Your questions answered: When will EVs get cheaper?

There’s lots of ute love swirling around the carsales e-mailbox this week – and most of it is for models with a bit more driving excitement and muscle than your average load-lugger.

The EV questions keep coming, too, suggesting more people are considering the electric plunge.

Plus we’ve got one reader asking about tyre pressures for sand driving and another keen to buy his Holden V8 dream machine.

Answer: Yep, the wider track and flared wheel-arches of the Rogue and GR Sport add some much needed muscle to the HiLux (they both share the same basic body with other HiLux variants).

And the GR Sport is an interesting prospect. While it doesn’t have anything like the outright punch of the Ford Ranger Raptor – its most obvious competitor – it should use less fuel, so could be more useful for remote driving or off-roading.

Toyota hasn’t confirmed exactly when the Hilux GR Sport will hit dealerships, other than to say it’ll be the second half of 2023. We wouldn’t expect to see it before August, possibly later.

You can chat to a dealer now, though, to join the inevitable early rush. The dealers should also get regular updates on rough timing.

Answer: Charging an electric car in an apartment block has more challenges than plugging in at a house. That’s because in some instances the block’s power supply may not be up to handling dozens of EVs all charging at a high rate concurrently.

There are solutions; companies such as JetCharge can supply charging systems to manage the power delivery, in turn ensuring people can still brown their toast and catch up on all the MAFS goss.

Also, in most instances it will also require the block’s strata committee to pass a by-law allowing the charging of EVs. That regulatory sign-off can be a lot trickier than getting an electrician to hook up a charger.

So the first step is to speak to your managing agent and ask them to consult the apartment owner. Get them to point out that EVs are getting more popular and installing an EV charger could help attract future tenants.

If they won’t come at that, offer to install the charger yourself but let them know you intend to take the hardware with you when you move out.

Either way, you’ll need to get the apartment owner to raise the issue with the strata managers with the view to discussing it at the next AGM. Once you’ve got strata sign-off the whole process should be relatively easy.

Answer: Yep, you’re right, EVs were supposed to get cheaper. We’ve seen occasional flashes of it – Hyundai temporarily reduced the price of its IONIQ 5 and, more recently, Tesla prices dropped – but they’ve often been tempered by rises before or after. Blame it on inflation, demand and a lack of supply.

Car-makers are masters of charging what the market is prepared to pay – and it seems EV buyers are prepared to pay those prices for now (keeping in mind we’re generalising here).

We’d expect the added competition set to kick in this year to add some pricing competitiveness. Subaru, Toyota, Ford, Cupra and others will all join the EV race this year, while Volkswagen is readying a 2024 attack. Existing brands selling EVs are also planning on getting more stock, adding further competition.

As for the Ora, it’s part of GWM (Great Wall Motors), which also sells Haval here. The brand is still in its relative infancy but is improving as the product gets more convincing.

The Ora is basic EV motoring but with lots of those basics done relatively well, judging by our first brief acquaintance with it. If you’re expecting it to make you gush about EVs then it’d probably be worthwhile saving a bit more, but if you want something that does a decent job it’s shaping up nicely.

Answer: Lowering tyre pressures allows the tyre to ‘bag out’ more, in turn increasing the surface area of the contact patch. So instead of cutting into a soft, sandy surface, the tyre can better mould around it once you have reduced the pressure.

If you’re driving at relatively low speeds (below, say, 40 or 50km/h) then the dangers of overheating the tyre are minimal.

There is, however, a risk you can pull the tyre off the rim if you corner too aggressively. All of which means you have to drive accordingly.

It’s also important to raise the tyre pressures again once you start driving faster. Underinflated tyres compact more every time they rotate, something that builds heat, eventually leading to a blowout. So take an air compressor with you to raise the pressures once you’re off the soft sand.

As for what pressures to lower the tyres to, it depends on many factors, including the type and dimensions of your tyres (tyres with a lower profile may not like being run at super low pressures) and how much weight you’re carrying.

As a start we’d pull them down to 17 or 18psi and see how it goes. If the car is still bogging down maybe aim for 15psi.

Also remember to choose the appropriate drive mode and/or disconnect things such as stability control, which can apply the brakes if it detects the car sliding (something that will happen on sand). Check the owner’s manual for more details.

Answer: It’s been almost impossible to work out what’s going on in the collector car market, especially during COVID times. We know that may sound weird calling a Holden Commodore that’s six or seven years old a collector car, but the last of the Aussie-made V8s has certainly been popular with those into their cars.

As for prices, it’d be difficult to imagine them rocketing much above what they are now, at least in the next few years (what happens in 10 or 20 years is anyone’s guess!). That’s perhaps easier to accept when you consider the financial pain that’s biting so many as interest rates rise and inflation remains high.

Equally, we wouldn’t expect prices to fall off a cliff. Choose carefully when buying, though. The sportier SS models tend to be more loved on the used car market than a Calais. Grab a Redline or – even better – the Motorsport Edition and you’ll be onto one of the more collectible ones. The SS Black was also a great option towards the end of the (real) Commodore’s life.

Naturally, of all the models it’s the 2017 ones that were the pick, mainly because that’s the last year Holdens were manufactured in Australia.

Some of those tend to be a tad higher in price, but it’s also easy to get a decent one for less than $50K.

Also, if you want the car to remain collectible our tip would be to keep it standard, as it came off the factory floor. Those fatter wheels and tyres may look tempting in the online ad, but we’d expect the bog-stock wheels to be in hotter demand in years to come.

Answer: You’re right, Volkswagen is not alone. Some cars make it ludicrously difficult to perform sometimes basic tasks, such as recirculating the air-conditioning or switching from AM to FM or DAB radio tuning. Multiple touches and swipes can drive you mad – not to mention distract you from the task of driving.

The challenge for car-makers is packing a whole lot more features and functions in without just adding a button for every one. It’s the same reason our smartphones switched to virtual buttons on a larger display screen (although, come to think of it, the simple task of making a phone call on a modern smartphone can be trickier than it was 20 years ago).

Some brands do it well (we’d pop Ford, Hyundai, Kia, Volvo, Polestar and Tesla in that bunch) while others have been hit-and-miss (we’re looking at you Honda, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen).

Rest assured it’s on the agenda of some car-makers, who are working to improve their infotainment functionality. We suspect there may be more missteps along the way…

One thing that could help bring improvements is over-the-air software updates. Tesla pioneered them and other brands are slowly rolling them out, bringing the ability to tweak things throughout the life of the car.

Answer: Ford certainly underestimated the popularity of the V6 engine when it introduced it to its new Ranger. That’s the biggest issue with the crazy wait lists on the V6. In short, the company can’t build enough – something that’s likely to be a short-to-medium term issue rather than one that lingers for too long.

As you may know, the soon-to-arrive new Volkswagen Amarok uses the same V6, but VW doesn’t have anything like the wait lists. That’s because Volkswagen predicted the high take-up of the V6, in turn ordering more from Ford way back in the planning phase years ago.

It obviously helped that VW has had a V6 ute in its fleet since 2016, giving the brand an understanding of what ute buyers want when it comes to gruntier engines. So that’s obviously one way to get the same engine in a slightly different body: buy the Amarok. That said, it’s more expensive than the Ford.

The other option, as you’ve noted, is to opt for the four-cylinder twin-turbo diesel. While it doesn’t have the grunt of the V6, it’s been improved for the new Ranger and was already among the best performing and most refined four-cylinders in the ute market. So no complaints from us!

Find more of Your Questions Answered by carsales here

For everything you auto know about EVs, listen to carsales' Watts Under the Bonnet: the electric car podcast

Join the conversation at 

our Facebook page

Or email us at 

editor@carsales.com.au