Another EV sales boom in April, with one in six cars sold being EVs. How does that stack up on the year, and which brands are booming.

We talk 12v Charging and how it works, hear how one car didn’t make it home on a regional road.

Emma is new to the EV world but loving her BYD with a shoutout to a dealer, and Chris is ready to take delivery of his Geely after a decent search for his next car.

Be part of the show, text or WhatsApp to 0477 657 657 thanks to Vodafone

Full AI Generated transcript below

[00:00:01] Trevor: This is Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars with Steven Fenech and Trevor Long. Thanks to NRMA Insurance and Uniden. Great to have your company. NRMA Insurance, helping Australians protect what matters most, and they have been doing for 100 years and many more to come. And they’re also one of Australia’s largest insurers of electric vehicles. So whatever car you’ve got, please do us a favor, ring NRMA Insurance or go online, get a quote for your next insurance renewal. Uh, all we ask is that you get a quote, they’ll be competitive wherever they can. And whatever car you’re driving, get yourself a dash cam. And Uniden provides some stunning models. The DashView 60R is the one with the Sony STARVIS sensor. Yes. Beautiful barrel model with rear camera.

[00:00:43] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:00:43] Trevor: It’s unbelievable quality, all controlled through an app. Watch the footage on the app and get great footage front and rear of whatever happens around you.

[00:00:50] Stephen: For your new EV or whatever car you happen to be driving.

[00:00:53] Trevor: Well, speaking of cars you’ve been driving, we spoke 4 weeks ago about the March car sales data, which was around 15% of cars sold were electric vehicles.

[00:01:02] Caller: Yep.

[00:01:02] Trevor: Oh, ladies and gentlemen, thanks to the fuel crisis, um, the, the market share for electric vehicles in, uh, in April— and I’ll just read some stats that, uh, Paul, uh, the PR manager for BYD, shared on LinkedIn because I thought they were an interesting combination. Because we’ve spoken about this before, but there’s 2 sets of data about car sales.

[00:01:22] Stephen: Yep.

[00:01:23] Trevor: First is VFACS, which everyone but Tesla and Polestar are in. And so those numbers are often, there’s a percentage point off, and then you add the Polestar and BYD and Tesla numbers. So these include all of them. 16.97% of all cars sold in April were electric vehicles. Wow. In year to date, in 2026, 13.3% of all cars sold were electric. When you combine plug-in hybrid and electric, in April it was 27.5%. Wow. And year to date it’s 20%, which means that 1 in 4 Australians took delivery of a new energy vehicle last month, and 1 in 5 Australians have taken delivery of a new energy vehicle so far this year. But the headline is really 1 in 6 vehicles sold was electric last month.

[00:02:11] Stephen: Last month, that is incredible. And you know, and as we mentioned 4 weeks ago, this has always been building, but what’s topped it up, I guess, is the fuel crisis And I think it’s not the crisis, it’s the fuel uncertainty.

[00:02:25] Trevor: Well, yeah, and there was no doubt a crisis early on, but even though the prices have— well, I drive past petrol stations, the numbers seem to have come down. But I think about people in my family and people we speak to, and this has created knowledge among people that not only do prices fluctuate during the week, but they can go like this because of something that some bloke on the other side of the world does. And so that that lack of control that you have over petrol prices is a concern for people. And I think we said a month ago this would drive sales up. I said that I think they would go up in April and they have. I said I don’t know that they’ll go up again in May because I think there might be some supply issues.

[00:03:04] Stephen: All right, from the EV manufacturers.

[00:03:05] Trevor: I mean, the car, you know, do you think Kia’s got that many cars in the market? They’ve got to put them on a ship and bring them here. Yeah, so I think June, we’ll see.

[00:03:13] Stephen: We have heard you were mentioning that people have gotten their cars in a couple of weeks.

[00:03:18] Trevor: But. I wonder whether or not that’s because they’re in the country and they’re being sold out. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens in May. And I think June will be good again because everyone tries to push sales into June. But the other headline apart from the 1 in 6 and the 16%, Toyota was number 1 car sales, car company in Australia with 15,000 cars sold. BYD, the number 2 car brand in Australia with 7,700 sales beating Kia. Remember last month it was like 60 or 70 cars away from Kia. This month they’re more than 1,000 cars ahead of Kia.

[00:03:51] Stephen: Wow. Where does Tesla fit in?

[00:03:52] Trevor: They’re not even in the top 10. Is that right? No. So Isuzu Ute, 3,447. Tesla, they sold 400 Model 3s and 800 Model Ys. So 1,500 or plus.

[00:04:05] Stephen: So there’s some other brands that are really sort of making some inroads here. And I think that you’d think that the people that work in these companies would think, well, you know what, we know there’s gonna be, well, we know, they knew there’s demand there already. But they would have figured out what’s happening in Iran and all these other places. Yeah, we need to lift our game. Yeah, there’s gonna be a lot of people looking to get into the market. We want to have stock ready.

[00:04:28] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:04:28] Stephen: So I’d say that they would have called over to their production line, say, listen, we need more stock, let’s go.

[00:04:34] Trevor: Yep.

[00:04:35] Stephen: And someone’s coordinated that.

[00:04:37] Trevor: That will happen now. I think over the coming months those ships will start coming here with cars on board. In the top 10 vehicles, by the way, the RAV4 was the number one car, beat the Ford Ranger, which was huge, but that’s a new model. So they would have had a huge backorder or preorders. But in the into the top 10 for the first time is the BYD Sea Lion 7. So another electric vehicle in the top 10, which has happened before with Teslas and things, but 1,780, uh, BYD Sea Lion 7s were sold, which is the number one selling. The number two, Zeekr 7X. Yeah, wow, 973 of those.

[00:05:09] Stephen: Now, so popular.

[00:05:10] Trevor: I just got back from China and I was there with Geely and Zeekr, and their bosses were like, that’s a good number, but we can do way more. We can do better than that.

[00:05:18] Trevor: We can do way better than that. Tesla Model Y was the third best-selling car. The EV5 was the fourth best. And then Atto 3, Atto 2, Atto 1 in 5, 6, and 7.

[00:05:28] Stephen: Wow.

[00:05:29] Trevor: The BYD Dolphin in 9. So BYD had 5 vehicles in the top 10.

[00:05:35] Stephen: That’s amazing. That is amazing.

[00:05:37] Stephen: Yeah. Wow. They’re really, they’re moving, aren’t they?

[00:05:39] Trevor: They really are.

[00:05:40] Stephen: They’re going places.

[00:05:41] Trevor: Just in terms of other ones that don’t appear in the top of the charts and what, like on raw kind of percentages. Yep. Just on Zeekr, they had 58 sales last April. They had 1,006 this April.

[00:05:53] Trevor: Year on year, that’s—

[00:05:55] Stephen: they’re looking like a genius.

[00:05:56] Trevor: Crazy year-on-year growth. Geely went from 324 last year to 2,000 this year. So 519%. They have some hybrids and other cars, so they’re not all electric. BYD is up 140% year on year. Yeah.

[00:06:09] Stephen: Well, you know what? Word’s getting out there.

[00:06:12] Stephen: From, you know, because you know what? It’s, it’s, it’s word of mouth that, you know, people who drive their cars and how much they love them. They tell their friends and family.

[00:06:20] Stephen: Okay, well, maybe. And then all the other factors, of course, you know, people listening to this podcast and the whole political situation, it’s all leading onwards and upwards.

[00:06:31] Trevor: Well, there’s also uncertainty around financing and government rebates. We’ll talk about that at the end of the show because there’s been some news on the government rebates. But before we do that, we’ll take your calls. If you’ve got a question about electric cars, you want to buy an electric car, please look at our episodes on YouTube that’ll help you understand what to do before you buy a car. And then when you ‘How Do You Buy a Car?’ The things you need to know about owning an electric car. So have a look at those kind of episodes. They’ll be there forever for you to understand. But get in touch. We’d love to hear from you. 0477 657 657. That’s it. Stephen Frenick here for the dance moves. Um, 0477 657 657. If you want to be on the show, we’d love to hear from you. You can text us or send us a WhatsApp. Thanks to Vodafone. And we’ll get to you. There’s a lot of people that we haven’t gotten to yet. We have a backlog. Yes. We’re trying to get through.

[00:07:28] Stephen: Trying to clear the backlog.

[00:07:30] Trevor: Doing our darndest, Stephen. So we’ll keep going as we can. Chris though is on the line. G’day, Chris.

[00:07:36] Chris: G’day, how’s it going?

[00:07:37] Trevor: Really good, mate. Where are you at? You a petrol car or an EV owner?

[00:07:43] Chris: We are not an EV owner yet, but we’ve signed a lease on one soon. Where we started our journey was that we had a Kia Carnival which is a diesel, so we were really hurting with the recent fuel prices. And then we had a second car, which was supposed to be our runabout and my wife’s work car. It was an old beat-up Nissan Altima, and it was looking a bit long in the tooth. And we were— my wife’s been hassling me for a little while to upgrade, so we finally bit the bullet. We upgraded to a Mazda CX-5 2020 Akera with all the bells and whistles. We got a great driveaway price, bought it outright, And then 2 weeks later, she sort of said to me, you know what, I think I messed up. And I think we should have looked closer at EVs because the fuel price is hurting us. And maybe this is not the right runabout second car that we should have, you know.

[00:08:42] Trevor: So are you keeping the Carnival and you’re looking for a second car, or you’re now thinking we’ll keep the Mazda as one car and we’re looking for something to replace— you get to get rid of both the original cars?

[00:08:54] Chris: We’ve got 3 kids and a very active lifestyle. So the Kia Carnival is a must. It performed great over long distances. It only cost us about $400 in fuel recently to go to Sydney and back. We did it in 2 tanks.

[00:09:09] Trevor: Where are you from?

[00:09:11] Chris: Melbourne. And we drove up to Sydney over the Easter long weekend. So that was good. But the Mazda, I think, yeah, it’s ripe to be replaced with the EV already.

[00:09:22] Stephen: A couple of things stood out to me in that conversation. One, your wife admitted she was Wrong. Amazing.

[00:09:30] Chris: Yeah, that’s a rarity.

[00:09:32] Stephen: Number 2, she’s the one who suggested the EV. Normally it’s the guy, the husband, the partner convincing the treasurer that they want to go EV. So your wife is, well, yeah, she’s a smart woman. Well, she married you for a start, but also she wants the EV. So yeah. So how did you, where did you take the next step? What did you have in mind for your EV?

[00:09:55] Chris: Well, yeah, I guess because we both have access to salary packaging and we were looking at it a little bit more closer with the FBT and GST discount at the moment. And we sort of thought, well, if we sell the Mazda, we could easily get into an EV and sort of delay some of those costs and spread them out over the next 4 to 5 years. So we actually started by booking a test drive with the Kia EV5.

[00:10:22] Chris: And that was actually fantastic drive. A little bit weird with the center console not being a console, sort of an unusable—

[00:10:31] Trevor: a weird bench seat that can’t be sat in. Yeah, go on.

[00:10:34] Chris: Yes, yeah, exactly. And we sort of felt, yeah, really well-refined tech, but maybe not quite the price point for what you get compared to some of the other cars. Just didn’t seem to make sense to us. And I think our budget, we really want to stay sort of as close or near to that purchase price of the Mazda Otherwise it doesn’t make sense, which is how much to sell that.

[00:10:58] Chris: So we, we, yeah, well, we, we only paid $31,000 drive away for that Mazda, but I think for an EV we were sort of saying $40,000 to $45,000 and we would be okay with the FBT and GST discounts and all that sort of all working out as equal.

[00:11:14] Chris: So the Kia EV5, then we went to the Geely, the extended The EX5. Um, yeah, funny. CX-5 to EX5, maybe. Um, yeah, that— the Geely, uh, the first time we drove it, we were all a little bit overwhelmed by all the tech and everything and, and the bright— the, the white interior, the, the, you know, the loftiness of it. Um, we kind of got a bit— we were a bit overwhelmed. Um, we also tried the BYD Sea Lion 7. Um, we sort of didn’t we didn’t like the vision out the back. And I think my daughter, who’s particularly sensitive to motion sickness, didn’t enjoy that either.

[00:11:55] Chris: And so we— the sales experience at BYD also wasn’t that great, which I think many people have sort of spoken about. And the test— the opportunity to test drive was extremely limited. So it didn’t feel like we could really consider it.

[00:12:09] Stephen: Did you book that online? That’s what they specify. You got to book online. To do for the test drive? Did you do all that? Was it a bit of a—

[00:12:17] Chris: We booked online, showed up at the specific time, and it was sort of like we had to beg someone for attention and to help us sort out our test drive. And, and then once we got the test drive, as soon as we sort of got the keys, they said, you need to be back in 10 minutes. No highway driving. And yeah. And then once we had— once we returned, they just took the keys off us, handed it to the next person. There was no like, what do you think? How you going?

[00:12:43] Stephen: Really?

[00:12:44] Chris: So we were sort of like, That’s disappointing, mate.

[00:12:46] Trevor: And, you know, it’s not the first time we’ve heard it, but we’ve also heard positive stories. But it’s certainly a really important thing for the industry generally to understand. You said you’ve got a lease in place now, so where have you ended?

[00:12:59] Chris: Yeah, so we actually test drove a couple more, the JQ J5 and the GAC Aion, but we actually went back to the Geely for two more test drives and that’s where we’ve landed. Yeah, we actually found that. Yeah, it was actually once we understood how to use the regenerative braking and things and acclimatise our style of driving, it was actually fantastic.

[00:13:24] Stephen: I take it this was the first time you’ve driven an EV, mate, with these test drives, was it?

[00:13:30] Chris: Yeah, quite, quite a different driving style from a, you know, a diesel Kia Carnival as your daily to an EV. Really different.

[00:13:39] Trevor: And understand that it’s actually a thing you’re going to learn and you think you’re going to get used to in that sense, which is fine. You’ve done a good job there.

[00:13:48] Stephen: You mentioned one car that I was going to suggest. You said you just drove the JQ J5. You said you got your budgets around $40K.

[00:13:56] Trevor: That’s perfect.

[00:13:56] Stephen: J5 sits perfectly in that and actually gets— we’ve mentioned on the show before, a lot of bang for your buck.

[00:14:02] Trevor: Why didn’t that get the vote, mate?

[00:14:04] Chris: The JQ, that was an interesting one. I think we felt, yes, fantastic value for money, no doubt. In fact, we would be making money if we, if we bought that car. I think we just felt the interior was a little bit small for the 3 kids, although the storage space in the boot was fantastic. And we sort of thought that the tech was great, but then over the air, no over-the-air updates. And there were a few things they were saying they may tweak, but they may not. And they can’t provide clarity on whether that will come or not.

[00:14:36] Trevor: Confidence. Yeah. That makes, that makes a lot of sense.

[00:14:39] Stephen: So the Geely sounds like ticked more boxes, most of your boxes for you, and that’s what you’ve settled on, eh?

[00:14:45] Chris: Exactly.

[00:14:46] Trevor: Exactly right. And now quickly, before we let you go, how long till you pick it up and have you got charging sorted at home or are you just going to trickle for the, for the first bit?

[00:14:56] Chris: We’re supposed to pick it up this month, but we haven’t confirmed a date with them. We got— we are going to go with the trickle charger, but they actually threw in a wall charger as part of the promotion as well. Even though we didn’t get finance with Geely. So yeah.

[00:15:13] Stephen: Okay. I’m just going to get a sparky to then install it. What do you got, 3-phase at home? You should be fine.

[00:15:17] Chris: Yeah, we, yeah, we were on single-phase, but our neighbor, the sparky. So yeah, we’ll be on to him very quick.

[00:15:25] Trevor: Nice, mate. You’ve done very well. That’ll be a great car for you. We look forward to hearing from you in a couple of months once you’ve had it for a bit and you’ve done some driving. You can give us some feedback, a little review. But, you know, I don’t think you’ll look back, mate. It’s a great little car. You’ve still got the Carnival for the bigger trips and for the more, more space for the kids as they grow up as well. It’ll work out very well for you, mate. What a great buying experience, mate. Thanks for sharing it with us.

[00:15:47] Chris: Yeah, thanks for having me.

[00:15:48] Trevor: No worries at all, mate. Good on you there. That’s exactly the kind of experience that people are going through right now. And as we talked about earlier, the sales numbers, I mean, I don’t know when he’s gonna get a date for the pickup because they sold a couple of thousand of them. They sold a few of them. They sold a bucketload last month.

[00:16:05] Stephen: What stood out for me, he knew what he wanted. They knew what they— you know, they’ve got kids, they need to do this, they do want to do that. And also that helped them narrow it down.

[00:16:13] Trevor: Going back and being willing to go back. Yeah, that would be a put off for the BYD experience too, because even though, yes, you had a bad experience the first time, imagine going back to drive it again and they’re like, no, 10 more minutes. You know, they drove that Geely at least 3 times. That’s, that sold them on the car. So yeah, it shows how important it is, folks. And if you had a buying experience you want to share with us, 0477 657 657. We’d love to hear from you. Electric cars. Thanks to NRMA Insurance and Unit N Smart Dash Cams. Support those brands. If you’re in the market for insurance, give them a call, at least get a quote to find out where you’re at when you’re in renewal or in purchasing mode. And whether you’ve got a brand new car, an old car, get yourself a dash cam. It gives you a great piece of mind. Taking your calls, 0477 657 657. Send us a text, we will get you on the line. Ronan’s there. G’day, Ronan.

[00:17:10] Ronan: Hey, g’day, boys. How we traveling, mate?

[00:17:11] Trevor: Really good. What can we do for you?

[00:17:14] Ronan: Yeah, you know, I was just, um, I sent a message to you just regarding— because I’ve just bought a new Jayco.

[00:17:20] Trevor: Yeah, the J5. Yeah, excellent. We were just talking about that with another caller.

[00:17:25] Ronan: Oh, well, yeah, no, and absolutely love it.

[00:17:29] Ronan: It’s fantastic. But last week my wife bricked it. She went right down to zero and had to pull over on the side of the freeway.

[00:17:41] Trevor: Oh, that’s not good.

[00:17:43] Ronan: And no, and she said she just couldn’t drive it any further because it had, you know, like 20-odd kilometres left and she only had 8 kilometres to get home.

[00:17:57] Trevor: On the freeway. She was on the freeway.

[00:18:00] Ronan: On the freeway. Yeah.

[00:18:01] Trevor: Yeah. So just rewind for a second there because you make a good point, Stephen. Yeah. She had 20 kilometers on the gauge and 8 kilometers to go before she left on that journey. And that journey was on the freeway. Is that what you were saying?

[00:18:14] Ronan: Yeah, it was. She’d left Bendigo and was traveling home, which is about 70, 80 kilometers. And she had plenty of, plenty of charge in that. And it was at night too. So she wasn’t too keen on using the charger on her own in Bendigo.

[00:18:35] Ronan: So she thought she had enough and anyway, she bricked it and the Jayco Roadside Assist are absolutely fantastic.

[00:18:43] Stephen: They were great.

[00:18:43] Trevor: Even out there, which is great to hear.

[00:18:46] Ronan: Yeah, they came out, they picked her up, brought the car home.

[00:18:49] Stephen: Because we’ve spoken, yeah, we’ve spoken a few times about the freeway difference between freeway driving.

[00:18:57] Stephen: The range could be a bit trickier on the freeway because it’s opposite of a petrol car. And actually, petrol cars love the freeway, whereas EVs love the stop and start.

[00:19:07] Trevor: But yeah, and on the highway— and I don’t want to be kind of rude or arrogant, but she learned that from this, that essentially the range you’re seeing on a freeway is something you need to be a bit cautious about trusting.

[00:19:18] Ronan: Oh my word, she’s learned from it. Absolutely.

[00:19:19] Trevor: But is But is she worried about like, if that happened to my wife, yeah, mate, she would tell me to get a petrol car. Like she would say, get it, get another car in the driveway. Like she would just go, this is not happening to me again. Like, has it?

[00:19:30] Stephen: How’s she feeling about it now?

[00:19:32] Ronan: Yeah, I can’t even— I’m not— I can’t even get to drive it anymore.

[00:19:36] Trevor: She drives it all the time. She still loves it. She still loves it.

[00:19:38] Ronan: Okay. Oh, she absolutely loves it. And she’s, she’s taken it off again today and left me with the diesel Land Rover.

[00:19:47] Stephen: Oh, that’s good. That hasn’t discouraged her.

[00:19:49] Trevor: Yeah, that’s great. I’m pleased to hear that, mate. Yes.

[00:19:52] Ronan: And just one of the questions I had was, you know, they’ve got a 12-volt battery in them.

[00:20:00] Ronan: How do they charge?

[00:20:01] Trevor: You know, it’s a fascinating question because especially in the Kia world, there’s been a lot of issues with the, with the 12-volt batteries across the EV6, EV9 and others. And it was, it was fixed in a software update broadly. But I will admit that we’ve had roadside to our house twice and once in a random car park. First time was very early in the ownership experience because of the software issue. Second time, yeah, we were like, this is weird because it was meant to have been fixed and what’s happening? But it was actually a faulty battery. So the 12-volt was faulty. Wow.

[00:20:30] Stephen: You’ve had no luck.

[00:20:31] Trevor: Yeah. And the third time it’s like, wait, what’s going on here? This doesn’t make any sense. But there is an alarm on the car for a rear seat sensor problem. And it’s like, we don’t really care because the rear seat doesn’t get used much. But the guy at the roadside basically said, look, the battery’s fine, the software is fine. His suspicion was that it was being drained by that fault. So in really simple terms, things like your car being parked and the lights being on in a petrol car drains your battery. So in an electric car, one of the concerns that needs to be really properly fixed with software in all cars is, is your car waiting for you? So if it’s unlocked, is your car kind of of working, thinking, is this person near me now? I’m waiting for a fingerprint to unlock and little things like that. That actually is using the 12-volt battery because the big battery that drives your car is not used for any of the software in the car, any of the screens and infotainment or anything like that. And what I learned, Ronan, to answer your question, is the little 12-volt battery can’t be jump-started by the big, you know, 98-kilowatt battery.

[00:21:38] Stephen: You need to drive.

[00:21:38] Trevor: You got to drive just like in a petrol car. It’s got to be on the road. And so while ever you are in motion, the 12-volt is being topped up in the same way that it is when you’re driving a petrol car, which is insane to me. There should be a button you could push to go, you know what, just take a bit of a divert. Give me some power. Give me that. I’ve ended up buying— and look, sorry, I’ll be very, very clear, I haven’t bought, I’m reviewing, with thanks to CTEK, a couple of those little 12-volt jump starters. Yeah. Because you know what? It can happen. And look, it goes to that point earlier. If it happened to my wife on the freeway, it’d be drama. Well, Amanda is not annoyed by the roadside problem we had a couple of times ’cause I’ve explained it to her, but I don’t want me to be overseas and her to have to have that problem and can’t take the kids wherever. I want a solution.

[00:22:27] Stephen: In my Merc, I’ve had a couple of warnings to say, you know, critical condition level ’cause I haven’t driven the car for like a week or two.

[00:22:33] Trevor: I get him in the Cupra and Jackson texts me, goes, “This is a message.” And what we think, Ronan, is it’s the dash cam because the dash cam is in parking mode and it is using the 12-volt and the car is being smart enough to go, hey, there’s a problem. There’s a 12-volt. Parking mode, you’re right. So that’s again why you should get one of the CTEKs as well and have it plugged into your car when it’s parked for long periods. So basically, Ronan, it is just like a normal car. It’s got to be driven for that 12-volt to be used.

[00:23:01] Ronan: Yeah, well, and ‘Cause what happened when we got it home, we couldn’t open the— Yes, I was going to say the petrol flap, but the—

[00:23:08] Stephen: Yeah, the charging flap.

[00:23:11] Ronan: The charging port. Yeah, the charging port. We couldn’t open it.

[00:23:14] Stephen: ‘Cause of the battery, ’cause the dead battery.

[00:23:15] Trevor: 12-volt uses the bloody—

[00:23:17] Stephen: What? How ironic.

[00:23:20] Trevor: Wow. There’s 2 batteries in the car. One of them’s flat. Oh no. Yeah.

[00:23:26] Ronan: So we ended up calling Roadside Assist the next day and just said, look, can you send someone out? And they sent someone out.

[00:23:31] Stephen: And did they say you again?

[00:23:34] Ronan: Yeah, exactly right. Because the guy said, what’s going on with this car? And he actually put one of those little, you know, like jump starter things on it, on the battery. Yeah. And straight away everything turned on and I was able to actually plug the charger in and get it up, you know, use a trickle charger. So, you know, to get it working.

[00:23:55] Stephen: It’s a very good point you brought up. This is a very interesting topic for all owners because they’ve got to realize that the 12-volt is separate to the big battery. 12-volt battery.

[00:24:06] Stephen: To the main battery.

[00:24:07] Trevor: Don’t ignore those warnings. Like, I essentially am ignoring the warnings in the Cooper because it does get driven enough that it’s not an issue with the dashcam draining it in any period of time. Also, the dashcams are set to stop draining when they detect the 12-volt being at a certain point. So it’s actually an unnecessary warning regardless. But if you are someone that, you know, has your car parked for a long time or whatever and you worry about these things, it’s not a bad little backup to have, which frankly applies to petrol cars too.

[00:24:37] Stephen: One thing we have in common with it.

[00:24:38] Trevor: Yeah. You know what, Ronan? The most important thing to me is you’ve got a great car, you love it, and your wife has not been put off. And you’ve not been put off.

[00:24:46] Stephen: Very understanding wife.

[00:24:48] Trevor: By an issue that she had with range calculation, mate. So great to hear from you and great to hear that things are going well with the JACU, mate.

[00:24:56] Ronan: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I was one of these people that always had range anxiety before I bought one. So that’s why I didn’t get one. And now I’m, you know, I’ve had it for about 4 weeks Yep. I’m now getting used to, you know, knowing the limits of the battery and limits of what we can, where we can drive and that type of thing.

[00:25:15] Trevor: Shave off 25%, 30% just for safety on the freeway. And, and you’ll end up, you’ll end up with more than you need. And, you know, it’s obviously disappointing societally that your wife didn’t feel comfortable charging at night, but that’s unfortunate. But, you know, yeah, that’s right. Yeah. You know, also maybe think about what time of day to charge different, different things to be in preparation for that. So good learning. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:25:38] Ronan: Absolutely.

[00:25:38] Trevor: Good on you, mate. Great to hear from you, buddy.

[00:25:40] Ronan: It’s great. Thank you. Thank you very much for the call. See you later.

[00:25:43] Trevor: Thank you. Cheers, buddy. Thank you. Good to hear from you, mate. And yeah, I mean, it’s a simple thing. It’s very much— there’s always little things to learn.

[00:25:50] Stephen: And how good is it? Like, my wife would be like your wife said, I don’t want to drive this car ever again. That is really nice. Shout out to Mrs. Ronan.

[00:25:58] Trevor: I’m impressed.

[00:26:00] Trevor: We’d love to hear from you. 0477 657 657. That’s one of your best. If you’re not watching on YouTube, you’re missing out on Steven’s pure entertainment. Uh, we’d love to hear from you. Jeffrey’s on the line. G’day, Jeffrey.

[00:26:24] Jeffrey: Uh, how’s it going?

[00:26:25] Trevor: Yeah, really good, mate. What can we do for you? Are you, uh, you’ve got an EV or you’re interested in an EV?

[00:26:31] Jeffrey: We’ve just recently purchased a 7X Long Range.

[00:26:38] Trevor: Second best selling electric car last month.

[00:26:41] Jeffrey: Yes. And my question is with regards to charging, because at home I’ve got the solar 13 kilowatts on the roof. Yep. I’ve got a 42 kilowatt battery.

[00:26:52] Jeffrey: A FoxES battery. And I’ve heard mixed reports with regards to— because obviously most days the car isn’t home, so we’re on Globebird. There’s the Zero to Hero plan, I think it’s called. So during the day from 11 AM to 2 PM, we can get free electricity, free electricity off the grid. So what we do, we force charge the battery.

[00:27:19] Jeffrey: Get the battery topped up to 100%. Yep. The home battery is Is it worth my while at night? Obviously, when the car gets back and then at nighttime, instead of discharging the battery to make a bit more in terms of the feeding tariff, which is only $0.15, we set a schedule and then we discharge off the battery into the EV.

[00:27:40] Trevor: That’s a very nice report. It’s a great question because really, and I don’t think we can give you a single answer, but because I think it needs essentially a spreadsheet. Peak, you know, you kind of need to go, all right, because the other question I have with Glowbird, do they have an overnight rate, like a nighttime rate as well that’s super cheap, or is it a same rate all day except for that free period?

[00:28:02] Jeffrey: No, sorry. So with Glowbird, it’s a— so at nighttime, they don’t have an EV rate per se. So it’s about $0.34 to charge.

[00:28:11] Trevor: Even at like 1 AM?

[00:28:13] Stephen: Midnight to 6 AM? Really? Because, you know, we’ve heard of other plans. I’ve actually got over which is free 11 to 2, but midnight to 6 AM, I think it’s like $0.08 a kilowatt.

[00:28:23] Trevor: And so that’s exactly what I was going to say. Yeah, Jeffrey, is because, because you’re going to pay that higher amount. So $0.30 or $0.34 a kilowatt is a high number. Like, I don’t pay that and I’m not on any of these plans. Right. So it’s paying a higher amount to get that little bonus in the middle of the day, which is great because it’s charging up your battery. But your challenge is so with the 40 odd kilowatts of power, you really need to work out how much of that do you need for the house at night? Because what you don’t want is to be drawing on the grid more than you need to. Yeah. So you want to draw down the battery high, high tariff whenever you want. Honestly, I would lean towards shopping around for a plan that does have an overnight rate. Don’t worry about it. It might not be called an EV plan. It’s just overnight rates because those, that 8 cents or 10 cents, mate, even if it’s 15 cents, it’s still cheaper than the 34.

[00:29:15] Trevor: You can schedule your car to charge during those times. So in the, in the infotainment system and under, under charging, there’ll be an option to go, well, use charge between these hours or be ready by this time. And that’s a much smarter way to charge.

[00:29:29] Stephen: And so, Jeffrey, you don’t have a wall charger, do you? So you’re just granny charging or you’ve got a wall charger?

[00:29:35] Jeffrey: We’re just granny charging at the moment. But the, the overplan you’re talking about, it doesn’t exist anymore. So I looked into that one as well. So, so the OVO plan now is you get either free electricity or you get the cheap nighttime EV rate, which is like one or the other.

[00:29:54] Stephen: Really?

[00:29:55] Jeffrey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don’t get both anymore. So they’ve stopped that plan. But maybe a lot of customers—

[00:30:00] Trevor: I would argue that still sounds better to me than what you’re getting now, because in, in 3 hours for free electricity, you can only bring so much in, right?

[00:30:09] Trevor: But if you went, okay, I’ve got my solar system, I’m going to rely on the solar system because the car’s not home. I’m going to rely on the solar system to feed the battery during the day. Obviously sunny days, it’s going to be the best results. And then I’m going to use the overnight lower rate to charge the car trickle. And your only challenge is going to be on days where there isn’t sun. Do you need to go in and out? What do you need to do to tell the battery to take that overnight charge as well? So like if you look at— we watch the news every night and I watch the weather and Amanda always looks at what’s happening with the kids and their plans because of the weather. Like I think it’s still fascinating that we still We still hook ourselves, even though you can go to the BOM website, we still go, what’s happening on the news at 6 o’clock to find out what’s happening with the weather. And you go, well, the next 2 days are going to be cloudy. Let’s set it so the battery charges overnight as well as the car, because you can, you can put the washing machine, the dryer, the car, and the home battery on at that low rate overnight, which is probably smarter in some ways than getting free electricity during the day. It’s an individual thing though, mate. Really is.

[00:31:10] Jeffrey: But yes, because, yeah, yeah, the good thing about the GlobeAir plan, obviously on a day if it’s cloudy or it’s raining, I can force charge the battery from 11 to 2, and then I know that at nighttime I will have energy in the battery to use in the house. And but the challenge is also now with an EV now, because obviously with the granny charger, it doesn’t charge at a very fast rate, but that’s all right. Yeah, but it’s the amount of electricity we use now.

[00:31:39] Trevor: Have you calculated how much electricity you’re able to put into the battery in those 4 hours?

[00:31:46] Jeffrey: And because it’s, it’s because I can maximum discharge into battery at about 8 kilowatts and normally by the afternoon, even if by 2 o’clock it’s not full, I’ve still got a bit of solar because I’m in Queensland till about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. So majority of the times it does get close to 100%.

[00:32:06] Trevor: So what I would, what I would say to you in terms of doing these calculations, because again, I don’t I don’t want to suggest that we have the answer for you here, mate. I think what I would be doing as the nerd is going average out how many kilowatts you’re putting into the battery every day free and then work out what that would cost on the, on the low plan overnight with another provider and just see whether that is working out. Because in the end, like, Glowbird might be perfect for you. Let’s be clear, it may, it may be absolutely perfect. But the thing about these electricity providers right now is they’re getting us in with enticement like free electricity or EV plan. And it’s the, it’s the higher cost. Like when Stephen switched over, I looked at mine at home and I’ll do the same. But I worked out that the higher, you know, nighttime rate of, you know, 30-something cents per kilowatt was way more than I was currently paying. And so that’s when my usage is— it was, it was not going to be worth it for me. So you’ve got to be able to balance the enticement of the plan against your physical usage. So I do a bit of numbers on how much you’re drawing into the battery. And a little extra shop around because, mate, they’re all still keen to get your business. So, but in the end, in simple terms, I think that you’re, you’re definitely worth topping up the car if you want to go back to your original question. I think it’s totally fine to top up the car with, you know, maybe 10 or 15 or 20 kilowatts of that battery for free. But if your home doesn’t need that much at night. Yes.

[00:33:32] Stephen: And you sound like you— well, how big is your— but you’ve got a big home battery. Well, how big is the battery?

[00:33:38] Jeffrey: 42 kilowatts is the home battery. Pretty common during the day. We’ve got like a pool pump we’re running and obviously in summer at night we’ve got like 4 split system aircons we’re running. So yeah, so yeah, so it does. I’ve realized now with the EV, yeah, it’s— yeah, you use a lot more power obviously.

[00:34:00] Trevor: And the last thing I’d say, Jeffrey, is, mate, do the numbers on how much it’s costing you to plug that car in for 6 hours at 34 cents a kilowatt. It’s still way cheaper than petrol. So just remember that even though it’s expensive, it’s—

[00:34:16] Trevor: yeah, it’s all— what I— the calculation I encourage you to do, and again, it’s a spreadsheet nerd thing, is a cost per kilometer. So work out what the range of your car is that you’re getting, work out how many kilowatts are in there, work out a cost of full battery on your home electricity off the grid and then divide it into the kilometres. You work out that it might be $0.12 a kilometre and then do the calculations on your former petrol car and you’ll work out you were paying 2 to 3 times that per kilometre. And that’ll make you feel better about plugging into the grid.

[00:34:47] Jeffrey: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Because it’s all relative. Exactly. Getting the electricity from the battery, which is free, then obviously buying from the grid, but still way cheaper than if I was to go and have to fill up the car with petrol or diesel.

[00:35:02] Trevor: Or at a public charger. Yeah. Or at a public charger. Yeah. Or at a relevant charger.

[00:35:05] Stephen: It’d be more than 34 cents a kilowatt. It’d be way more than that.

[00:35:08] Trevor: All right, mate. Good luck. Sorry we couldn’t give you a direct answer, but hopefully all your conversation for everyone here. Food for thought though.

[00:35:13] Stephen: That’s very, how you thought it through.

[00:35:15] Jeffrey: I’ve got one other quick question if you don’t mind answering.

[00:35:19] Jeffrey: It’s to do with the charging. I’ve got, I don’t have a lithium phosphate battery. I’ve got, what is it called? Nickel, cadmium-ion batteries, and those ones you’re not meant to charge up to 100%. Is there a percentage that you’re meant to have it charged up to, or is there no—

[00:35:39] Stephen: it’s normally driving 80, 90.

[00:35:41] Trevor: Yeah, it’s normally 80%.

[00:35:43] Trevor: If you, if you just set it at 80% and live between 20 and 80 in all your life, and then on your road trips go to 100 and go down to wherever you want, like, mate, 80 is a good number. All the research, all the studies are showing that the batteries are surviving very well. Got great battery health if they’re treated, especially in slow charging circumstances. So if you were doing fast charging all the time, we would probably say be very cautious about what you do. You might want to go to 70% and more often than 80%. But mate, I don’t think you’ve got a problem at all. Slow charging, you’re good.

[00:36:12] Jeffrey: And with the 80%, if you get to 80%, because obviously on some days we don’t drive it much, is it not worth charging then on some nights and just letting it drop back down a bit lower to, you know, Well, just depend on what you’re doing that week.

[00:36:26] Stephen: If you know you’re only just going to be running around locally, then you should be fine. Charge it up.

[00:36:29] Trevor: The only reason we often say plug it in every night is for the habit, because we’re often talking to new owners.

[00:36:36] Trevor: You know, but even my wife, who’s, you know, very new to this broadly, is very much just in the groove of going, when it gets to 40, I’m going to start charging. But she’s not charging every day. So you’ll be fine, mate. You’ll be totally fine.

[00:36:49] Jeffrey: Okay. Yep. Okay. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Frank.

[00:36:51] Trevor: Good to hear from you, Mitch. Good man. Cheers. It’s Jeffrey in Queensland. Oh, what about the— just a little salt in the wounds there. Did you hear that? I’m in Queensland, so lots of sun. Yeah. He basically said, great place to have solar. What do you mean overcast?

[00:37:04] Stephen: Hey, yeah.

[00:37:06] Trevor: Good on him. Good on you, mate. Cheers.

[00:37:08] Stephen: Sounds like he’s got quite the system.

[00:37:10] Trevor: Yeah. Well done. All right. We’d love to hear from you. More calls after this. I thought we were just making faces.

[00:37:25] Stephen: I didn’t know what you were doing there.

[00:37:27] Trevor: I never know what you’re doing.

[00:37:28] Stephen: Very unpredictable, you are.

[00:37:30] Trevor: I’m unpredictable. Two blokes talking electric cars. Thanks to NRMA Insurance and Uniden dash cams. We’d love to hear from you. Send us a text or a WhatsApp. Just go on your phone and save it as Steven Fenwick.

[00:37:41] Stephen: Trevor Long’s personal line.

[00:37:43] Trevor: 047765 6557. Save it, save the number, call it Two Blokes and, uh, you’ve got us.

[00:37:49] Stephen: That’s your hotline to the Two Blokes.

[00:37:51] Trevor: Don’t ring it because it’s not a phone number, it’s only an SMS number, okay? Just for clarity, because yeah, it actually won’t ring anywhere. I actually don’t know what happens if you ring it, probably nothing. Anyway, on the line, another caller, Emma. G’day, Emma.

[00:38:03] Emma: Hey, how you going?

[00:38:04] Trevor: Really, really good. Where are you at in your EV journey? I think you’ve, uh, you’ve made the decision on a BYD, is it?

[00:38:10] Emma: Yeah, BYD Atto 3 that I’ve had for like 2 weeks.

[00:38:14] Stephen: Oh, you’ve only just got it.

[00:38:18] Stephen: So you’re fresh, fresh to the world of EVs. Now, can we ask, Emma, how long did it take you to decide that was the car for you? Did you tell us about your test drives and what spurred you to go in this direction?

[00:38:32] Emma: Well, I’d wanted a hybrid for quite a while, but obviously they were all in like the $50,000 range, so it was always out out of my budget, and the BYDs just appealed to me because they were obviously within a price range that was a little bit more achievable. Um, I was looking at more of a hybrid, and then I went to the showroom and test drove the ATTO 3 and was quite happy with like the range that it had for just like the local driving that I did. And I don’t know, I just thought you got a lot car for your money. Really, it was really lovely to drive.

[00:39:11] Trevor: What did you have before it? Like, how— let me ask you a more simple question. How old was your car that you had?

[00:39:17] Emma: It was just a 2023 Mitsubishi Outlander.

[00:39:19] Trevor: Okay, so pretty, pretty modern. Pretty new. Yeah, we often talk about the fact that I think that most people have a car that’s 5 to 7 years old, and when you get in any new car, electric or otherwise, you’re like, oh wow, this is pretty cool. So you’re saying that jumping in one of these made you very aware of how much more advanced this market was?

[00:39:40] Emma: Yeah, well, just for the same amount of money that I paid for my Outlander 3 years ago, I’m getting like, you know, like leather-type seats, a really fancy interior, what essentially looks like a mini TV in the front of my car. It’s got a dashcam at the front. Yeah, I was just like, I was like, this is amazing. And you don’t have to pay for petrol.

[00:40:02] Stephen: Did you test drive any other EVs or was it BYD had your heart from the start?

[00:40:06] Emma: Yeah, well, again, I’ve just seen a lot of them around and they have been around for a little bit. So even though I’d heard about a lot of these other brands through like your podcast and this other one that I was listening to, I’m just like, I’m a single parent, so I just, I didn’t need the stress of like unknowns.

[00:40:27] Trevor: Yeah. Can I ask you a question about podcasts? Because it’s fascinating to me.

[00:40:30] Stephen: How dare you listen to another EV podcast?

[00:40:32] Trevor: What? Name them. Who are they? And then what are they good, although we better just tell us what we want to hear. No, no. Are you listening on the way to work? Are you tuning in? Like, how do you engage in podcasts? Very curious. Quickly.

[00:40:44] Emma: So via Spotify, I just did a search and you guys came up because I wanted something Australian as well. So you guys were perfect.

[00:40:51] Trevor: Oh, that’s a great— there’s our quote for the day. That’s great. Can you tell my wife?

[00:40:56] Emma: Anyway, no, you’re so helpful. I’ve learned so much between you and this EV charging podcast, which is also an Australian one. I’ve just learned so much.

[00:41:07] Trevor: Excellent. Excellent. All right. So you— Stephen asked about the BYD, so you were pretty sold straight away there, were you?

[00:41:15] Emma: Yeah, well, just the experience center that they call it that I went to was lovely. They sent me off on a test drive immediately. Unlike a few other people, I wasn’t given any restrictions. They just said, yep, here you go, go for a drive. The guy even offered to take—

[00:41:33] Emma: Central Coast. The guy even offered to take my car seat out of my old car and put it in the test drive so that my son could come.

[00:41:42] Trevor: Oh, what’s his name? Not your son’s name. Also very, very lovely. But what’s the salesman’s name? Do you remember?

[00:41:48] Emma: His name was Nick.

[00:41:50] Emma: Shout out to Nick at BYD Tuggerah. He was just charming.

[00:41:55] Trevor: Did you— I mean, was that something you needed at the time or was Was that just something he observed?

[00:42:01] Emma: No, yeah, it was just, I had my little boy with me, so it was just something that he observed. And I mean, he could tell I was fairly new, so he was showing me like the, the app where you can look at where all the chargers are and the other one where you can plan your trips, where it shows you your elevation and you can put in your car.

[00:42:19] Trevor: Oh, Nick’s doing our job for us.

[00:42:21] Stephen: Nick’s killing it up there. That’s great.

[00:42:26] Stephen: Emma, so you’ve had the car for a few weeks, did you say? So how, how have you settled into it? Are you— what’s the charging situation?

[00:42:41] Emma: So I, I’m going to get a charger at home, but I did have some drama to begin with because on day 3 I got my car down to 7% and the lights coming on saying like, please charge.

[00:42:55] Emma: Yeah, day 3 and I’m going to be calling someone to come and kill me.

[00:43:00] Trevor: We have had already, we spoke to a caller earlier who went flat on the freeway, so it does happen.

[00:43:05] Stephen: So what happened on that day? Did you get to a charger? Did you get home or what happened?

[00:43:08] Emma: Well, I did get to a charger, but there was 4 at the shopping center and 2 were broken and then only 2 were working, but they were being used. And I’m like, oh my God, what am I going to do?

[00:43:22] Trevor: Name, name, what brand?

[00:43:24] Emma: Tesla.

[00:43:25] Trevor: Oh, wow. That’s who we’re working with.

[00:43:28] Stephen: That’s, that’s unusual.

[00:43:30] Emma: Yeah. So I was looking on the app and then this is something that would have been nice to have been told. I didn’t realize so many chargers you needed to bring your own cable.

[00:43:41] Trevor: Yes. All right. Can I just go back to the Tesla one? Where was that? At the Homeco? Because those Superchargers are Teslas only.

[00:43:49] Emma: No, it was Green Hills, Stockland.

[00:43:53] Trevor: Right. Yeah, very good.

[00:43:54] Emma: Because I work up in Maitland.

[00:43:56] Trevor: But, you know, it’s a really interesting point. And I don’t know whether you’ve had time to watch or listen to our episode from 2 weeks ago. So you’ve just bought a new EV, but it’s something we cover in there is the idea that, you know what, I know the car came with a cable. You should go and buy the other cable, which is the public charger cable, and it should be in the front or the boot at all times because you never know when— like we’ve got a shopping centre up the road at Pennant Hills and you’re like, I would never I never really need to charge when I’m there, but sometimes it’s busy and that’s the open parking spot. So I whack the cable in. It’s the slowest charging possible, but you know what? I get a free parking spot guaranteed. So yeah, that’s another little investment is that charging cable.

[00:44:34] Emma: Yeah, well, I did go and buy one like a few days later because that was really scary. But you want to know who saved my life in the end?

[00:44:43] Stephen: Is it our man Nick? Our man Nick at BYD?

[00:44:46] Emma: No, it was the NRMA fast charger in Maitland.

[00:44:49] Trevor: There you go.

[00:44:50] Emma: NRMA!

[00:44:51] Trevor: Let’s go. Yeah, well played. You know what? So have you learned— so I’m gathering from this that the Central Coast is your home and work and there is— I mean, there’s a pretty good network around there. There’s, I mean, there’s AmpCharge, Ampol charges at a couple of service stations. There are some NRMA ones roadside. So it’s not a bad network. Have you started familiarizing yourself with where they are or are you not charging at home at all? How are you? Using that?

[00:45:17] Emma: So I have done a bit of like the trickle charging at home, um, with the, the slower cable. But yeah, I’ve just had some bad experiences, like, because I went to Mingara and they have chargers there, but two of them again were broken, and the other one, it kept saying, coming like up with this EVSC error, and it just wouldn’t connect to my car. So again, I couldn’t charge my car there either.

[00:45:43] Stephen: So yeah, there’s a, there’s a great— I don’t know whether you already have this app, but There’s an app called PlugShare, which—

[00:45:49] Trevor: Yeah, that’s the one that Nick introduced me to.

[00:45:51] Stephen: Okay, so it tells you that if there’s any issues with certain, certain chargers, it’s—

[00:45:57] Trevor: Yeah, but Emma, why are you not using the trickle charger more? Because you can just do that every night at home. That’s without being rude. What isn’t that the simplest way to go? Do you not have off-street parking?

[00:46:07] Emma: Well, it’s my parents’ house that I’m staying at and they park their car.

[00:46:11] Stephen: Even better, use their free juice.

[00:46:13] Trevor: They’re not going to charge you electricity.

[00:46:16] Emma: The problem is, though, like PowerPoint and where my car is.

[00:46:21] Emma: I have to get them to like move their car.

[00:46:24] Trevor: Dad, listen.

[00:46:25] Stephen: So Dad, move the Camira and I’ll move the Commodore to get the— I know we have 3 in there.

[00:46:30] Trevor: Dad, park on the bloody road. Emma’s got to park in the driveway near the car, near the park. She needs to charge her car.

[00:46:37] Emma: So they’re very precious of their car.

[00:46:41] Trevor: In simple terms, though, you’re loving it is what I’m hearing.

[00:46:45] Emma: Yeah, it’s just— I don’t know, it just feels like an expensive car. It’s just smooth to drive. It handles nicely. It’s really comfortable. I honestly, I feel like I’ve got a $60,000 car and it was like $43,000. What is it? What is it?

[00:47:02] Stephen: Is it your son?

[00:47:06] Stephen: What does your little boy think of it? He must love it.

[00:47:07] Emma: And he keeps dinging the things on the door, like the little guitar strings.

[00:47:10] Trevor: Little guitar strings on the 803.

[00:47:13] Stephen: Does he like playing on the big screen as well?

[00:47:16] Emma: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I open the door and for about like a minute before we get in, he’s got to play with the strings.

[00:47:22] Trevor: So it’s a little bit annoying, but I was going to say, I hope he grows out of that one. But anyway, hey, Emma, lovely to hear from you. Great story. And glad to— glad you— glad you moved straight to EV because in the end, I think you would have— you would have loved any hybrid. There’s a bunch of great hybrids out there. BYD have some beautiful hybrids as well. As well, which you could have, could have probably looked at as well. But I think the long term is, is hugely beneficial for you, and great insight on, on the charging network and the fact that it’s not just one or two, there’s, there’s multiple sites where this can be a problem, and that’s a really big problem for the industry. I think that’s so, you know, if, if you weren’t so happy and friendly, that’d be something that could really annoy you right now. Like, you know, some people would be begrudging EVs because they’ve had that experience.

[00:48:05] Stephen: Trev would have annoyed.

[00:48:06] Trevor: I definitely would have.

[00:48:07] Emma: Yeah, yeah. But good, good. Trying to remain optimistic for the environment.

[00:48:11] Stephen: And good to hear that BYD looked after you too and sort of—

[00:48:15] Trevor: Nick at Targa, let’s go, Nick.

[00:48:20] Emma: I know some people have had problems, but just wonderful.

[00:48:23] Trevor: Well done. Excellent. Lovely to hear from you, Emma.

[00:48:26] Trevor: Good on you.

[00:48:30] Stephen: Yeah, I mean, she feels like she’s driving a more expensive car. Isn’t that great? Great feedback. It feels more expensive than it actually is.

[00:48:37] Trevor: Great endorsement.

[00:48:38] Stephen: That is a really good recommendation of the ATTO 3.

[00:48:41] Trevor: My, my uncle, who I ran into a couple of weeks ago at that family wedding, decided they were going to buy an EV because of petrol prices, literally boom. And I wrote him a list and he ended up going above the list because I wrote out ATTO 1, ATTO 2. He went and got the ATTO 3 because he wanted to tow just a small trailer. Sure. But, and so here’s a quick one. I said, when are you going to get it? He goes, in 2 weeks. Wow. So I’m like, I thought, I thought it’d be months because of the supply and stuff. So they must have stock.

[00:49:06] Stephen: They’re pouring in, I reckon.

[00:49:09] Trevor: Yeah. But shout out to Nick at Tuggerah BYD. Well done, mate. You’re lifting the brand. Yes.

[00:49:15] Stephen: And she also said that our podcast was perfect.

[00:49:19] Stephen: We were perfect.

[00:49:22] Trevor: I mean, I know the grab was about our podcast. That’s right. We’ll take it.

[00:49:28] Trevor: We’ll take anything. All right, two blokes talking electric cars. Thank you for listening. Before we wrap up the show, I mentioned at the start of the show, there, like a lot we’ve had over the last couple of years, over the last 120 episodes, so many callers talk about how they bought their car on a innovative lease with the FBT exemptions and all these government subsidies. And remember all the state subsidies are slowly disappearing as well. I got a state subsidy, so did you, I think on one of your car, on the Merc? No, mate. ‘Cause it wasn’t, why not?

[00:50:03] Stephen: Did, ’cause it was too expensive. Too expensive, mate.

[00:50:05] Trevor: Yeah, there you go. I got a subsidy on my Cupra. But the state ones have all kind of disappeared, right?

[00:50:10] Trevor: So there’s been an announcement last week that the full electric car discount essentially is what they call it, which is the FBT exemption. Exemption is going to stay in place until April 2027. So that’s another whole, you know, 2 years. Um, no, 1 year. It’s 2026 now, isn’t it? So another whole year of electric car discounts essentially, but then it’ll shift a little bit. So as of April next year, the full exemption will still apply to cars up to, um, up to $75,000.

[00:50:45] Trevor: And if you’re spending over that and still below the $91,000, you’ll get 25% FBT. But as of April 2029, it’ll all go down to 25%. So basically, you know, you’ve got now a couple of years to buy a sub-$75,000 car and take advantage of that FBT, which is still pretty good incentive. I think that’s the right incentive. The industry seems positively supporting this. I think it gives clarity for people. And, you know, they talk about the— this is the EV Council— talk about a target of 5 million EVs on the roads by 2035. We’re going to need these kind of things. Absolutely.

[00:51:22] Stephen: Well, as we said at the start of the show, there’s no— I think there’s enough incentive for people to get out and buy an EV right now that we know how popular they are. But this is a nice little sweetener. Yeah, it’s good if you can get— it’s another reason. May you might get an EV maybe cheaper than a petrol car. Yeah, another reason to jump in. But still, they still have the luxury car tax though, if you’re over a certain amount.

[00:51:44] Trevor: Yes. Well, if you’re doing very well, you can afford both the car and the tax. So get over yourself. The Electric Vehicle Council, Julie Delbecq, Kia made the point that, you know, because I think it’s a good point to continue reinforce, which we do, you know, on average EV households save $3,000 a year in fuel and maintenance costs.

[00:52:01] Stephen: Boom.

[00:52:02] Trevor: Mate, I got the Kia serviced this week, it was $100.

[00:52:04] Stephen: What?

[00:52:04] Trevor: That’s because Amanda did it.

[00:52:06] Stephen: I’m like, excuse me, could she take my car?

[00:52:09] Trevor: I went, babe, what did that get? What happened?

[00:52:18] Trevor: Because I got a notification on my phone, AMEX charged $100. I went, that must be like a deposit. I thought it’d be $500.

[00:52:19] Trevor: My, what just happened?

[00:52:20] Stephen: What happened? Why was it so cheap?

[00:52:21] Trevor: I don’t know. I’m not going to ask a question.

[00:52:23] Stephen: That’s amazing. Can she— can you— when my Mercedes is due for service, can she take mine in there too? Because mine’s way more than $100.

[00:52:30] Trevor: She bat her eyelids and see if she can get you a discount.

[00:52:32] Stephen: I might tell my wife to take it in.

[00:52:33] Trevor: There’s the go. There’s the go. All right. We’d love to hear from you, especially if you’re— if that’s going to tip you over the edge, that ability to, you know, over the next year, look at getting yourself an electric car because of those FBT exemptions. Lock it in, folks. It’s sticking around. Thanks to the government decision on that one. So we’d love to hear from you on any topic about electric cars, whether you’re in the market or you’ve just bought one. Get in touch, 0477 657 657. Steven, talk to you next week, mate.

[00:52:58] Stephen: Ciao, see you then.