The Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars podcast: Episode # 118 – PHEV – Plug In Hybrids – are they worth it?

This week, we’ve been driving a PHEV – Plug in Hybrid, how do they work are they worth it for those not quite ready for an EV?

We talk to a man with an original MG electric car, ready to move to his AION A story about Zeekr losing business to Deepal, and a young man with electric desires!

Thanks to NRMA Insurance and Uniden Dashcams!

Full AI Generated transcript below

[00:00:01]  Trevor: This is Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars with Trevor Long and Steven Fenwick. Thanks to NRMA Insurance and Uniden. And we appreciate their support. NRMA Insurance, helping Australians protect what matters most for 100 years and many more to come. And they’re also one of Australia’s largest insurers of electric vehicles. And Uniden smart dashcams. You’ve got a car, you should have a dashcam. And Steven’s big recommendation is always go the R model.

[00:00:25]  Stephen: That means a rear camera as well. So front and back. Look, if you’re gonna go to the trouble get covered in all directions.

[00:00:31]  Trevor: Absolutely, gives you peace of mind, and, and that’s a great way to drive, knowing that whatever happens around you, you’ve got some peace of mind around it. We’re going to talk plug-in hybrids later in this episode because, you know, it’s been a constant conversation over the last few months. We’re into May now, but the conversation around fuel is intense, and there’s a lot of people who are just not ready yet to go full electric. And so the plug-in hybrid is a genuine option. So we’ve been driving one, and we will give give you our view. Stephen even took it on a long road trip.

[00:00:59]  Stephen: I did, yeah, it was, it was very handy. We’ll talk more about the actual car that I drove, but very handy device. It’s a very handy device at a really good price. But yeah, it was, it was great.

[00:01:09]  Trevor: Very good. We’ll tell you about that shortly, but most importantly, we want to take your calls. If you have a question about EVs, a problem with your EV, or you want to talk about your buying experience or anything to do with electric cars, we’d love to hear from you. Thanks to Vodafone. 0477 657 657 is the number to text or WhatsApp, and we will get you on the show. Myrick’s on the line.

[00:01:27]  Stephen: G’day, Myrick. G’day, how you going?

[00:01:30]  Trevor: Yeah, really good, mate. Where are you at in your EV journey?

[00:01:34]  Myrick: Oh, well, I’ve had an MG ZS EV for almost 5 years now. Oh, and about to— the lease is about to run out, so I’m about to pull the trigger on another one. And so I’m looking at the Aion V. I did say to the sales guy it’s an Aion 5, but he said, no, no, it’s a V. So, well, fair enough.

[00:01:54]  Trevor: I’m going to stop you right there. Yeah, I was at the Melbourne Motor Show a month or so ago and I spoke to the people at Aion And I think it might be ION. ION.

[00:02:05]  Stephen: Yeah, ION.

[00:02:06]  Trevor: I had quite a debate with them about whether or not it was AION or ION, because we debated this too, didn’t we, when we had the car. So ION.

[00:02:14]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:02:14]  Trevor: And we agreed that what they should do— so if you see this video on the internet, folks, I had come up with the idea— they should get all the reviewers from Car Expert and Drive and us or whoever and get all their videos and clip them together going, AION, ION, AION, AION, AION, and then just have someone at the end go, but by the way, sorry to upset you, it’s ION. Just tell us what it really is. They really need to set that in stone. But leaving that aside, the ION V, what drew you to that one, mate?

[00:02:43]  Myrick: Well, your review of it was the first thing because I never heard of it before that. And I was looking at the Zieger, but, you know, the price on the ION is a lot lower. So I thought more money in my pocket so I don’t have to spend as much. The Zeekr is nice. It’s got the— and it’s got the good range. It’s got the range of over 600, approximately 600. But the IONIQ’s got just over 500, which is pretty good. And the price is great for the luxury model. And I drove it and it was really, really nice and comfy. I thought it was great.

[00:03:15]  Stephen: So you have driven it. You’re happy with it? It is actually. We’ve driven it too. It’s actually quite a nice car. Fit and finish is pretty solid.

[00:03:22]  Trevor: This is the one that had the fridge and heater, like fridge and oven in the middle, isn’t it?

[00:03:26]  Stephen: That’s it.

[00:03:27]  Myrick: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The fridge in the middle.

[00:03:29]  Trevor: You laugh like that’s a stupid thing, but I’m telling you, mate, when you want those meat pies to stay warm.

[00:03:33]  Stephen: Yeah. Or for your drinks to stay cold. You want to— you got a couple of Diet Cokes in here.

[00:03:38]  Myrick: I guess it’s— yeah, it’s handy and it’s got the, you know, the massage seats. And my wife was happy with that. She goes, oh yeah, really? Okay, okay. And I think it’s got aircon seats as well. But yeah, with the price and the range, that’s basically what I— yeah, what I went for.

[00:03:51]  Trevor: You got the Luxury or the Premium?

[00:03:53]  Myrick: Yeah, the Luxury. So it’s a top, top.

[00:03:55]  Trevor: What’d you get it for? About $48,000?

[00:03:58]  Myrick: I think it’s on the right, $48,000 plus maybe I’ll put the tint in because I think you said the aircon wasn’t too good with the non-tinted windows. So I’ll put the good tint on for about $800 or whatever it is. So hopefully that’ll help with the airconing.

[00:04:13]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:04:13]  Stephen: Are you, your MG, is that just the trade-in or are you selling that? What are you doing with that one?

[00:04:18]  Myrick: No. Yeah. So I can’t trade in because it’s salary sacrifice. So it’s lease. Oh, that was a lease. Yeah. So you’re just giving that back? Yeah, right. Oh, no, no. So I have to say it’s mine, but I just got to pay out the residual, whatever it is.

[00:04:33]  Trevor: And you’ll keep it or you’ll keep it, then you’ll sell it. What will you do with it?

[00:04:38]  Myrick: No, I’ll sell it. Yeah, I’ll sell it.

[00:04:40]  Stephen: And how’s that been? That’s sort of one of the OG EVs on the market. How have you enjoyed driving that?

[00:04:47]  Myrick: Yeah, no, it’s been amazing. So I bought it when there were only a few EVs on the market at the time. Especially cheap ones anyway. I think this was the cheapest one at the time. Yeah. The advertised range was 280. I never got 280 out of it. I think I got 240 out of it. I get about, you know, pretty close to 240 now. Still, it hasn’t really gone down in range.

[00:05:08]  Trevor: That’s a good, good call after 5 years.

[00:05:11]  Myrick: Yeah. And I’ve done almost 140,000 km on it.

[00:05:16]  Stephen: Yeah. And it run okay. No issues. That’s a bit of a compliment to MG.

[00:05:24]  Myrick: Yeah, no issues. They— MG’s fixed anything that I’ve asked to fix. The aircon vents around, plasticky thing that started to bubble and they just replaced it. They replaced the seat coverings because they started to crack. Anything I asked for, basically they just replaced under warranty.

[00:05:45]  Trevor: And so a 5-year owner of an EV, and with respect, a cheap EV, like you didn’t have a Tesla. This is a car that was a punt in a sense too. MG have been around for a while. That car was essentially a petrol car with a conversion to electric. How do you feel about the experience of owning an electric car over 5 years? Because you would have learned everything you needed to know coming into the next one. Have you become the advocate among your mates?

[00:06:21]  Myrick: Well, absolutely. So yeah, I tell everyone, especially at work, because they can all salary sacrifice. So I tell them, go and get an EV. I got it before the new FBT policy came in. But I tell everyone at work, 3 of my kids have got EVs, 2 have got the ETO3 and one’s got the Shark. And they’re all very happy with it.

[00:06:53]  Trevor: You’re breeding EVs.

[00:06:55]  Stephen: You’d be set up at home then on the charging front, mate. What’s the story? You got a wall charger? How are you charging?

[00:07:01]  Myrick: Just granny charge, yeah.

[00:07:02]  Trevor: Okay, you got 5 years of granny charge. Wow.

[00:07:05]  Stephen: You know what? That’s a big deal because a lot of people, they sort of balk at the granny charging. You’ve done 5 years of driving and that’s been okay for you?

[00:07:15]  Myrick: Yeah, absolutely. I come home after work, plug it in in the morning. It’s got definitely enough range to get to work and back in most cases. I’ve only been caught out once when I had to drive to Quimby and the GPS told me to go through Torago, Narragawea Way, and there was no reception. So I ended up in Torago and had to call a tow truck. That was the only one time that I got stuck. I just made it to the pub and called from there.

[00:07:57]  Trevor: So what’s your— I mean, you’re obviously a massive advocate. You’re breeding EVs, as we said, both in your workplace and in your family. There was just no hesitation for you to EV again. And are you a two-car household or are you single car?

[00:08:16]  Myrick: No, we’ve got two cars, so we’ve got a diesel for the other car. That’s leased as well, but that’s got another year and a half to go. So we’ll see what EVs are out there at that point. But there weren’t really any four-wheel drive EVs when we got this one.

[00:08:30]  Trevor: Maybe Denza by then will be a great contender in that four-wheel drive space — the super hybrid from BYD’s premium brand. It’s a nice looking car. You should go and have a look at that.

[00:08:41]  Myrick: Yeah, yeah, we’ll have a look. It’s got a while to go yet. I mean, it changes so quickly, you know, even when I started looking probably 6 months ago at a new replacement for this one, there have been so many new additions to the market.

[00:08:54]  Trevor: They were low.

[00:09:07]  Stephen: What was the car where the cupholder was really tight?

[00:09:10]  Myrick: You can hardly get a cup out.

[00:09:12]  Trevor: That’s this one. It’s like, I’ll make you a promise. Stephen will 3D print you a cupholder integrator. So it’ll be like a cupholder in a cupholder.

[00:09:21]  Stephen: I’ll fix it up for you.

[00:09:34]  Myrick: Well, they said I should be able to get one by mid-May, maybe end of May.

[00:09:40]  Stephen: Okay, so in a couple of weeks.

[00:09:44]  Myrick: And they said they’ve got the deal as well, which is I think $2,000 back and they’ve got the wall charger and yeah, and they’ve got 8-year warranty as well. So I’ll keep it for quite a while.

[00:09:54]  Trevor: So the current deal on their website is 8-year unlimited kilometer warranty, 8-year 200,000-kilometer battery warranty, 5 years roadside assistance, free 22-kilowatt EV wall charger, and $2,000 premium cashback.

[00:10:08]  Stephen: Wow. Great deal.

[00:10:11]  Myrick: You can’t really walk away from that. And I mean, I think BYD is doing something similar at the moment.

[00:10:18]  Stephen: So BYD was never in the picture for you, Myrick?

[00:10:23]  Myrick: Well, I just— I think the price and the range. I was looking at the 803 until you guys mentioned the Aeon actually. I wanted something cheaper, so I didn’t want to go anything over 50 really.

[00:10:41]  Trevor: Well, mate, happy to know we could help you with that. I’ll be telling Aeon about this. That clip will be going directly to Allison at Aeon. It’s lovely to hear that someone is able to take on a bit of our information and make a decision independently because you’ve gone and driven it. And I hope you love it. It’s a premium car.

[00:11:08]  Stephen: What color do you get?

[00:11:09]  Myrick: I’ve got the sandy color with the beige interior.

[00:11:14]  Trevor: Yeah, it’d be the one we drove. If you could see dents from Diet Coke cans, Sunkist cans and Heather Braes pies. Mate, happy motoring. Enjoy it, buddy.

[00:11:35]  Myrick: Thanks, guys. Nice talking.

[00:11:36]  Trevor: Good on you, mate. Great to hear from you. Excellent stuff there. Well, there’s Myrick with his brand new—

[00:11:41]  Stephen: Hey, we are EV influencers. Does that make us EV influencers?

[00:11:44]  Trevor: Officially. And the head of PR at ION used to be at Kia and she’s just moved over there. I ran into them at the motor show and we had that debate about the name. For 15 years we’ve been talking tech and logging that, but on our podcast, I still love the fact that someone says, I bought this because you said so, you know.

[00:12:09]  Stephen: Well, you know what, we bring it to your attention and then they take it the rest of the way.

[00:12:13]  Trevor: We’re not writing the check. But yeah, that’s right. Please drive the cars before you buy them. I don’t want to be that responsible.

[00:12:21]  Stephen: We drive most of them.

[00:12:22]  Trevor: So what’s fascinating about that though is — that wasn’t a glowing review. We definitely talked about— you mentioned, I think, the CarPlay dropouts. And I think if Myrick’s smart, he’d think that’s a software issue and can be fixed pretty easily. We mentioned the cupholders and they’re little things, but it’s fascinating that someone’s listened to that and then gone to the trouble of checking it out for themselves.

[00:12:46]  Stephen: He sat in and drove it himself too. So that’s the ultimate. That’s what seals the deal when you’re sitting in it.

[00:12:52]  Trevor: Spot on. So let us seal the deal for you folks. Find an EV through us or whatever you like. And if you are in the market for an EV, please reach out. We can try and hook you up with Aaron, our dealer contact. No kickbacks, just trying to get you a better deal. Send us a text 0477 657 657. Anthony’s on the line. G’day, Anthony.

[00:14:03]  Anthony: Hello, Steve. Hello, Trevor.

[00:14:05]  Trevor: Mate, great to have you on the show. Where are you at in your electric car journey?

[00:14:10]  Anthony: Whoa. I’m waiting for delivery.

[00:14:14]  Trevor: What did we get?

[00:14:15]  Stephen: How exciting. What are you getting?

[00:14:17]  Anthony: Okay, I got a Deepal S07S.

[00:14:21]  Trevor: You got the S07S? Yeah, the— so it’s the Model Y lookalike kind of thing.

[00:14:27]  Anthony: Oh yeah, yeah, pretty much. Beautiful looking car. Beautiful looking car. But it’s— I’m still waiting and it’s becoming extremely frustrating.

[00:14:36]  Trevor: Wow. So how long ago did you put your money down?

[00:14:40]  Anthony: Well, I put the deposit down. I think it’s about 3 weeks ago now. Which is not bad. I mean, it’s just frustrating because I want the car.

[00:14:55]  Trevor: It’s nervous anticipation rather than disappointed, broken promises.

[00:14:59]  Stephen: Anxious to get it. Yes.

[00:15:01]  Anthony: Yeah. Very anxious. And also now starting to doubt some of my decisions, but I’m pretty confident that it was a long journey to get here.

[00:15:10]  Trevor: Tell us about your doubts, mate.

[00:15:13]  Anthony: Yeah. Well, I’ve been waiting for an EV since I was a little kid. That’s how long I’ve been waiting for an EV. In the ’70s, I thought this was the future. I loved EV cars. I was just obsessed with science fiction and the future and electric cars would be fantastic. And even then in high school, our school had an old electric milk van for the kids to learn on. And it was awesome. My God, this is amazing. Always a car nut and I was just obsessed, obsessed with electrical cars. This is the future. It has to be the future. It makes so much sense.

[00:15:55]  Stephen: So is this your first EV then, or you’ve had one before?

[00:15:57]  Anthony: Well, I’ve had hybrids. I had like the first and second Prius. Oh my God, that was the future. I thought this was just unbelievable, but I still think hybrids are a compromise, an overly complicated compromise to have an electric motor and a petrol motor together. Just doesn’t make any sense.

[00:16:27]  Trevor: Over here it was the Volt, the Holden Volt. I remember driving the first time, thinking it was amazing, but it was a petrol engine charging an electric battery that you would then power the car with. It was a very strange thing. It wasn’t really an EV.

[00:16:42]  Anthony: Yeah, but it makes more sense because it’s not complicated, the transmissions and that.

[00:16:47]  Trevor: Right. I see what you’re saying. So having two forms of actual propulsion is overcomplicated. So what then fast-forwarded you to the point of going, right, I’m ready to buy one?

[00:16:57]  Anthony: Well, I currently have a Volvo V40 diesel. I think the car is absolutely gorgeous, but it’s no longer the right car for us because we’ve got grandchildren. And also I have elderly parents I’m now responsible for and they can’t fit in the back of the car. I’ve been listening to your show since day one thinking, oh, this is great, this will help me. In actual fact, I was just thinking, my gosh, how many different cars.

[00:17:30]  Trevor: We’ve overwhelmed you.

[00:17:33]  Anthony: If I was given $100,000, I kept saying, I don’t know what I would buy. There were so many good choices. And then I retired and the wife is retiring. She says, we don’t have the money. My son, just before Trumpy’s war happens, my son buys an electric car secondhand off Pickles. And my wife says, gosh, amazing value. Then petrol diesel goes up. My first $500+ bill for a diesel car, a diesel truck, and earthmoving machinery. I said, this is ridiculous. This is unsustainable. And that was what I needed to convince my wife.

[00:18:15]  Trevor: Yep.

[00:18:15]  Anthony: So we started looking at secondhand cars and seeing the value. I looked at Pickles, I looked at car sales, and every time I looked, and if I didn’t buy that immediate time, I missed out — missed out on 6 cars from Melbourne to Sydney. Oh, I was getting so frustrated. I was looking originally for a Polestar because I wanted to keep in the Volvo family. I still think they’re a good looking car.

[00:18:45]  Trevor: Absolutely. I’m a big fan of that.

[00:18:57]  Anthony: So then I started looking, looking, looking. I kept missing. And then I looked at the other Volvos. I love like the C40. Anyway, missed out on 6 cars. I was so angry because I couldn’t make a decision straight away. And then I found like dealer demos. My wife was now getting caught up in the excitement. And then we looked at the Zeekr X.

[00:19:30]  Trevor: Yep. The little one. Yeah.

[00:19:33]  Anthony: Yeah. Beautiful looking car. And I found a dealer demo in Car Sales in Sydney. But the dealer, they wouldn’t respond. They were just so unresponsive. Didn’t call me back, wouldn’t answer the questions. It was just ridiculous. And the car was still for sale. So I said, let’s try Zeekr in Canberra. And anyway, we’re looking and I started taking the old man with me to look at cars: can you get in and out? How easy is it to get in and out of the car? So that became the criteria. He’s like nearly 90. And so that’s, you know, it’s things to take note of.

[00:20:25]  Trevor: Absolutely.

[00:20:25]  Anthony: Anyway, the Zeekr, fantastic, beautiful. My dad, can you get in and out? Yeah, yeah, it was good. He liked it. Went for a test drive and they were fantastic. The dealer was fantastic. My God, they were so busy. And the criteria started increasing and I watched everything. I was consumed watching YouTube. I’ve watched every review on the internet, on YouTube about electric cars — over-researching. And I started to have the checklist. It’s gotta do this, it’s gotta do that. My first thing was it has to have vehicle-to-grid. That makes the most logical sense. We’ve got solar and we got battery. But you can’t find vehicle-to-grid. It’s just so hard and not every car does it. So I thought that’s next gen. Started looking, had to have the room for my dad to get in and out of the car. We had to have a big boot for the grandchild and all the prams.

[00:21:46]  Trevor: You end up with a solid list. Are you doing a lot of driving around? How did you stumble across Deepal? Was that through online viewing all these videos or was there a dealership nearby?

[00:21:58]  Anthony: No, no, I was looking, looking. We were going in to pay the deposit on the Zeekr and I was just unhappy. It didn’t tick enough boxes — even down to, oh, beautiful big panoramic sunroof but there’s no cover for it. And then the deal breaker for me — I wanted heated seats. I live in Canberra. I need heated seats. And the Zeekr, that’s on the next option.

[00:22:34]  Trevor: So the Deepal obviously ticked more of those boxes for you. One of the big things about the Deepal back in the day was it was deemed by most reviewers to be annoying because of the beeps and chimes and things.

[00:22:48]  Anthony: So exactly why I went past it.

[00:22:51]  Trevor: But then you’ve ended up buying one. What convinced you? Did you take it for a drive and it didn’t have those problems?

[00:23:00]  Anthony: No, never drove it. I saw a review from one of the big reviewers in Australia, and he said how it went from the most annoying car in Australia to one of the best. Because they did solve the problem. Software update. And I said, oh my God, that’s fantastic. It had the heated seats, it had the awning, they had the blind for the window, had a big boot, it had everything. And we were at the Zeekr dealer and I said, can you hold the car till after lunch? I’ve got to have a look at another car. The guy was fantastic. He said, yeah, no worries. We went and found the Deepal dealer. Went there and the guy said, well, I saw on that night there was a dealer demo, $42,000 non-negotiable. And every car, my wife kept approving the budget creep — started off at like 30 and it crept up and crept up. So now we’re at 42. Okay, you happy? Yes, that’s what I want.

[00:24:07]  Trevor: All right.

[00:24:08]  Stephen: Oh, decision made.

[00:24:09]  Anthony: Went and looked at it and they showed me a car they were preparing for another customer. You can’t take it for a drive. Have a look at it. And it was beautiful, had all the features I wanted, everything, great room. And interestingly enough, he pulled up my car, the V40, compared to that car measurement-wise, external, and it was like 70mm difference in length. That was it. But it was so much more spacious.

[00:24:39]  Trevor: Yeah, I think that’s one of the things you find — there’s actually a lot more space inside the car. It’s the way these cars are set out. So fast forward because we need to move on to other callers. You haven’t driven it, but you have bought it on the spot and you’re now in that flux zone of questioning yourself. But mate, it’s going to be a great car. You’re weeks away.

[00:25:04]  Anthony: Yeah, but it’s in Sydney. They said we found you the car, dealer demo from Deepal headquarters, and it’s going to be on a truck from Sydney to Canberra. And I keep going to them, where is it? I said, how come I can order something from China and get a delivery date, but you can’t tell me when I’m getting a delivery date from Sydney?

[00:25:22]  Trevor: Yeah, I would check the contract and say to them, listen, I’m prepared to take my money back if you’re not prepared to deliver me a car, or at least give me a date that you can stick to. I think you need to be a bit strong about that because they may well be playing you off a break with other buyers. So they need to know you’re going to walk as well.

[00:25:41]  Anthony: Yeah, yeah. Well, I was going to give them a deadline. And he showed me the email from the depot in Sydney. He says, look, that’s your car and 4 other customers. And it’s all getting ready for you. And I said, but where is it? I don’t want to miss out on it.

[00:26:08]  Stephen: We’ll just wrap up with this, mate. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, mate. So keep reminding them, where’s my car? Keep asking the question.

[00:26:17]  Trevor: Congrats, buddy. Mate, it’s going to be a great car. With that software update, our biggest gripe was the bings and bongs.

[00:26:28]  Stephen: Yeah, but the noise update solved all that.

[00:26:32]  Anthony: Can I ask one more question? Is the charge rate something to worry about?

[00:26:40]  Trevor: No. You know what? We just spoke to someone who had owned an MG for 5 years, never used a wall charger at home, just a trickle charger every night. Unless you are doing 150 kilometers a day of driving and you’re both retired, that’s unlikely, mate. Just get into the routine as we talked about on last week’s show. Plug it in. Rewind to last week’s show when you get a chance to listen and you’ll hear us talk about what you do when you get your first EV. And that’s gonna be the information for you. Don’t stress about it, Anthony. Enjoy the car.

[00:27:17]  Stephen: Good on ya.

[00:27:17]  Anthony: So I got the tick from the two blokes.

[00:27:19]  Trevor: There you go. Tell the wife you’re fully ticked off. No, don’t tell her that. All right, mate, have a good one. Cheers, mate. No worries at all. Good to hear from you. I mean, it’s a journey. Well, it’s not unusual.

[00:27:31]  Stephen: I’m surprised it’s taken so long to get his car though.

[00:27:34]  Trevor: Well, you know what? I think in the end it sounds like he’s the kind of person that’s always trying to get the dealer demo. He’s not going for the driveaway price brand new car. He was looking at Pickles, he was looking at car sales, and then he went to the dealer demo angle. So he’s trying to get the best deal. And that doesn’t always mean you’re ordering online and getting a car off the boat. So that’s probably the challenge.

[00:27:58]  Stephen: Well, anyway, quite a journey. That’s good. Glad that he’s finally got something.

[00:28:27]  Trevor: Yeah, you do a great job at it, Steven. 0477 657 657, Fraser’s on the line. G’day, Fraser. Hello, how are we? Really good, mate. Where are you at in your EV journey?

[00:28:39]  Fraser: Well, I haven’t got an EV yet. I’m 18. I’m looking, because, you know, petrol’s expensive. And, you know, I have to be honest with you, EVs are a lot more exciting to me than petrol cars.

[00:28:55]  Stephen: You’re 18, Fraser, you’re a young driver.

[00:28:57]  Fraser: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I’ve got a full-time job now and I’ve got enough money that I can sort of look at buying things, maybe a year from now.

[00:29:08]  Stephen: Good for you, mate. So is this your first car? Is it going to be your first one and it’s going to be an EV?

[00:29:16]  Fraser: I, it’s unfortunately not. I’ve got a Honda Jazz at the moment. 2012.

[00:29:23]  Trevor: That’s a cracker. What do you reckon as an 18-year-old with a full-time job, what do you think your budget’s going to be in 6 months or a year from now when you are looking to buy?

[00:29:33]  Fraser: I think maybe like a bit under $40,000 probably.

[00:29:39]  Trevor: That’s a good number. There’s a lot of options. Everything from the bottom end of BYD up through the JACU. Do you— you are a bit of a Honda Jazz person. Have you seen the Honda Super One, which is a tiny compact? Google Honda Super One. It looks cool. That is one heck of a little beast that should come in under $40,000, shouldn’t it?

[00:30:01]  Fraser: Yeah, it’s quite nice. I mean, if they can price that in at like $37,000, something around that, I feel like they’d probably sell well. But I’ve sort of heard more stuff around people saying it’s going to be priced around where the Mini Cooper and the Fiat 500 are.

[00:30:41]  Trevor: It’s far too small to do that. It genuinely can’t be those prices, mate. It’s tiny. They wouldn’t get away with it. They’d sell 100 of the things in a year. It wouldn’t work.

[00:30:51]  Trevor: What’s the family situation, mate? Are there any EVs in the family or do you think you’ll be the first?

[00:30:57]  Fraser: Well, my parents have a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Yeah. So I mean, I’m not too big on plug-in hybrids, but I mean, they do have their place. And they barely use any petrol now. And I’ll be honest with you, the other thing about EVs is the acceleration — the instant torque. It’s very exciting compared to any like petrol car I’ve driven.

[00:31:27]  Stephen: That’s a great feature. Yeah, but a lot of EVs have that. You know, if you get a Tesla, you can go 0 to 100 in like under 3 seconds.

[00:31:39]  Fraser: But generally, yeah, a lot of performance is 2.1 seconds. But a lot of them are around 3.1 seconds.

[00:31:50]  Stephen: Yeah. Others might be 4 seconds or something. But no, that’s definitely a feature. So is there a specific type of car? Like, are you looking for a sedan? Are you looking for an SUV? What’s your preference?

[00:32:07]  Fraser: Nothing in particular. I’m working at the moment at a valuation firm, property valuer firm. And I’m looking at becoming an assistant valuer. So it doesn’t really matter what type of car it is.

[00:32:27]  Stephen: So you do a bit of driving there, don’t you? So you drive around all different properties.

[00:32:31]  Trevor: Yeah. How many Ks a day would you do, mate?

[00:32:33]  Fraser: Maybe like, I don’t know, it’s not that much. I’m doing more specialized commercial, so it’s probably only like 100 maybe.

[00:32:41]  Stephen: Okay. Per day. That’s decent. So range is important to you then.

[00:32:51]  Trevor: Yeah, sure. You’re gonna have a fun experience, mate. There’s a lot of cars on the market. Look, I don’t wanna give fatherly advice to an 18-year-old, but buying a brand new car when you’re 18 is almost insanity, if I’m honest with you. I did it and I regret it. I could probably own a house by now, earlier than I did, if I hadn’t bought that car. He’s a property valuer, mate.

[00:33:14]  Stephen: He knows the deal.

[00:33:15]  Trevor: I’m just saying, mate, previous caller spent some time looking at Pickles Auctions. You might be able to find a Kia Niro or an Ioniq or different things that are only a year or two old. Just remember you don’t have to buy a new car. That’s all I’ll say to you. There’ll be plenty of options out there on the market. And I think you’ve got a fun journey ahead, mate.

[00:33:36]  Stephen: But is secondhand an option though, mate?

[00:33:42]  Fraser: The thing for me is, from what I’ve seen, I’m not sure if like it’s that much cheaper, dramatically. Like, if you look at stuff like the MG4, for example, like they were selling those for like $30,000 at one point. And they haven’t like gone down that much.

[00:34:04]  Trevor: Yeah. You’re balancing the pure number at the top end. And that’s fair. All I’m saying to you, mate, is just remember you don’t have to buy a new car. When you are truly and genuinely shopping in a year from now, unless you’re doing a novated lease and all those kind of things that might require it to be a brand new car, you don’t need to buy a new car. There’ll be plenty of options out there on the market.

[00:34:34]  Stephen: Where would you charge it? You got a charging setup or how would you charge your car?

[00:34:39]  Fraser: I mean, I think probably just like a wall socket. I could probably install something in our house, but I don’t know, I might be moving to Tasmania actually in like half a year.

[00:34:55]  Stephen: Well, that will affect the decision.

[00:34:56]  Trevor: That’s going to affect a lot of what you’re doing, Fraser. But lovely to hear from you, mate. Good luck with the EV journey. Keep us in the loop.

[00:35:04]  Fraser: Yeah, yeah, sure. Thanks, guys. We all appreciate what you’re doing. Don’t worry, it’s good work.

[00:35:09]  Trevor: Good on you, mate. Thanks very much. Cheers, buddy. And look, that’s the fun part of the journey there. Very early days.

[00:35:15]  Stephen: First 18-year-old buying an EV. How good is that?

[00:35:17]  Trevor: That’s wild, isn’t it? And the other thing about that is whenever Jackson isn’t driving my Cooper, which is very rare, he does mention petrol prices because the Mazda is like $80, $90 to fill up now. When you drive 35 minutes to your girlfriend’s house and stay there for 2 days and then you drive home, that’s 2 journeys. That you see the money. Like, it’s actually, what is that costing me? As opposed to when you’re in an EV, you know that it can be costing you zero basically if you do it right. I can imagine the secondhand market being a boon for parents buying their kids’ first cars too. You know, like that MG that our first caller had, what a great car. It’s had 5 years and a good life, but a great first car for someone.

[00:36:12]  Stephen: Absolutely.

[00:36:13]  Trevor: And Fraser just mentioned plug-in hybrids. We should take a time to talk about plug-in hybrids because we drove the Mercedes-Benz GLC 350 recently.

[00:36:22]  Stephen: Yes, we did.

[00:36:22]  Trevor: You know, SUV, Mercedes SUV, but the big difference here is there’s a battery there that gives you around 100 kilometers of fully electric range, about 110 it gave you. And when you gave it to me, I charged to 100 and you had it in full electric mode. The Mercedes system has multiple options — one of them is just do your best, the other one is kind of battery saver so it just tries to keep the battery at the same level using it and the petrol engine. Then there’s just full electric. So we drove this thing exclusively in electric mode.

[00:37:09]  Trevor: And I, in the week that I had it, I charged it probably 2.5 times. Essentially I’ve charged it to full a couple of times and then one day I just put it in for half an hour and got a bit and never touched the petrol tank. Like it didn’t move. I saw I would have used maybe half a milliliter of petrol at one point because I did gas it off the lights. But you can, if you drive it particularly well and you charge properly, as in you plug in every night, you can drive a PHEV as an electric car.

[00:37:48]  Stephen: Because as we’ve said over and over again, people on average drive about 50 km a day. Battery on this is 100 and change, so you can exclusively drive this on the battery. So I took it up to Newcastle, we went to see my daughter Hayley, and I had it all fully charged up on the battery and it started in electric mode. And then once we were halfway there, then it kicked over — it just said electric mode now unavailable and then boom, it was just on the petrol motor. And then on the way back, the hotel I stayed at had a charger. So I just plugged it in for 2 hours, recharged the battery to full again, and then did the opposite — started off with the battery halfway back to Sydney.

[00:38:32]  Trevor: And that’s the thing with the PHEV, the batteries are so small that the trickle charge is all you’d ever need at home because it’d only take a few hours. At home, you rarely ever need anything more unless you’re in one of those moments where you want to drive 100 kilometres purely electric and you need a fast charge. That’s like, when’s that going to happen? Very rarely. So, mate, I drove it. Obviously it’s a beautiful car. It’s a Mercedes, has all the fittings. But the thing that stood out to me was without thinking about the car, but just remembering to charge every 2 days or so, I drove an electric car for a week.

[00:39:16]  Stephen: It was an EV, yeah, you’re right.

[00:39:17]  Trevor: It was an EV. Yeah. And I think that’s what people should know.

[00:39:20]  Stephen: We’ve seen, and my wife particularly loves, she said, “I would drive this car.” Because she’s of the mindset where she likes EVs, but has the fear that there might not be a charger when she needs one.

[00:39:33]  Trevor: Well, with her grandchild in Newcastle later this year, she’s gonna need those kilometers. Well, look, not to put words in Jo’s mouth, but I would guess she would be reluctant to have to go to an EV charger every time she goes up there to be able to get home.

[00:39:46]  Stephen: Maybe. But I did show her the chargers at the hotel and there’s plenty of chargers where they can plug in. She can plug in at Hayley’s home and all that. I think she liked it because it was a Mercedes first, but she loved it too because it had that option — and the petrol motor, the range was like 740 kilometers. We could have just driven up and back. I could not have even bothered to charge the battery.

[00:40:13]  Trevor: What you did was save money on petrol.

[00:40:16]  Stephen: So we hardly touched the petrol. We only sort of did 100km up, 100km back.

[00:40:20]  Trevor: The other test that would be nice next time we get a PHEV is to just put it in hybrid mode. So that you don’t specifically go electric, but you drive to Newcastle and back in hybrid mode. It would have been interesting to see how much petrol you use, how one versus the other balances out, because I think it would be on a road trip more efficient to go in hybrid mode. So the car works out when to use what sort of power.

[00:40:42]  Stephen: And does it give recuperation to the battery then? Would it recharge?

[00:40:46]  Trevor: But you know, the recuperation is never going to be enough.

[00:40:48]  Stephen: There’s a lot of downhill runs, it would have given a bit of recuperation on the highway.

[00:40:53]  Trevor: Anyway, so while we are all in on electric cars, yeah, there’s nothing wrong with a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, especially if it’s what meets your budget. But the critical thing for me is it’s a great teacher of how to drive, how to charge.

[00:41:06]  Stephen: And I had to remember what side the EV plug was. It’s on the left side. There’s a little arrow. Plug-in hybrid has got your petrol cap and your EV charging as well. So yeah, I had to keep remembering it was back left. There is a tiny little arrow. Petrol symbol has a little arrow pointing to the right and the little battery has a little arrow pointing to the left.

[00:41:28]  Trevor: You will need your glasses to see the arrow. Very hard to see.

[00:41:32]  Trevor: Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars. Thanks to Uniden Smart Dash Cams and NRMA Insurance. We’ll be back again next week with another episode. We can take your calls. We’d love to hear from you. 0477 657 657. Thanks to Vodafone. Send us a text or a WhatsApp. Steven, let’s just do it all again next week.

[00:41:46]  Stephen: I’ll see you then.