The Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars podcast – Episode # 139 – He went for a Prado, bought a Tesla – plus, New or Used?

139 – He went for a Prado, bought a Tesla – plus, New or Used?

Podcast: Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars
Date: 28 September 2026
Hosts: Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech
Callers: Stefan, Kushal

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[00:00:00] Trevor Long: This is Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars with Stephen Fenech and Trevor Long. Thanks to NRMA Insurance and Uniden. NRMA Insurance, helping people protect what matters most for 100 years and more. And they’re also one of Australia’s largest insurers of electric vehicles. So all we ask is that you give them a call, go online and get a quote when your insurance is up or when you’re getting a new car and just see if they’ve got an offer that might suit you there. And Uniden smart dashcams, again, no matter what car you’ve got, brand new or old, EV or otherwise, protect your information, protect what happens on the road and what you see with the dashcam front and rear, Stephen.

[00:00:39] Stephen Fenech: Exactly right. Award-winning dashcams, Uniden as well. They’re well worth the investment.

[00:00:43] Trevor Long: Very much so. Now we’re gonna talk later in the show about the Sea Lion 7. We’re gonna jump behind the wheel of the Sea Lion 7.

[00:00:50] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, literally behind the wheel.

[00:00:51] Trevor Long: And take you for a trip around the block. Yep. Is that what we should call it? We should call it that.

[00:00:54] Stephen Fenech: I think I was driving that. I’m gonna be driving that one, eh? Am I the driver?

[00:00:58] Trevor Long: ‘Cause we recorded last week, you’re trying to remember who was driving.

[00:00:59] Stephen Fenech: I’m trying to remember who was the driver.

[00:01:00] Stephen Fenech: That’s correct, yes. I don’t remember.

[00:01:01] Trevor Long: It was one of us.

[00:01:03] Stephen Fenech: He was me.

[00:01:04] Trevor Long: Okay, okay. Well, we’ll call— I think we should call it the Trip Around the Block.

[00:01:07] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, there you go.

[00:01:08] Trevor Long: We’ll get an intro. The Trip Around the Block.

[00:01:10] Stephen Fenech: Live, live, uh, live suggestions, live marketing.

[00:01:13] Trevor Long: We spent a lot of time producing the show and you’re witnessing most of it, folks. So that’s a little later in the show, uh, but first we’d love to hear from you. Anytime you want to talk EVs, whether you’ve got one, uh, you’ve sold one, uh, you didn’t like it, you love it, or you’re in the market and you want to learn some more or ask some questions, we don’t definitively have every answer, but hopefully we can try and steer you somewhere.

[00:01:32] Stephen Fenech: Between us, we’ve got the answers. I think between us we can find solution.

Stefan — Swapped a Prado for a Tesla Model Y L

[00:01:36] Trevor Long: Absolutely. We’ll do our best. Speaking of being between us, Stefan’s on the line. G’day, Stefan.

[00:01:40] Stefan: Hey guys, how are we, mate?

[00:01:43] Trevor Long: Really, really good. Thanks for joining us. Where are you at in the, in the EV journey, mate?

[00:01:48] Stefan: I’ve actually bought one.

[00:01:50] Stephen Fenech: Woo!

[00:01:52] Stefan: Thanks to you guys. Thanks to a lot of people and a lot of resources. I’ve finally got one. It ended up being the Tesla Model Y, but I can, I can get to Tesla.

[00:02:02] Stephen Fenech: Okay. Right. So was did— let’s, let’s go through the process. How many did you test drive? Did you— were you always had your heart on a test set on a Tesla or were there other contenders?

[00:02:15] Stefan: Not always on the Tesla Model Y. I actually test drove 3 cars. I started with— I started with a diesel, the Toyota Prado. Yeah, that was kind of the dream car.

[00:02:29] Trevor Long: That was the first car you test drove because it’s the dream car, big car. Have you got a family?

[00:02:35] Stefan: Yes, yes. So recently had a 7-week-old baby. She’s gorgeous.

[00:02:41] Stephen Fenech: Congratulations.

[00:02:42] Stefan: That kind of changed everything. We thought, you know, currently we’re driving Nissan Qashqai, 2015 model. It’s a manual. It does the job. It drives you from A to B, but it’s a little bit crampy, a little bit tight. Chuck the pram in there, chuck the border collie dog at the back.

[00:02:58] Stephen Fenech: It all adds up. Yeah, right.

[00:03:01] Stefan: It all adds up. So we’re looking at the Toyota Prado. We love camping. We love going on long trips down to Jindabyne, and it made sense for us. And when we test drove it, we loved it. We didn’t have any dramas with it. The price was probably a little bit higher than what we would have liked to. Our range, we were kind of looking at that $60,000 to $70,000, and the Prado was at that sort of $90,000 plus having to— oh, it goes a light— plus having to finance it as well, which we were quoted at about 8% at the time, which is a bit high, we thought.

[00:03:39] Stephen Fenech: So that’s a bit of a jump then from the Prado to— so then what the thought was, how did you get to an EV? Well, let’s go EV, down the EV path.

[00:03:50] Stefan: How did we get to EV? Yeah. Okay, so we actually, we had some friends over and we sort of mentioned, hey, we’re looking at buying a new car., and, um, the friend said, oh, I actually just bought a Polestar 3, uh, innovative lease. And, uh, basically said, okay, that’s cool, you know. And I wasn’t really looking at EVs at all, um, wasn’t, wasn’t in frame of mind. And he said, look, you need to look at EV. Um, we live in an apartment complex, but it does have, um, capacity to charge. Uh, there’s— we have individual car spots in the apartment, uh, that are being charged right now, and they’re actually installing like a charger for use for the entire building as well. And you can kind of just like tap on apparently. So yeah, that’s really cool. And so, okay, well, you know, we can charge it at home and obviously there’s a lot of chargers out on the roads now. It’s doing the research and listening to you guys as well and other people. So I thought, okay, let’s look at EVs. I sort of— we were looking at something that had a big boot size, obviously with the kids. Something that had decent range because we wanted to go out and explore something that we could potentially, you know, go camping with as well.

[00:05:11] Trevor Long: And so all of these things actually start to limit your selection pretty extensively, don’t they? Is that what you discovered straight away, was that actually it probably wasn’t going to be easy to find an EV that fit those measures?

[00:05:23] Stefan: It was not easy. I went into a deep dive of Claude, Claude AI. Yeah. My best friend for about 4 weeks. It really helped me dive into every single type of model that was out there from, you know, obviously BYD, Tesla, Kia. I was looking at the new Subaru. They’ve got a few.

[00:05:47] Trevor Long: You’ve got a few. Yeah, they’d be well suited as well.

[00:05:49] Stefan: Yeah. Yeah. But it kept coming back to the Tesla YL for me because, because of the range and because of the boot size as well and just the family sort of orientation around it and I’ll put it down to two cars that we went and test drove, the BYD, the Sea Lion 7, and the Tesla YL. When we went to BYD, I was actually looking at the 8, but it’s a plug-in hybrid model. Yeah, plug-in hybrid. And it didn’t really work out in terms of the perks with the novated leasing. So I just thought, let’s test drive the 7. Maybe not a popular view, but I wasn’t really that impressed with the BYD, I’ll be honest. That’s just my personal opinion. Um, but, uh, we test drove the BYD first, and then immediately after, about an hour later, test drove the Tesla Model Y, and it was fantastic. I just— we loved it. The wife test drove it, she loved it as well. Um, it’s just simple The infotainment system is amazing. You know, you got the opportunity for that to be, to be updated over time.

[00:07:04] Stephen Fenech: Sure.

[00:07:04] Stefan: And so, you know, the drive itself, it was the first time we’d actually driven an EV.

[00:07:09] Trevor Long: Yeah, right. That was it. That was the number one.

[00:07:11] Stephen Fenech: So I just want to dig in on something you said earlier. So what was it about the BYD that you didn’t like? Was it the drive? Was it the fit and finish or what was it that that you didn’t— weren’t happy with?

[00:07:26] Stefan: To me, it was a little bit of the finishes and maybe the infotainment system as well. It’s— I don’t want to use the word tacky, but for me, just felt a little bit like that and just it didn’t meet the mark for me at the price. Yeah, the price that we were going to pay for it. And so when I compared it to the YL, it was just for me, it was, it was a massive difference because it is.

[00:07:48] Stephen Fenech: You’re right. It is quite a difference. So the Tesla, it’s really sparse and minimal.

[00:07:51] Trevor Long: And there’s also —a genuine luxury to the fit and finish of the Tesla, the materials they use. You know, I respect them a lot. It’s interesting though, I would say this, I was in a back of a Model Y coming back from dropping a car off and I did feel like the plastics were very hard and unusually not premium was what I felt, you know, the plastic up on the windowsill and stuff. But it’s the seats that are really well designed. They’re really well made. I think there is a lot of premium in the Tesla that I think the average person probably has never really experienced in the average car that we all owned and never Now these styles of premiums are becoming quite popular and that’s a good thing.

[00:08:30] Stephen Fenech: Still no front cluster, eh? The driver, no cluster, eh? So it’s just got the wheel, no heads-up display, just the screen. Are you comfortable with that, Stefan?

[00:08:39] Stefan: It took a bit of getting used to when we were doing the test drive, but I’m comfortable with it. Yeah, I didn’t have a problem.

[00:08:45] Stephen Fenech: So you own it now? You’ve already got it? You got it?

[00:08:47] Stefan: We’ve purchased it. It’s only a 2-week lead time at the moment. Oh wow. All right. Here in Sydney. So yeah, picking it up.

[00:08:56] Stephen Fenech: And so what have you got?

[00:08:59] Stefan: In September on the 3rd. So I’ll let you guys know how we go.

[00:09:03] Trevor Long: Yeah. Right.

[00:09:03] Stephen Fenech: So what have you done to prepare? You said you got in your apartment, you got a couple of spaces and so they’re putting in chargers. So that’s—

[00:09:10] Trevor Long: which is awesome. Like we often hear that it’s a bit of a combative thing to try and get the strata or whoever it is, the body corporate to allow that. So does that mean there’s other EV owners in the building?

[00:09:21] Stefan: Yep. It’s a very pro EV building. Nice. It’s— I think there’s about 30 units and there’s 6 or 7 chargers already.

[00:09:30] Stephen Fenech: Wow.

[00:09:31] Stefan: That’s a good ratio. It is. Yeah. The way that they’re hooking up— hooking it up at our place is they’re hooking them up at individual chargers to people’s car spots. And so we did actually get a quote for ours, but it was quite expensive due to the length of cabling that needed to go to our car spot. So that’s something to keep in mind. Yeah. And the further away you are from like the central box at the building, the board could be more expensive.

[00:09:57] Trevor Long: So, so you said they were putting in a solution though, that is some sort of tap on. So is that in a shared spot like a visitor spot?

[00:10:04] Stefan: A shared, a shared visitor spot? Yes. So you just drive in there, tap on when you need to and charge it up and then, and then go when you need to. So I’m not sure how that’s going to work yet with neighbours and when people start, you know, more people start buying vehicles, but we’ll see how we go.

[00:10:20] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, that’s good to know. Peace of mind, you got that literally at where you live.

[00:10:24] Trevor Long: That’s pretty good, mate. You’ve done very well to come from a Toyota Prado potential buyer to being a Tesla Model Y owner. That’s also the leap. And it’s also, you know what, you’ve future-proofed yourself and your family as well because, you know, you’ve got one young child and I’ve got no doubt there’ll be more. And that car has a long life. There’s nothing short-term about a Tesla or any electric car, but certainly Teslas have a really good lifespan and that car, mate, That’ll be taking your kids and their friends also to local school.

[00:10:55] Stephen Fenech: And also, I don’t know whether you heard the previous programs about the YL and the child seats and the strapping. That’s the things you need to do to get the child seat in there. I have.

[00:11:06] Stefan: Yes, I have. So I’ve actually got a story about that. I’ll be quick. So when we were in the showroom at Tesla, we were walking around the YL with the pram and the wife and a lady who doesn’t work there. She was just visiting. She walked up to us and she said, ‘Oh, hey, I’ll just let you know there’s an issue with the captain’s chairs and the child seat.’ And I said, ‘Oh, really?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, look it up online. Like, make sure, you know, you’re comfortable with that before you, you know, go down the Tesla route.’ I mean, she’s an angel in some ways, but also, is she there all the time just talking people out of this car?

[00:11:45] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, she works for BYD. Oh my God.

[00:11:49] Stefan: So it threw me into a tailspin. I was deep diving online trying to figure out, oh, you know, what’s going on me these captain’s chairs and all that. And it took me a couple of weeks to get my head around, okay, there are some compatible chairs. And I even spoke to individual Akasi installers. Yep. Who one actually reached out and sent me a table which I can send to you guys, and it actually listed all the compliant chairs.

[00:12:14] Trevor Long: Yeah. Is there like 4 or 5 of them? I think someone sent it to us and it tells you how it’s compatible using the extension or whatever it might be. It’s It’s a very small number of brands, but you know what? You’re in the market anyway, I guess, for those.

[00:12:27] Stefan: We ended up buying a new chair. Honestly, we’ve just bought the new chair and the other chair will go to my mum or something.

[00:12:33] Trevor Long: Yeah, there’s always a grandparent that needs a car chair as well. So don’t worry about that, mate. That’s right. Mate, good stuff.

[00:12:40] Stephen Fenech: Congratulations. Enjoy the car. Congratulations on your new baby. It’s all happening.

[00:12:45] Trevor Long: Mate, you are having a belter of a time, mate. It’s a great way to end the year. You’ve got a good Christmas coming up, mate. We look forward to— maybe we’ll talk to you early in the new year about your experience with that. YL and the baby, mate.

[00:12:56] Stefan: 100%. And thank you so much, guys, for all your chats every week. You know, it’s, uh, I really deep dove the last sort of 6 months of your podcast and it gave me a lot of confidence to jump into an EV and purchase one. So yeah, you’re doing great work.

[00:13:11] Trevor Long: That means a lot. We really appreciate it, Stefan. Thanks very much for getting in touch. No worries. Cheers, mate. Thank you so much. There you go, Stefan with his brand new Model YL having gone to buy a Toyota Prado.

[00:13:23] Stephen Fenech: There you go. Biggest shift, not the most test drives, or the biggest shift of test drives.

[00:13:27] Trevor Long: That could well be from 1 to 3. Yeah, that’s the biggest shift we’ve seen. Yeah, without question. 0 to 100. Yeah, well done. All right, well, we’d love to hear from you as well. 0477 657 657. Great stuff. Always entertaining. Stephen Fenech out of the breaks.

[00:13:52] Stephen Fenech: EV aerobics, as we call this, the EV show aerobics.

[00:13:55] Trevor Long: When you start doing weird things. Oh yeah. When you do the Donald Trump dance out of a sting, it’s weird, but we’ll accept it. People who are listening thinking, what is he talking about?

[00:14:05] Stephen Fenech: You know what? Let’s clue you in.

[00:14:07] Trevor Long: Watch it on YouTube. You can watch on Spotify as well. I should say the video version is available on Spotify, YouTube.

[00:14:14] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, you can watch.

[00:14:15] Trevor Long: Which reminds me, during the— before we do, we’re just doing a bit of house admin here. While we’re still set up for the EV show, we’ll do the video version of the Uniden ad because there’s actually a video ad that can roll in there as well.

[00:14:28] Stephen Fenech: Because, yeah, I’ve got to do the audio.

[00:14:30] Trevor Long: Well, I wasn’t going to name and shame you there, but I just need to add the video.

[00:14:34] Stephen Fenech: I’m just working on it.

[00:14:35] Trevor Long: We’re going to do it today. Great news from our great friends at Uniden. Fantastic. Brad and the team, some of the best. Dash cams you can get. Oh yeah. Also, if you want a UHF system for your car— oh yeah, got you covered.

[00:14:45] Stephen Fenech: My son just got one. Yeah, yeah, he got one. He’s got it. He sold his, uh, sold his— he got a Prado. He’s got a Prado.

[00:14:51] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah, mate. Yeah, buddy. Uh, Stefan could have—

[00:14:53] Stephen Fenech: Stefan, yeah, well, I don’t think Aaron would have gone to Model Y.

Kushal — New or used EV on a novated lease?

[00:14:57] Trevor Long: No, I don’t think so either. He doesn’t strike me as a Model Y kind of guy just yet. Uh, Two Blokes Storing Electric Cars, we’d love to hear from you. 0477 657 657. Send us a text or a WhatsApp, we’ll get you on the line. Kushal’s on the line. G’day, mate, how you Good, how are you? Mate, really, really well. Where are you at in the world of EVs? Are you in the market or have you pulled the trigger?

[00:15:18] Kushal: No, I’m still in the market. Just started looking a couple of weeks. I’ve had a look at a few cars, I’ve driven a few of them, but currently it’s more of a dilemma. Should I buy a new one? Should I buy an old one? Should I? Because I’m a PYG employee, so I can actually do the Novated Leasing, and that seems like a no-brainer for me. Absolutely. With electric vehicles. But yeah, so I think if I tell where I’m at is I don’t drive that much. I would say in a week about 200-250 kilometers. So the car is mostly sitting in the driveway. Yeah. It’s mostly sitting in the driveway for like 4 days or 5 days in a week. Then I started, I drove, the first car I drove was the Toyota BZ4X, which—

[00:16:17] Trevor Long: Now why did you drive that first? I’ve gotta know. Can I guess that you’re just a Toyota man? Because that’s not been the first car I’ve heard anyone suggest they’d buy.

[00:16:26] Kushal: Yes, I was gonna say. Not a bad car. I’ve never heard that mentioned. Yeah, it’s just not commonly mentioned.

[00:16:30] Trevor Long: I’ve never heard that mentioned in your show. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind betting I think we might have mentioned it once or twice, but in a couple of hundred shows, it’s Toyota’s only EV.

[00:16:38] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s right. One and only EV, full EV.

[00:16:41] Trevor Long: And it’s a partnership like the Toyota 86 is with Subaru. It’s a partnership with Subaru. There’s a Subaru that is the exact same car with a different name. So you took it for a drive.

[00:16:51] Kushal: What did you think? So I’ve been in a Toyota Corolla for 8 years now, and I had— so I had to drop my car for a few days for servicing, and Toyota had this offer of promotion of you can you can drive the bZ4X for 2 days, no charge. Wow. So I took it up and I loved it because going from a Corolla, which is like 8 years old, 10 years old, to an EV with all the new tech and everything was pretty, pretty fancy. And I enjoyed all of that. And that’s when I started thinking, oh, maybe I should get one because I was— okay. So that’s the car I drove first because I actually rented it out.

[00:17:29] Stephen Fenech: It’s not by choice, but I did like You know how smart of Toyota that is? That is genius. Smart move by Toyota. Let’s give him a taste. And look what’s happened. You’re in the market now.

[00:17:40] Trevor Long: You’re in the market. But how did that taste end up for you, though? What have you ended up looking at since then?

[00:17:47] Kushal: I’ve looked at a couple more. So I looked at the Deepal SO7, and I’m actually more interested in the Mazda one that’s still on preorder, which is the CX-60 or 6E, whatever they call it.

[00:18:05] Trevor Long: Yeah, we’re going to drive that in October. So it’s not too many weeks away for our listeners.

[00:18:10] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it’s just in a couple of weeks we’re going to be driving that.

[00:18:13] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:18:14] Kushal: Yes. And in terms of old cars, everywhere I’ve looked, it’s mostly Teslas or BMWs.

[00:18:20] Trevor Long: It’s not a bad time though, Chrisholm, for you to be in the market if you’re willing to consider a secondhand car, because that novated lease that you’re signing up to Over the last 3 years, people have been signing up to those things ad nauseam. So there’ll be people coming off novated leases looking to get another one because the whole thing’s going to end at some point. So why not get another new car now and then, you know, trade in the other one? So I think there’s going to be a good number of secondhand EVs out there. What worries you about going secondhand instead of brand new?

[00:18:52] Kushal: I think it’s more like— I think in the beginning it was more about battery. Will it last? You know, because I don’t plan to sell it off in 3 years or 5 years, whatever. I plan to keep it for a longer time. Is it going to last me if I’m going to keep it for 10 years? That’s one thing. And looking at the prices as well, I thought, well, if I spend 10K more, I can get a new car. Yes.

[00:19:21] Stephen Fenech: You know, currently— I remember the secondhand— we’ve spoken to people on the show in the past talking. I think the guy Brendan from Pickles was telling us about the battery checks they do. And the, the, the consensus appears to be that battery health, even on a 4 or 5-year-old EV, is still pretty healthy. So, and also too, you’ve got to remember, you buy a secondhand car, the, the battery warranty is still probably got years to run on that as well. So you do have some protection.

[00:19:52] Trevor Long: And the other part of that on the battery warranty is there’s no clear evidence that you— like, it’s one of the big attack points of the anti-EV brigade is what happens in 8 years to the battery. I’m like, that’s just the warranty. You don’t ask people what happens in 1 year to their TV or 2 years to their fridge. That’s just, that’s just the warranty period of the battery. We have absolutely no evidence that batteries won’t last exceptionally long periods of time. In 10 years, if you— so if you buy a brand new car today, Chrishell, I think that’s— let’s talk about buying a brand new car today. I genuinely think that in 10 years from now, you’re gonna— you’re still gonna have a wonderful car that’s gonna have a far lower cost of ownership, which is critical. If you look after it well, its battery will still be in exceptional form based on all the data we currently have.

[00:20:41] Stephen Fenech: But then low maintenance costs too. Low maintenance costs. That’s the thing too, you gotta keep in mind that when you’re buying an EV, there is, you can plan the savings. You’re not paying for petrol and maintenance costs are lower.

[00:20:52] Trevor Long: And then if you do opt to go secondhand with the vehicle, then my main thing would be, and I think Stephen, you might agree with this, is try and get a battery health report. Like, I think it’s almost incumbent upon anyone trying to sell an EV today to do a battery health check because they’re available.

[00:21:09] Stephen Fenech: If it’s a worthy secondhand sale, it probably would already have a battery health report. What do you mean by that? You know, if it’s for sale and they’ve probably got a battery health report to show. I don’t think that’s guaranteed at all.

[00:21:21] Trevor Long: Most people aren’t thinking of that. That’s what we’re saying is Pickles is doing it right. Yeah, Pickles is doing it. Yeah, but I’m not sure the average private sale or even the average car dealership is yet at the point of Pickles where they’re actually doing these reports enough. Well, that’s what They need to do that.

[00:21:34] Stephen Fenech: They do. Absolutely. Well, you know, we’ll put it this way. If it does have a battery health report, you know, that’s a winner.

[00:21:39] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:21:39] Stephen Fenech: You know, they’re fair dinkum.

[00:21:40] Trevor Long: What have you seen in the secondhand market other than Teslas, or is that, you know, piqued your interest at all?

[00:21:47] Kushal: Not really. I’m not a Tesla fan, so I don’t really want to. Even though I know it’s a great car. Are you not an Elon fan?

[00:21:56] Trevor Long: Can we be honest about this, Kushal? Yes. Yes. I ask that because it’s fascinating.

[00:22:03] Stephen Fenech: Trev’s the same. Trev’s the same.

[00:22:04] Trevor Long: Yeah, I asked that because I think it’s really interesting research for a brand to be so maligned by an individual. So yeah, well played. So what have you seen out there that you might look for if it’s secondhand?

[00:22:19] Kushal: I’m not sure. I haven’t really spent too much time looking at the secondhand.

[00:22:25] Stephen Fenech: Can we make some suggestions? Can we suggest? Like, obviously, there’s gonna be a lot of secondhand Teslas. That’s a no. Even, even like, and we know there’s a lot of other brands that are so new that there are not many secondhand models out there.

[00:22:39] Trevor Long: Yeah, BYD Atto 3 would be good.

[00:22:41] Stephen Fenech: I was going to say BYD, a lot of really secondhand vehicles. But also too, if you want to get like maybe a luxury brand, a secondhand luxury brand, what may be the same price as a brand new Chinese brand in an EV too. So you, I think you mentioned, did you mention BMW earlier as well?

[00:22:58] Kushal: BMW. Yes.

[00:22:59] Stephen Fenech: BMW. So maybe that’s a Mercedes. Have— I reckon the— I’ve just handed back my Mercedes.

[00:23:05] Trevor Long: We know of an EQE out there right now that’s been low case, low case.

[00:23:09] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, very low case. But I do know that Mercedes, you look on car sales, there’s lots of Mercedes EVs and not my car, but it’s in good condition. But there’s other— others you might get at a good price.

[00:23:23] Trevor Long: Have you got a budget in mind, Kushal?

[00:23:25] Kushal: It’s roughly like $60K. Under $60K and—

[00:23:31] Trevor Long: but you’ve been driving a Toyota Corolla for 8 years, mate, and you’ve got a budget under $60K. Honestly, I’d be getting a new car, mate. Go and drive the, the Geely EX2, the MG4, BYD, all the BYDs, Atto’s. There’s a new Atto that was just announced a month or so ago, the Atto 3 Evo. Yeah, honestly, I think what what you get from that ownership experience from day one, especially given you’re likely to hold on to it for such a long time. Yes. No, no question.

[00:24:02] Stephen Fenech: Can I also suggest Geely? The baby, the EX5?

[00:24:06] Trevor Long: Uh, yeah, the size of Corolla.

[00:24:10] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, the EX2. Are you looking for a similar size car to the Corolla? You want something? No, I want something bigger. Like, you want SUV? You’re laughing.

[00:24:19] Trevor Long: You’re after that?

[00:24:19] Stephen Fenech: Okay, well, mate, give the EX5 a crack. Back. I reckon the Deepal as well. The Deepal, what’s the, the, the 5, J5? No, that’s the JQ. Sorry, the JQ J5 is— that’s bang for your buck there too.

[00:24:34] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:24:34] Kushal: Huge, huge savings and well under your budget. Just— yeah, well under my budget. Yes. The other thing is I did look at— I was going to drive the Geely. So this comes back to something that you have been discussing in previous shows is dealer experience. Yeah. I went to Geely. I had booked in an appointment for a test drive.

[00:24:51] Kushal: I actually arrived 45 minutes late.

[00:24:55] Kushal: And, uh, I went in there, there was one salesperson, and there were 3 people in line waiting ahead of me to do a test drive. So it’s— I don’t know what they were doing. Um, I didn’t even wait. I wait— I think I waited for 15 minutes and I then left. Uh, you were the one that was late.

[00:25:15] Stephen Fenech: You were like that, you missed yourself.

[00:25:17] Kushal: I was late. Yeah. But yeah, there were they were not even honoring the appointments. They were just— it was just first come, first served.

[00:25:25] Trevor Long: Yeah, actually, when you say if you were late, the queue should have been shorter because people’s appointments should have been brought up a bit. Yeah. But, you know, I would say this. We’ve had a lot of conversations, as you rightly mentioned, about the dealership experience from a lot of people about a lot of different car brands. I would try another one because it feels to me like it’s not actually the brand. It’s very much localized. It feels like you can have a vastly different experience from a dealership on one side of the city to another. So it might be worth just taking a weekend road trip and having a look at a different dealership to see whether or not you might get a much better experience.

[00:25:58] Kushal: Yes, I think I’m planning to do that over this weekend. I’m going to another Geely dealer and we’ll see how it goes.

[00:26:06] Trevor Long: Well, it seems like we need to follow this journey, mate. It feels like in a little while we need to hear back from you about what you’ve driven and where you end up, mate. Do you think you’ll make a decision before Christmas?

[00:26:18] Kushal: I want to because I definitely want to make most use of the FBT exemption, and I know it’s going to be taken off in a couple of years. Um, yeah, so yeah, I would like to make use of that. But before I go, I just had maybe a couple of questions. So one being, uh, there’s all this talk about NMC battery versus LFP battery. In your experience, does it really matter if I’m just charging it to 80-85% every time? It doesn’t matter at all.

[00:26:49] Trevor Long: Doesn’t matter. And there’s a couple of things there. We’ve learned from Brendan Pickles. Again, we cite that because they’ve been great to us with their information and sharing their data. The basic information here is if you’re only ever charging at home on a slow charger, it doesn’t matter where you charge it to, mate. The thing’s gonna be fine. If you’re using ultra fast, super fast chargers regularly, then you need to be very cautious about to what level you charge regularly and all those kind of things. But even then, the degradation is nowhere we thought it was. But I think for the average owner, it’s smart to keep it between 20 and 80 just for your own peace of mind. Then have absolutely no hesitation in putting it to 100 at any point in time because you need it. There’s really nothing to worry about there. There’s obviously a life efficiency that you get from being able to charge regularly to 100 with an LFP. Yeah, but there’s also a density issue with an LFP that they’re a much bigger battery. So that’s why the other companies aren’t always using that technology because they can fit denser, bigger, higher energy batteries in their cars. So honestly, what I would say is is, I wouldn’t even look at the battery technology. Some people will think that’s ridiculous, but I don’t think it matters. It’s a battery.

[00:27:52] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that’s a battery. Exactly. Exactly. It’s got a battery. That’s all you got to worry about. What was the other question you had, mate?

[00:27:58] Kushal: The other was more about the— because I told you that my car usually sits in the driveway for like 4 or 5 days a week in summer. It’s going to be hot out there. Does— how badly, you know, how does the battery get affected? Do I need to think about—

[00:28:14] Trevor Long: No, it’s not too bad.

[00:28:15] Stephen Fenech: Bad. We often travel, we leave our EVs for weeks at a time and we only lose a couple of percent of battery. But, you know, yours undercover or yours out? No, no, mine’s undercover, but outside. Yeah, outside. Look, the heat might be an extra percent you lose, mate.

[00:28:32] Trevor Long: The heat’s going to be a bigger issue for the paint and the interior than it is for the battery. Not for the battery. If your car is genuinely outside in the summer sun a lot, mate, tint the windows to protect the interior of the car, not the battery. The battery is not going to be your issue. That’s just fine. Because batteries just sit, they’re stagnant. It’s what you need to do with them that matters. So you don’t need to warm up a car like we used to, but a battery sometimes need to be warmed or cooled based on your ability to charge. And the car’s doing that for you. The best cars will modulate the temperature on their own. Other cars, you just need to know that if you pull up at a fast charger and the battery is at a low temperature, it might take a little bit longer to ramp up the charging. But that’s really the only effect. Again, And again, you’ll never notice, Kushal, you’ll never notice. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Mate, good luck with the journey, my friend. Thank you for asking us those questions and for getting in touch. And we look forward to finding out where you end up, mate.

[00:29:24] Kushal: Yep. Thank you. Thank you for the help. It’s a great show. I have to say.

[00:29:27] Stephen Fenech: I’m dying to know what you buy.

[00:29:31] Kushal: Yeah. I’ll call you back in a couple of months.

[00:29:33] Trevor Long: Good on you, mate. Great stuff.

[00:29:34] Kushal: Actually, with something. And I have to say this one last thing. I think you guys are doing great. And even better than any salesperson I’ve met so far, they don’t know as much. I mean, I’m asking them questions they don’t have any clue about. And I think that that’s a bit of a training that they should do. They should just listen to your podcast.

[00:29:53] Stephen Fenech: Boom, there’s our pull quote.

[00:29:54] Trevor Long: You heard it here, folks. Mate, Kushal, lovely to hear from you, mate. Thank you so much. Thank you. Cheers, good on you, mate. Thank you. There you go. I mean, that’s some lovely, very, we really appreciate the lovely comments from people.

[00:30:05] Stephen Fenech: Very kind words. And hey, we’re not trying to sell you Tell anything. you anything. That’s the other thing too. Like, you go to a dealer, they’re trying to tell you something, which is why it’s ridiculous that they don’t know how to sell these. Yeah, I know.

[00:30:15] Trevor Long: To his point, they’re the ones that are trying to sell them.

[00:30:17] Stephen Fenech: They’re trying to sell them.

[00:30:18] Trevor Long: Here we are. Anyway, two blokes talking electric cars. After this, we’re getting— we’re going around the block. Is that what we call it? Yeah, around the block. Around the block in the BYD Sea Lion 7. Welcome back to Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars, and we are inside, Stephen, the BYD Sea Lion 7.

[00:30:46] Stephen Fenech: I’ve had huge raps on this car.

[00:30:47] Trevor Long: I drove it once for a brief time a year or so ago. I actually gave this best car last year. I’m enjoying this. Um, now the first thing I— because I picked it up and then I gave you the keys, um, and I said to you, I think this thing is super impressive for a couple of reasons. First honestly, the screens are excellent, and you’ve got a head-up display as well. And the thing that I did—

[00:31:06] Stephen Fenech: very good heads-up, so I’ve got to say, that is a, that is a really cool heads-up display. A lot of information there without being too distracting.

[00:31:12] Trevor Long: And we’ll talk me through, what are you seeing?

[00:31:14] Stephen Fenech: Because, well, there is—

[00:31:14] Trevor Long: viewers aren’t seeing— we’ve got—

[00:31:15] Stephen Fenech: I’ve got the speed limit, I’ve got my current speed. Yep. And I’ve also, like, if I’m navigating, it’s got the directions. It’s even showing me, showing me where I need to go.

[00:31:25] Trevor Long: Right. As well, have you navigated this with Waze? I have, yep. Did you notice that you get the, the Waze input goes into the instrument cluster and the directions are in the head-up display? Absolutely. Like, it’s excellent. That, that from a technology perspective, I just think they’ve incorporated everything. Cuz you think about these, you know, cheap Chinese cars, they could easily not incorporate some of the, some of the more modern Apple technologies. Cuz the ability to show Waze not only on the Apple CarPlay screen but also on here. Well, firstly, on the instrument cluster, yep, is, is it, it’s an add-on. You’ve got to, you’ve got to enable that in your instrument cluster. So big fan of that. A big fan of the general layout. Big tick. Wireless charging.

[00:32:05] Stephen Fenech: The, uh, the space, it’s quite roomy. This is a larger SUV.

[00:32:08] Trevor Long: This is, yeah, this is your size. Yeah, I’m, I’m not judging, I’m just saying that I’ve seen you in a lot of cars. Yes, this suits you perfectly. Yep. I really like the size of this car. I agree, it’s a family car for sure. Now, would I put 3 adults in the back for a trip up to the restaurant or somewhere. Sure, fit in there, no problem at all. But on a road trip, 4 adults easy, family, you know, kids are going to be nagging.

[00:32:31] Stephen Fenech: Plenty of space up the back too, but plenty of space here too. Look, look at all the space we’ve got here.

[00:32:34] Trevor Long: For sure, it is remarkable. It’s really, really good, and it’s, it’s a really nice trim too. I love the trim.

[00:32:39] Stephen Fenech: I was going to say, that’s— is that— that’s not leather, it’s sort of leather-like. No, it’s all leather-like and vegan leather or something, is it?

[00:32:45] Trevor Long: Yeah, it’s, uh, some, some nice stuff.

[00:32:48] Stephen Fenech: But mate, you You know what, this sort of like— no, no joke, this has got the sort of the stitching and the finish that you’d find in a Mercedes. 100%, you know, it’s really nicely appointed. Yeah, I mean, look, design-wise, I love this.

[00:32:59] Trevor Long: So BYD, I don’t know, I think they’ve got 4 main designers or something. I’m not— I’m making this up, but when you look at their lineup, the ATTO 1, the ATTO 2, the ATTO 3, and the Seal/Sea Lion, they’re all different looks. They don’t look like they’re from the same family.

[00:33:14] Stephen Fenech: No, you’re right, they’ve got their distinct sort of, uh, their distinct features.

[00:33:17] Trevor Long: This is the look would pick. I loved the Seal, the sedan, when it came out.

[00:33:21] Stephen Fenech: This has kind of the Seal DNA. That’s what I’m saying.

[00:33:24] Trevor Long: This is Seal. This is the same designer. You’re right. But yep, in between, I prefer this look. So just the front end, just the headlights and stuff. I prefer this to an ATTO every day of the week. MATTO 1 is my— I’d love that. The person who designed that car, I want them design something bigger from, from—

[00:33:39] Stephen Fenech: but also too, we should consider the, uh, the, the range. Range is 450 86k.

[00:33:45] Trevor Long: Not bad, decent.

[00:33:47] Stephen Fenech: Well, that’s the thing with the, the BYD models, not only they get bigger but also the range increases on the, on the— yeah, right, as well. So pretty good.

[00:33:55] Trevor Long: Um, and also this is a couple of year old kind of, uh, model of car, so, you know, range has improved dramatically on cars in that time. So you can imagine a follow-up vehicle to this from BYD will get improved range, but this is in the in the area that is completely fine for people unless they’re super range anxious.

[00:34:16] Stephen Fenech: We should mention too, this is fully electric, not a hybrid. The Sea Lion 6 is hybrid.

[00:34:21] Trevor Long: Yes, the only way I remember that is because the Shark, they call the Shark 6, is a hybrid. And so I go, oh, Sea Lion 6, it’s got a 6, it’s a hybrid. Okay. Yeah, so it’s fully electric. It’s got the punch, it’s got a really nice ride. I feel it feels good directional steering as well.

[00:34:37] Stephen Fenech: It’s, I’ve got to say, I’d say not quite, it’s a touch softer on like a softer drive.

[00:34:41] Trevor Long: Yeah, but I think that’s something that BYD plays into because for the average— it’s for everyone. Yeah, for everyone. As a family, mum and dad taxi, this is— so this is the thing, what’s this worth price-wise?

[00:34:55] Stephen Fenech: It starts at $53,990 for the entry, and then I think it’s $64,990 for the Performance.

[00:35:01] Trevor Long: So it’s cheaper than a Model Y. Yeah, sure, it doesn’t have the third row of a Model Y L and stuff that. But for the size of it, the space you get, I think people buy this and they go— they will show off how premium the car is that they bought.

[00:35:14] Stephen Fenech: That’s a good word. Premium is how it feels. You’ve got lots of storage space here. You’ve got your cup holders, a second layer down the bottom here. You’ve got a nice center console to store stuff as well. Big infotainment screen. That’s— what’s that, 15 inches?

[00:35:26] Trevor Long: I’d say 14. Yeah, we’re not looking at specs here, we’re just using a decent size. Yeah, you’re right, I think it’s 15. Yeah, um, yeah, I’m a big fan.

[00:35:34] Stephen Fenech: Plenty, and a lot of boot space. Have we mentioned that already? Like, plenty of room in the back. Golf clubs will fit in there, not a problem. Selling like hotcakes too. Yeah, you see so many on the road.

[00:35:43] Trevor Long: I think it was a top 10 car last, last couple of months ago.

[00:35:48] Stephen Fenech: Um, I can understand why. Like, you think about it, right? You get— you say you get into a— you look and you’re doing your test drives, you might have looked at a Tesla, you might have looked at other models. Tesla’s going to be more expensive than this, of course, yeah, and less space. So I think, yeah, you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck here.

[00:36:03] Trevor Long: Yeah, I think this is a really good example of BYD in the market. They’ve just— they’ve found, like, the, the original ATTO 3 was an SUV, but it was a small SUV. But the critical thing is they realized they needed to continue in the SUV space. They’ve now got a wagon, they’ve got the sedan, they’ve got the Denza brand to do larger cars, like It’s a— I don’t think you can go too wrong with BYD. And isn’t it interesting, if we just reflect on the, I would say, month and a half of bad calls we got.

[00:36:34] Stephen Fenech: There was a few. Haven’t had any since.

[00:36:36] Trevor Long: This is right, you—

[00:36:37] Stephen Fenech: that’s, that’s correct. Yeah, I think they might have heard, uh, from, from our listeners.

[00:36:42] Trevor Long: Maybe they’re lifting their game. Well, you know what, that’s a good thing. I think it’s a good thing. And look, I think that people— that’s part Part of the experience for us is understanding from people their experience, and because we want to pass that on to the car companies, we want to make sure that that’s part of what everyone else hears and sees in their buying experience. You know, there’s places to avoid, there’s reasons to avoid them, but give us the details. I’ll just say out loud, we’ve had a guy contact us about another brand and very angry about it, but not willing to talk publicly because they think they’re going to the 8 triple seen all this.

[00:37:17] Stephen Fenech: I’m like, you know what, he did share it on Facebook though.

[00:37:18] Trevor Long: It’s not a— yeah, it’s— yeah, but it’s not a court case, you know.

[00:37:22] Stephen Fenech: If you, if you genuinely have an experience, you can share it.

[00:37:26] Trevor Long: Yeah, you can share it with us. We can’t solve the world’s problems in one go.

[00:37:29] Stephen Fenech: Absolutely right.

[00:37:30] Trevor Long: But it’s a real— it might be a reason other people shouldn’t buy that car.

[00:37:33] Stephen Fenech: But, but like you said, people have been pretty honest with us about their experience with BYD, good and bad. Yeah. But you can’t deny though that if you’re in the market for an EV EV, then this has to figure into that discussion.

[00:37:46] Trevor Long: Mate, I think this would be— this is a top 5 EV for me, guaranteed. Top 5. Like, the Zeekr 7X is getting a lot of good raps. Yep. Obviously Teslas are in there. I would pick this again for my best car because it’s an all-rounder. It fits the right segment, and I don’t think in a year— size, competitively priced— because the Zeekr 7X is, is a good challenger in terms of getting good wraps and everything. Yep. But I don’t— because it’s more expensive and it’s a different class of car. Yep. I think this is the genuine all-rounder electric car.

[00:38:19] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I think a lot of people agree with you because like I said, I’ve seen so many of these on the road. Uh, available in what, 4 colors? I think there are 4 colors. Blue. I like the black.

[00:38:28] Trevor Long: Just go the black. This is—

[00:38:29] Stephen Fenech: that’s what we’re driving.

[00:38:30] Trevor Long: You told me that you didn’t think black suited.

[00:38:32] Stephen Fenech: No, I think this is more— I like their blue, but they call it like Atlantic Gray or something. It’s like a bluey gray color.

[00:38:37] Trevor Long: I quite like about that one. Well, let us know what you think. If you’ve got a C-Line 7, you’ve owned it for a day or a year, we’d love to hear from you. 0477 657 657. We’re going to try and jump in the car every week. Next week we’re in the, the Kia EV6. EV6, the current model, so it’s like a— not a massive revamp, but it’s their, it’s their original electric car. So I look forward to driving that. Until then, we’d love to hear from you. 0477 657 657. Send us a text or a WhatsApp, we’ll get you on the show.