Why my next family car will be electric

COMMENT

The label 'family car' means many things to different people. And it's a label that is being redefined in recent times for myself and my wife.

In the past we've exclusively owned small cars for their practicality and ease of use. They've been big enough to accommodate two growing kids, small enough to slot easily into shopping centre car parks, and they haven't guzzled fuel by the old-fashioned gallon.

In the meantime, I've satisfied my desire to drive nice cars by reviewing press vehicles for a living. In most cases those test cars were frequently bigger and more comfortable, often better performing, and always higher-priced than the knockabout family sedan or hatch.

Our two kids are now teenagers. The 18-year old is at university and the 16-year old is 18 months away from completing year 12 at secondary school. Other than holidays it's rare for us to travel together as four people in the one car. And when we do it's just as likely to be in the (much nicer) press vehicle.

Our situation makes us an outlier. We're not quite early adopters, not particularly cashed-up, and by no means ecologically aware – as a perfunctory inspection of our power, water and gas bills would prove.

But an EV (electric vehicle) is a car that increasingly makes a lot of sense for us. My wife of 20+ years has asked in recent times whether our next car could be an automatic. In the past she has only driven manuals, other than the occasional automatic press vehicle.

We are in the habit of hanging on to our cars for a while. One dates back to 2007, but the other, which has travelled fewer kilometres, is close to 14 years old, and has been in the family since new. So, from an environmental point of view – and provided the battery pack can last that long or be inexpensively replaced down the track – an EV is an ideal car. We'll actually keep it long enough to offset its 'well-to-wheel' CO2 emissions at least 20 times over!

It's also a car that will be an economically sound choice, costing less to run and service. If we retain the car into retirement, resale value won't be an issue one way or the other. The running costs will outweigh depreciation, provided the impact of inflation affects petrol and electricity prices at about the same rate.

Any nett difference in the future rising price of electricity versus petrol could be neutralised by installing solar panels on the roof, just like the two million households that have already done so around Australia. And like the 90 per cent of Australians who live in large population centres, we don't need to travel hours on end to reach whatever destination.

The family car no longer has to be especially spacious in the rear, since our enormous son can sit alongside his mother in the front seat for the occasional trip to the footy to see their much cherished Geelong demolish the opposition. An EV might even be able to make the return trip to Kardinia Park on one charge.

On the rare occasion the four of us do travel somewhere together, and the press vehicle is a two-seater or a Mitsubishi Mirage, my daughter can probably sit behind me in the family EV without feeling too cramped. Most of the time, however, accommodation won't be an issue.

When my wife is doing most of the driving, the car will be travelling no further than perhaps 20km in each direction – and that would be on the rare occasion she drives into town with our daughter to see a show. The rest of the time she would be driving about 5km to work or maybe 10km to catch up with friends two suburbs over.

Range anxiety is unlikely to be a major consideration then, although my wife did ask whether an EV could make it from our home east of Melbourne to one of the beaches past Geelong to the west. As it turns out, the Hyundai Ioniq can get that far on one battery charge. Whether it can with four people on board and luggage for a week remains another question.

I don't mind admitting that I think we as a family would be doing the right thing for the environment buying an EV, especially after watching a recent ABC 'Four Corners' documentary concerning climate change.

In that documentary, a ute owner was asked whether he would ever consider buying an EV. His answer – that if he did so, he would also have to grow long hair and tie it up in a "man bun" – was amusing, but actually avoided the real question, which is this: Why are we so culturally averse to a method of propulsion that delivers what most vehicle buyers have wanted from their cars over many decades?

I understand that aversion to an extent. As an enthusiast from a very young age, however, I'm also guided by the thought that my kids and their kids will have to adjust to a world that promises to be a harsher environment than we currently know. The signs are already there, and it's claimed that Australia is particularly susceptible.

It's only an accident of personal history that my wife has never owned a Toyota. If she had met someone else, there's a statistically significant chance that she would have become a very happy Corolla owner. She is not the sort of person to care about whether the car produces V8 sounds and performance, because nor would a Corolla or any of the cars she has owned in reality. For her, an EV could be perfect.

To be frank about it, my wife is by no means an exception. There are many tens of thousands of motorists who aren't car enthusiasts. It amazes me that EVs are yet to make much of an impact in the market. But then I see in the media how EVs have become tarred by association with climate change, which has been a political football in this country for about 12 years now.

I'm at a loss to explain why this is. You wouldn't call the late Ian Kiernan a hard-core socialist – not the man who headed the successful 'Clean up Australia' campaign and was also a builder and property developer...

Yet somehow, a different kind of environmental strategy – building, promoting and selling electric vehicles – has come to be viewed as an old-fashioned communist plot. Even the right-leaning Morrison government has projected that EVs could account for 50 per cent of new-car sales by 2030.

All that said, I remain a car enthusiast. I'll continue to enjoy driving and reviewing the occasional C 63 or RS 5 Sportback, and, come retirement I hope my gift to myself will an unreconstructed Aussie-built, fossil-fuelled rear-drive project... if they haven't all been written off by idiots engaging in crime sprees.

But for daily driving, the EV will be a perfectly acceptable device.