Would you buy an electric vehicle now or wait?
Electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming increasingly popular – the Mitsubishi i-MiEV is available to selected customers on a lease-only arrangement (ie you can’t buy one outright), and the Nissan Leaf and the Holden Volt are reportedly being released over the next year (the Volt is not a pure EV, as it has a small petrol engine to charge the battery when it gets low, called an Extended Range Electric Vehicle – EREV).
The current and predicted prices for these vehicles are relatively high for their size, around $50,000 or more but we expect that prices should come down over time as demand increases.
The good news is running costs should be low (even with electricity prices increasing) and servicing costs for pure EVs should be less than a conventional vehicle (given the simplicity of an electric motor compared with an internal combustion engine).
Pure EVs also produce no local emissions and if charged by electricity from a renewable resource, would have low environmental impact overall.
NRMA has an i-MiEV in its fleet and found the on-road performance to be satisfactory – the range being 100-120kms between charges.
Would you consider purchasing an EV now or would you wait until price and range were equivalent to conventional vehicles?
* NRMA is hosting a number of Electric Vehicle Roadshows around NSW during July and August.