge difference. But one of the things about regenerative braking, and a lot of cars use the pedals, which used to be used for paddles, used to be used for shifting is like going down on regenerative, shifting down is adding regenerative.

[00:23:14]  Stephen Fenech: You choose normal, strong, I always choose strong.

[00:23:17]  Trevor Long: Like a lot of cars have 3 modes. So in a Hyundai and a Kia, it’s like 1, 2, and 3 levels, and the 4th level is one pedal driving, right? So 1, 2, and 3 just basically means how much will the car regenerate, which means how much will the car brake when you take your foot off the pedal.

[00:23:34]  Stephen Fenech: Short trips, I hardly touch the brake.

[00:23:36]  Trevor Long: And so the reason it’s a really important setting to know about is because it was a real off-putting thing for my wife my wife the first time she drove the Kia. It’s like, what is it?

[00:23:44]  Stephen Fenech: Well, it takes some getting used to.

[00:23:45]  Trevor Long: Why is it doing that? So I would put my wife’s setting on 1 so that it just felt like a normal car. Right. Just drive it like a normal car. And then over time, if that’s frustrating to you to have the regenerative feeling, because it is a feeling.

[00:23:58]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it takes getting used to. It’s not something you think, oh, this is life.

[00:24:01]  Trevor Long: You literally have to move your foot, your pedal. Yeah. Very, very differently. But the key is, if you can bring yourself to go into full regenerative mode, or i-Pedal or one-pedal driving if it’s available. You’re doing the best for the battery, you’re doing your best for your efficiency, and you’re doing the best thing for your brakes.

[00:24:19]  Trevor Long: But it will— it is a feeling. And please remember your passengers. I’ve been in Ubers that are EVs where the driver has definitely got regen on. And dude, I’m like, mate, what are you doing here? Like, I’m— because I’m not driving, I’m feeling every bit of it.

[00:24:19]  Stephen Fenech: Absolutely.

[00:24:33]  Stephen Fenech: So Trev doesn’t like not driving. Are you? You hate— you’re the worst passenger.

[00:24:36]  Trevor Long: I’m not a fan of being a passenger.

[00:24:38]  Stephen Fenech: But I think too, another thing, another attractive thing for people before they buy the car and even when they test drive is the acceleration. EVs have instant torque. So off the mark, they’re pretty solid. Some cars, depending on the sort of car you buy and how much you pay, that instant acceleration could be as 2 seconds, 0 to 100. Yeah, it’s just crazy. But others in general, on average, about 4 to 7 seconds is 0 to 100.

[00:25:05]  Trevor Long: The new BYD Shark with a bigger motor, that’s coming out this year has a 5.5-second 0-100 for a big ute. Are we kidding? That’s crazy.

[00:25:13]  Stephen Fenech: You know what? That’s, that’s plenty.

[00:25:15]  Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:25:15]  Stephen Fenech: I know there’s a lot of people who think they spend more to get a much faster off the market.

[00:25:21]  Trevor Long: The point here is we’re talking about driving differently. Be careful. Yeah. Because you might get some red and blue lights coming behind you with your heavy right foot. But that also leads us to the fact that you can actually be quite efficient in your driving. Yeah, it can be very smooth way to drive. You can, you can really with that pedal, you can control so much more of the car than you normally would with gearbox and brakes and acceleration. So be true. Be thinking about that.

[00:25:47]  Stephen Fenech: We’ve said, mentioned many times on the show about the driving, the driving conditions and how that affects your range. Yeah, we’ve said many times that batteries, EVs are the opposite of a petrol car. Yes, a petrol car on the highway, that’s its most efficient way mode of driving, whereas an EV loves the stop and start of city driving. That’s its most efficient Highway driving is less efficient because it’s constant high speed and that draws on the battery slightly more.

[00:26:16]  Trevor Long: Yeah, exactly. So just remember that when you hit the open road, the range is going to dip. You may think you’ve got 500 kilometers range, but at 110 kilometers an hour, that car is going to go 400 kilometers. So, you know, it’s not going to go as far.

[00:26:30]  Stephen Fenech: Making even little differences like sitting in the left lane at 100, that could add a lot of range. Well, for some conservative drivers, drivers, but it can make a difference.

[00:26:39]  Trevor Long: If you, if you’re wondering why the Tesla is going 90 on the freeway, it’s because it’s more efficient to drive. And they’ve realized that, you know what, that 10 kilometers an hour is not getting me there any much faster. It’s really not. It’s like you’re getting there 5 minutes earlier. What are you doing? It’s crazy.

[00:26:53]  Stephen Fenech: You’ll have a bit, a bit of range, a bit more percentage left on the battery when you arrive there.

[00:26:57]  Trevor Long: So now another big one here, this is something you may not have been told at the dealership or learned in any reviews, is the weather The weather can affect your range.

[00:27:06]  Stephen Fenech: Yes.

[00:27:07]  Trevor Long: Exhibit A, I took a Hyundai Ioniq to Bathurst many years ago, 2018, 2017, something like that. And we didn’t make it. It was very cold that day. It was snowing outside of Bathurst and the car didn’t make it to Bathurst. Even though the range was 196 kilometers and the drive was only 190, we fell 25 kilometers short because it was—

[00:27:29]  Stephen Fenech: It was cold.

[00:27:30]  Trevor Long: A, uphill, B, yeah, freezing cold.

[00:27:33]  Stephen Fenech: It’s like George Costanza, there’s a bit of shrinkage.

[00:27:34]  Trevor Long: There’s a bit of shrinkage in the battery range. So you can— and a lot of cars will inherently do this. You get in a car on a cold morning in winter, it will show you a lower range than on a summer’s day.

[00:27:45]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:27:45]  Trevor Long: So your car will, your car will tell you this, but the heat isn’t really that big a determinant. But a stupidly hot day can also affect range because the battery needs to moderate itself for safety as well.

[00:27:57]  Stephen Fenech: Also charging. I know, I know the Teslas and other cars do, they preheat the battery to speed up the charging a little bit too. So that’s, that’s another factor.

[00:28:05]  Trevor Long: Charging can be affected by the temperature as well. Yeah, but that, that goes to our last point about how the driver’s different. And again, you never used to look at range, you only ever used to look at a fuel gauge, and you can still do that. Just look at the, just look at the battery gauge. That’s okay. But you’ll want range because you’re worried about where you’re going to charge.

[00:28:22]  Stephen Fenech: I know on the Tesla you could choose to have either a percentage reading or a kilometer reading.

[00:28:26]  Trevor Long: Yeah, some, my car has both. I want Yeah, but if I only— if I had the choice of one, I would put kilometers.

[00:28:32]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, K’s just a range guy. You’re good to go.

[00:28:34]  Trevor Long: 100%. Yeah. But just remember, as we said earlier, that that number will vary based on your weekly driving, based on the weather, and based on how you’ve been driving even that day. So just keep those things in mind when you are experiencing the difference of driving an EV. Another great thing about the EV is just how much different it is to look after. Have to. In some ways vastly different, in other ways not much at all. You should ask the question about the servicing schedule of the car.

[00:29:02]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, before you buy your car, that’s a good question to ask. Whether, you know what, some brands may include free servicing, they may, some brands may not.

[00:29:10]  Trevor Long: That’s unlikely.

[00:29:11]  Stephen Fenech: But, uh, you know, you may, you may have, uh, I think it’s a good question to ask, what, what’s the servicing like roughly? Even ask what the cost of the servicing is going to be.

[00:29:19]  Trevor Long: Like in my, both my cars, I chose to just prepay for 5 years worth of servicing. Like it’s better to just have it locked in and done. But you’ll find it’s different. You’re not having to get a service every 10,000 kilometers. It’s more likely to be an annual thing than it is a kilometers thing.

[00:29:33]  Stephen Fenech: If that, if that. My Tesla—

[00:29:35]  Trevor Long: Very rare for anything other than Tesla.

[00:29:37]  Stephen Fenech: I booked it in for my first 12 months just out of habit. And they said, well, how many K’s on the car? And I told them, they said, no, you’re okay, we’re canceling your service, which is rare.

[00:29:46]  Trevor Long: Very rare. We’ve only ever heard that from Tesla. So just be clear and don’t And don’t— Stephen will tell you, he’ll get very angry about it, but don’t get too angry at them when they stuff it up because they send you an invoice that has oil change on it. The systems at some of these dealerships are so old that they’re just inherently ticking a list.

[00:30:02]  Stephen Fenech: They’ve got to get with the times.

[00:30:04]  Stephen Fenech: They need to have a checklist for a normal car and a checklist for an EV.

[00:30:04]  Trevor Long: They’ve got to get with the times.

[00:30:08]  Trevor Long: You won’t get this with an Aion or a Geely because they don’t have established service principles anywhere else.

[00:30:13]  Stephen Fenech: This is a subject for another day, but Mercedes-Benz, I thought their servicing of an electric car was a touch on the high side.

[00:30:20]  Trevor Long: I think Alison has no—

[00:30:22]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, yeah, way above what I expected. Yeah.

[00:30:25]  Trevor Long: And look, and that’s the problem is if you don’t ask the question up front, yeah, you don’t know that actually it’s not better off. Like, that, that’s a decision-making thing, and we should have covered it last week if we didn’t. But you know what, if it’s no cheaper to service, then you’re not getting the true benefits of the EV other than the petrol. So think about that. We talked about how regeneration and one pedal is a great thing for your brakes. Yeah. And in all, using them less My experience has been they’ve gone, oh, they’re looking great. The brakes are fantastic.

[00:30:51]  Stephen Fenech: A lot friendlier on the brakes.

[00:30:52]  Trevor Long: So even if you’re going in for a service, you know, let’s say it’s a $400 service. We all know that it’s a $400 service and then they’ll charge you for the brakes and the da da da da da da. Well, the good thing is the $400 service on an EV might be the same as a petrol car, but you’re going to be getting your brakes refreshed much fewer times. And that’s a positive. But we have both noticed tyres can be an issue.

[00:31:14]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s right.

[00:31:15]  Trevor Long: And what we learned—

[00:31:16]  Stephen Fenech: to be heavier—

[00:31:17]  Trevor Long: what we learned is inflation. We were told just go a couple of PSI up because it overinflates. It overinflates. Otherwise your car sits and kind of hits the very sidewall of the— or the very curved edge of the tyre and can wear it much quicker. So you’re better off to overinflate. And for the same reason, I check my tyres far more than I ever did before. Because even though your car’s not saying— hasn’t got an alarm going off saying tyre pressure issue, you’re— that’s because you’re in the normal range. But you actually want to be just above the normal range is what we’ve learned in our experience.

[00:31:50]  Stephen Fenech: That’s, that’s the best advice. But yeah, just, just know an EV is much heavier car than what you drove before because the battery is along the bottom of the car.

[00:31:58]  Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:31:59]  Stephen Fenech: So yeah, check, check pressures often.

[00:32:02]  Trevor Long: Yep. Don’t forget your electric vehicle vehicle has 2 batteries. The big booming thing that powers the car.

[00:32:09]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:32:09]  Trevor Long: And then there is still— and this is still mind-blowing to me— there is still a 12-volt battery under the hood or in the boot.

[00:32:14]  Trevor Long: It’s wild to me that that still exists, but it does. They are very different systems, the high voltage system and the 12-volt system. Very different systems. There have been known issues with some cars, my Kia included, where the 12-volt drains through software updates. They fixed that, or they’re fixing that.

[00:32:14]  Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:32:28]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:32:29]  Trevor Long: But just know that that leaving your lights on can still drain the battery. Yeah, not the big battery.

[00:32:35]  Stephen Fenech: That’s a lot of people. Yeah, what about my big battery?

[00:32:36]  Trevor Long: Just the little one, right? And the big battery is nowhere connected to the little one. So even when that little battery is dead, you can’t jump start it with the big one. Yeah. So I actually am testing one of those CTEK battery, you know, jump starters because it’s a great thing still to have in your home.

[00:32:52]  Stephen Fenech: Absolutely.

[00:32:52]  Trevor Long: Without question, the 12-volt can still be a problem.

[00:32:55]  Stephen Fenech: I get warnings on my car as you I’ve checked the 12-volt battery and it’s not, it’s never, just, you just got to drive the car again.

[00:33:02]  Trevor Long: Yeah. So I get that because of the dash cam. I get that because the dash cam is using it and the car.

[00:33:07]  Stephen Fenech: I would too, because I’ve got parking brake.

[00:33:09]  Trevor Long: And the car’s going, mate, that 12-volt’s being used while I’m not driving. And so again, just one drive and you’re sort of again.

[00:33:16]  Stephen Fenech: That’s why I’m getting my warning too.

[00:33:17]  Trevor Long: Just know the 12-volt is there.

[00:33:19]  Stephen Fenech: And you know what, this is another, like I remember when I first got my first I’m thinking, oh, it’s just another thing I’ve got to remember to charge. But it’s also another thing you’ve got to remember to update.

[00:33:30]  Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:33:30]  Stephen Fenech: You get software updates as well. And I remember the famous story when I got my Tesla, the guy said to me, today is the worst your car’s going to be. It’s going to improve over time with software updates. And he was right.

[00:33:43]  Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:33:44]  Stephen Fenech: So just remember, we spoke earlier about maybe having Wi-Fi connected into your driveway. Connect that because there might be an OTA, an over-the-air update that you can run on the car. But run the updates. I know people get annoyed, they get annoyed they gotta update their iPhone or their Android phone, but you got to do it because you know what, it helps with the efficiency, security. Same deal for your car. These updates are for the best.

[00:34:08]  Trevor Long: And the last thing about just looking after the car, you’re still going to get warning lights and errors. Pay attention to them, don’t ignore them.

[00:34:15]  Stephen Fenech: You still get tire pressure warnings.

[00:34:17]  Trevor Long: Look up the manual, find out what it is, because it might be worth going ‘Come back to the dealer on.’ It’s really that simple. A lot of cars have more information now, and that’s fine, but don’t ignore warnings because they could be a big difference for you. Just finally, Steven, and I think this is a really important one, the mindset. It is. It’s a complete change. It really is. Because the biggest one is you go from, ‘Oh, when the tank gets to a flashing light or at a quarter, I’m going to go to the station and fill it up.’ You don’t need to do that. You do not need to take your car down to whatever your number is, a third, 20%, 30%, 20%, whatever it is. Just charge it whenever you can.

[00:34:55]  Stephen Fenech: I know there are a lot of people, my mother included, when they see the little red, the warning light to come on to fill up, they go, “Oh, I need to fill the car up.” That is not necessarily the case here. And you run the risk of if you need to sort of go out quickly in your car, you’ve only got 10% charge, you’re going to get caught out. So it’s a good idea to top up. Up the battery when you can.

[00:35:15]  Trevor Long: Whenever you can. Just like your phone. It’s what we always say. Just keep charging it whenever you can.

[00:35:21]  Stephen Fenech: We should mention too that you are charging at home. There are a lot of electricity plans and offers. I’ve actually, I’ve got OVO Energy, which offers free electricity between 11 AM and 2 PM and overnight charging between midnight and 6 AM. It’s like 8 cents per kilowatt, which basically means you can have fully charged your car for like $8. It’s really cheap. So that’s another thing.

[00:35:44]  Trevor Long: Shop around. Once you’ve settled in your car, start talking energy with the energy providers.

[00:35:49]  Stephen Fenech: And, you know, we can, we can have a whole other show about solar and the benefits of having solar panels. But it’s not a necessity though. We hear a lot of people saying, they call us and say, I’ve got solar panels. So a lot of people equate that, well, do I need to have solar panels to drive an EV? No, you don’t. But it helps. But it doesn’t, it’s not a necessity. But if that’s something you want to do to maybe to make yourself more power efficient and and spend less on electricity, then go for your life.

[00:36:14]  Trevor Long: We mentioned this at the start. You don’t need anything but the trickle charger that was provided with the car or that you can buy at Bunnings. You can absolutely get by with that for life, especially if you don’t do any of the road trips. It’s totally fine to charge your car using that. It’s also totally fine to charge your car regularly on a high-speed charger, but you know, stick to the 80% in that case. We’ve had great research from Brendan Green at Pickles, who’s appeared on this show many times, showing us that a lot of the data coming from the used cars they’re seeing is actually showing that battery life is not— battery health, there’s no degradation. It’s not actually degrading.

[00:36:46]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, if you fast charge every week, there’s no battery— there’s no evidence of battery degradation.

[00:36:53]  Trevor Long: And the most important thing is if you’re charging your car on a slow charger all the time, you are absolutely not degrading your battery. It’s totally cool. Keep topping it up. Don’t worry about letting it go down and up again. Range anxiety will drive you insane. Been for many months. It will. You’ll think about it, you worry about it, but it will fade. It will fade over time, especially after you’ve done your first couple of cool trips. You’ll realize very quickly, ah, there’s cars that— that one, like, you drive past it. So my— on my trip at Meroolin, there’s one BP charger. You know, drive past, there’s someone there, or you get one of the kids in the back to check the app and it’ll show you whether it’s in use or not. It’s in use. I’m just going to drive on to the one. There’s another charger 50 kilometers away. There nearly always is.

[00:37:35]  Stephen Fenech: But so yeah, it’s like, you know what, how much range anxiety do you have when you drive a petrol car? Never.

[00:37:41]  Trevor Long: Because there’s petrol stations everywhere.

[00:37:42]  Stephen Fenech: But the good news is that there are more chargers. Mate, when I got my first EV 8 years ago, chargers were— they weren’t as frequently found as they are today. So today you’re buying an EV today, there are plenty of chargers. I think the Just a few weeks ago, the New South Wales government also announced that they’re going to put more chargers in more places.

[00:38:04]  Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:38:05]  Stephen Fenech: To give people that option and drive the push to EVs.

[00:38:08]  Trevor Long: No matter what you think of Elon, don’t be afraid to use his chargers because they are— it is the best charging network. That’s like saying I’m never going to use BP and Shell. They’ve got petrol stations everywhere. Yeah. And they’ve got more bowsers than anyone else. The Tesla Supercharger network is the best thing about the Tesla brand going. And don’t be afraid to use it. And while you’re there, It’s not something I do, but it’s something Steven does. Be part of the community. Talk to other owners.

[00:38:30]  Stephen Fenech: Absolutely talk. Yeah, I did that a lot when I’ve had my Tesla and I was connected and we were just chatting away to other drivers and they sort of gave me some advice and tips on how often they charge.

[00:38:40]  Trevor Long: You know, we were at Suttons Forest at an EV charger once and we pulled in, charged, and then I noticed the person next was having a problem. It’s like, you know what? I’ll help. I know that this is their first time, probably. Just have a chat to them, find out and help out. Help out where you can, learn where you can. It’s a really nice thing. There’s a bunch of— we always say this— join the Facebook groups for your car. It’s a great way to learn more about your car. You’ll hear a lot of whinges as well, but that’s fine. It’s good to know everything that’s going on.

[00:39:04]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:39:05]  Trevor Long: And if you want to have a chat about an electric car, that’s what we’re here for.

[00:39:07]  Stephen Fenech: Talk to us. Yeah, we’ve had plenty of great calls where we learn stuff.

[00:39:12]  Trevor Long: And what’s the text line number, Steven?

[00:39:15]  Stephen Fenech: 0477 657 657.

[00:39:17]  Trevor Long: I’ve never heard you say it, actually. I was just thinking out loud. There you go.

[00:39:20]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that was a test, mate. I passed the test.

[00:39:21]  Trevor Long: 0477 657 657. Send us a text.

[00:39:24]  Stephen Fenech: I’ve heard it enough, mate.

[00:39:25]  Trevor Long: And you know, the other one is, and this will happen at Christmas time, Mother’s Day, Easter, barbecues, whatever it is, you are gonna get quizzed. So you might wanna listen back to our myth-busting, you might wanna do reading, whatever, but just remember you are gonna get narcs. They’re gonna narc it. But you’re also gonna get the opposite, which is just questions.

[00:39:46]  Stephen Fenech: Just fascination, yeah.

[00:39:47]  Trevor Long: Fascination.

[00:39:48]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah, there’d be people like, I remember plugging the Tesla in years ago and people say, like, how? And the questions were all the same. How long does it take to charge? How far can you go? And how much is it? Yeah, that were the questions.

[00:39:59]  Trevor Long: 100%. Yeah. And so once you’ve, once you’ve experienced it for a little while, you will have those answers and you will. I can’t imagine you won’t become an advocate because they’re just great to drive and most of the myths are absolute rubbish.

[00:40:10]  Stephen Fenech: But you know what, after a while it won’t feel like an EV. It’ll just feel like your car.

[00:40:15]  Trevor Long: That’s right.

[00:40:15]  Stephen Fenech: It’s your car.

[00:40:16]  Trevor Long: And that’s the moment when you realize that you’ve converted yourself.

[00:40:20]  Stephen Fenech: That’s it.

[00:40:21]  Trevor Long: You’re just happy to be in your car and you love driving your car and you won’t notice other than the fact that your friends are whinging about petrol prices and you’re not. And look, just finally, I think for me, you know, we bought the Cooper first, didn’t we? Yeah. Cooper was the first EV.

[00:40:36]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:40:37]  Trevor Long: Like I knew as soon as I drove it, I wanted it. And I’d driven plenty of cars before that. But it was weirdly the moment for me, and we talked about solar panels not being required, but given I was lucky enough to have solar panels or put them on, I only put them on 2 years ago. That was the moment I was converted forever. When I went, wait a minute, it’s December, it’s sunny, plug in, car’s charging and I’m getting free driving. This is, that was the moment that tipped me over the edge. I’ll be honest with you.

[00:41:05]  Stephen Fenech: I had panels before I got my car charged. I had it in before.

[00:41:09]  Trevor Long: And what was the moment that made you go, I’m never going back to an electric car?

[00:41:12]  Stephen Fenech: I just think, well, seeing the fuel prices, that was one. But I just think in the air, I can charge it at home. I’ve got plenty of power coming through the panels and plenty of chargers around. I had at the time, I had the deal with the, they used to have a code and my car had free supercharging. So hello, I was charging. It wasn’t a problem to do a fast supercharge and it cost me nothing. It’s part of the deal of my car. That was, I’m thinking, well, why would I drive a petrol car ever again?

[00:41:39]  Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let us know as an EV owner, what was the moment that you knew you’d never go back? And I think for some people that moment was when they test drove one.

[00:41:48]  Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:41:48]  Trevor Long: The first time you drove an EV is for a lot of people the moment they tipped over the edge.

[00:41:52]  Stephen Fenech: Definitely.

[00:41:53]  Trevor Long: And despite the fact that, and why we had a text the other day from someone that said something lovely about EVs and then said, but I’m still going to keep the V8. And I wrote back, I said, if I had a V8, I’d keep it too. Like just in the garage. I’d love to own a V8 that I could bring out every month or so, fine. But I never owned a car that made the great sounds or anything like that. So I was happy to move on from that. It’s a fascinating world to be in. You now own an electric car, you’ll love it, but just take it easy, take it simple, take it slow, do the basics, download the apps, and you’ll have a great time. You’ll never look back.

[00:42:27]  Stephen Fenech: You’ll never look back.

[00:42:28]  Trevor Long: And if you wanna talk to us, we’d love to hear from you, 0477 657 657. Send us a text, and if you know someone who’s just bought an EV, send them a link to this show. We’d love to, we’d love to talk to them as well. Stephen, let’s do it all again next week.

[00:42:40]  Stephen Fenech: See you next week.

[00:42:40]  Trevor Long: We’ll take your calls next week, folks.