Whanganui letters: In praise of electric vehicles

Greg Bennett from Marton (Letters, August 26) must get all his information on electric cars from YouTube. If he looks long enough he will also find a cure for cancer and male pattern baldness.

I have been an owner of an EV now for three years and 40,000km, and would never go back to a petrol car.

I go from Whanganui to Auckland all the time. I leave here fully charged and get to Te Kuiti and stop for coffee and a bathroom break, and charge up in 35 minutes. Even petrol car drivers need to do this.

From there I can get to Auckland without charging again. I charge my car overnight at my brother's house when I am sleeping and wake up to a fully charged EV.

For every $20 of petrol Greg Bennett puts in his car, I put in $4 worth of electricity to go the same distance.

His petrol car has about 300 moving parts, mine has 10.

The second generation of EVs that are coming out now can be recharged in 18 minutes.

In Norway they sell more EVs than petrol cars.

Back when Henry Ford was driving his Model T there would have been people riding horses saying "that will never catch on".

It's called progress, Mr Bennett.

RICHARD BOULD
Westmere

ICE vehicles a "death knell"

That petrol-driven (ICE) cars are more "convenient" than electric (EV) cars, as espoused by Mr Bennett from Marton (Letters, August 26), entirely misses the point that ICE vehicles are producing too much CO2, trapping heat in our atmosphere causing irreparable damage to our climate.

The evidence for that has been around for at least 50 years (even a scientific article in 1910 said as much).

It is an absolute necessity to ditch ICE vehicles, preferably today, because we are, make no mistake, heading for an uninhabitable Earth if we carry on as we are. Soft option "mitigations" and mild-mannered "adjustments" to the way we live now will only lure us to a point where there is no return to survivable conditions.

All the evidence, currently in the form of catastrophic heat waves, droughts, fires, rainfall and floods tells us so. I know this is rather like "the end is nigh" slogans, yet in this case the evidence is clear.

I am appalled by the number of oversized utes and SUVs used as single-person commuter vehicles. We are being conned by ICE car advertising. The cost of these ICE vehicles could easily pay for an EV vehicle.

EV vehicles, even with their own problems, are a better way forward. Every kilometre driven in an ICE vehicle is a death knell for our existence. The planet itself will survive and adjust but we will not do well.

ROBERT JAUNAY
Whanganui

Competition is good

Jay Rerekura uses his article (Opinion, August 27) to try to convince us we are better off if companies and businesses don't compete with others in our chosen sphere.

If we don't compete, things get sloppy, the product is not as good and the price grows out of hand.

I know people can't see the need to have three rubbish trucks come up the same street, but it's competition, which makes for better service and price.

Jay has his dreams, he says, as we all do. Quite often they are Utopian, which means they are unachievable, just dreams.

GARTH SCOWN
Whanganui

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