My husband and I had been thinking about buying an electric car when it came time to change our small car but there seemed to be a lot of unknowns for us around doing this (and my husband really would have liked a Tesla but this wasn't on the cards!)
We did a lot of research and just under a year ago decided to take the plunge and buy a second hand Nissan Leaf to see how this would go. My husband was going to be using it to commute to his work in the city about 30-40 minutes from where we live as he works 5 days a week and I only work 3 so I would take the petrol car.
It was a bit nail biting taking the plunge and worrying about how we would go and if we would get frequent bouts of range anxiety but it has gone very well and we love it! It is great to drive and has saved us so much money in fuel and maintenance costs. During our 6 week lockdown here in NZ my husband worked from home and as I was an essential worker I took the electric car for work and grocery shopping. In those 6 weeks we saved nearly $1000 in fuel costs compared with running two petrol cars for the same period the year before. It was great! And no visits needed to the petrol station so one less place to worry about catching COVID!
Today I took some time to clean it. I vacuumed it inside and wiped all the surfaces down and gave it a through cleaning on the outside (I am embarrassed to admit this is only the second clean it has had the whole time we have owned it as we have had a very dusty driveway and there has not been any point!) Our driveway has recently had a new layer of gravel on it so there will no longer be any dust and this gave me a good reason to finally clean the car. And now I feel like we have a new car all over again - for some time spent with a bucket, hose and cleaning cloths - not to mention the free workout I got!
(the left side of the car does have a scrape across 3 panels put there by our teenage daughter doing a too tight turn and rubbing against another car - this is waiting to be done at the panel beaters so once this is repaired it will feel like a new car all over again!!)
Have you ever considered going for an electric car? We highly recommend it. Just make sure you do some research so you are buying the right car for your needs regarding the type of driving you need to do. We are so glad we made the choice to try it and hope that by the time our bigger car needs updating we might be able to make that a switch to electric too - my husband will still keep hoping it will be a Tesla but then dreams are free!
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