Switched on 93-year-old buys electric car

SWITCHED ON: Sid Moriarty, 93, has bought an electric vehicle.Photo/Michael Cunningham

At 93 years old, Sid Moriarty says there's not much he wants these days but now he's got something he'd dreamed of for much of his life - an electric car.

The Whangarei man is ready for people to ask what took him so long to get one, but the former electricity industry worker wonders what took the car companies so long to make them.

As a boy he imagined all cars would be electric by the time he grew up.

In recent years Mr Moriarty read everything he could find on the subject, and turned up at local expos and car shows featuring electric vehicles (EV).

He watched the technology improve and confidence in one day driving his own EV was boosted as Northpower installed public recharge stations "around the place".

Finally, after "dreaming of having one all my life", four months ago he walked into Whangarei Kia dealers Moore Cars, where he had bought a car before, and asked if they had, or could get him, a 100 per cent electric car.

They could, but Mr Moriarty had to wait those months for it to be shipped from England.

He now has the only fully electric, new Kia Soul in Northland - and he loves it.

"It's a pleasure to drive," he said.

"It's grunty as anything, but it's so smooth and quiet I sometimes think it's stopped running."

He enjoys just being able to plug it into the house. He is not worried about venturing far from home in it because it has all the gadgets to let him know how much juice is left in the tank - or battery - and where the next charge-up station is.

For now, though, he's still learning all about his new car's technology.

"I've had a heck of a lot of vehicles in my life, all sorts."

Among them were "old wrecks" he tinkered with to keep going, a few duds no amount of tinkering could fix, family-friendly cars, BMWs and even a Lamborghini (two-door, left-hand drive).

"But this is my first brand new car, and it's also one that I won't be sticking my head under the bonnet. I don't even want to look under there."

For the best part of 48 years Mr Moriarty worked at the Portland Cement Company's Wairua hydro-electric station, now a Northpower-owned facility. Electricity has always fascinated him.

He doesn't like what he calls New Zealand's dependency on fossil fuels.

"Here we don't need to run cars or much of anything on petrol. We've got hydro-electric, thermal, wind, solar.

"We've got our own power, we're crazy not to use it. Why should we want to buy oil from other countries?"

He hasn't yet had time to put the fuel cost saving or otherwise to the test, but he is surprised there are not more electric cars around, given the advances in the technology.

"In another four or five years the country will be flooded with them."

As for being so switched on himself that he's up with the trailblazers, he couldn't be happier: "It really is a dream come true."