As anyone who reads my stuff knows, we have a Hyundai Kona EV, and occasionally travel to Sydney to visit family. The first article I wrote was when we were nervous about how we would cope with a new, unfamiliar car, 11 years more modern than our previous car1. The next article was dealing in more detail with what has been termed range anxiety, and how this may soon be a thing of the past with the battery developments currently happening in China2. After getting the hang of the vehicle, we grabbed the bull by the horns and did a road trip from Canberra to Adelaide and back, which, with side trips, amounted to about 3,000 kms. All that is required for such a trip in an EV, when compared to a petrol or diesel vehicle was a bit of planning3.
A few days ago, I was in another person’s EV and I asked if he felt the same way about his EV as I did about mine. What has amazed me about our Kona is the acceleration and the handling. He felt the same way about his vehicle. The exceptional acceleration has its benefits. One of the common problems of driving in Sydney, is getting caught in the wrong lane, when the traffic is rather heavy. I had an incident a couple of days ago where we were coming up to a left hand turn a few hundred metres away, but were caught in the middle of three lanes. We fortunately came to a set of traffic lights and we were the first car in line. When the lights changed in our favour, I planted it and we easily outpaced the sedan in the lane to our left, such that I could change lanes ahead of the herd, allowing us to make our left turn without any dramas.
The other EV driver also was impressed with the handling of his vehicle, as I am with that of the Kona. I presume this is because in EVs, the centre of gravity is quite low, with the massive battery being underneath the passenger compartment. Compared to our previous diesel vehicle, there is very little body roll when cornering. This makes it handle very well4.
We will continue to learn more about driving our EV but, so far, we are more than happy with it.
Sources
I’ve never been in an EV but have followed their development pretty closely. Daughter’s partner enjoyed showing me videos of electric cars blowing away ICE super cars in drag races, even though he doesn’t have an EV or hybrid yet himself.
Weight is an issue for many EVs as it affects tyre wear rates – especially larger, more powerful models (obviously). To help overcome that some tyre makers are now making EV-specific compounds. Those versions are currently more expensive apparently but I don’t know what the price difference is or whether it makes economic sense to buy them. Battery evolution should help in the longer term.
One thing EV drivers need to pay particular attention to is pedestrian awareness in slow speed areas like car parks. Almost stepped in front of one a few years ago. Only the sound of tyre on loose gravel alerted me to its presence. Needless to say I’m more careful now. New ADR’s requiring acoustic alerts at low speeds are now in vogue but they only cover new models from Nov 2025 on.
The BIG problem still awaits resolution though, and that’s how to ‘equitably’ tax users.
Jon the so called road user thing is garbage. Only about 50% of the fuel tax excise gathered is used on road infrastructure. The rest goes to general revenue. Also 75% of Australian roads are council maintained so it is rate payers of those councils who fund that. This road user stuff is a furphy, particularly as most heavy vehicles that use the freight routes, and cause the most damage, get exemptions and many people who never, or rarely use them, and drive much smaller vehicles, do not. We have to pay fuel tax for our tractor but it never goes near any sort of road.
People have been completely conned over this issue. In fact it is a lie, like many others. It is not and never has been a proper road user tax at all. If you are going to charge people for use of federal or state maintained roads then make them toll roads or else do not do it at all and fund it from general revenue and tax the fucking fossil mining turds appropriately to pay for it. ICE vehicles contribute substantially to increased health problems particularly in urban areas so why don’t we charge people driving these vehicles a hospital user tax? .They are also causing climate change and causing huge environmental damage so we should charge the users of these vehicles for these things as well. The sooner we get all fossil fuel powered vehicles off the roads the better and everyone should be encouraged to get them. The planet can/t afford to keep indulging our internal combustion engine fetish.
It’s well-know that excise is a net revenue raiser Mark – about 30c in the dollar is ‘cream’ – but that’s not the issue. On principle every road user should pay something towards road infratstructure. That said I don’t expect every motorist tax dollar raised to be spent on transport, just as I wouldn’t expect a ‘proper’ LNG tax to be spent only in energy policy areas. Given governments for 30 years haven’t managed our mineral and petroleum resource revenues properly I can’t imagine how future PMs will deal with the revenue gap associated with electric vehicles.
But Jon every road user doesn’t do that now. There are road users now who get exemption as I pointed out. The very road users who actually cause the most damage to roads. The reality is every taxpayer should pay for roads, whether they drive, or not, because they enable our society to function. Tax, in this case, should be regarded like the tobacco excise or alcohol excise. It is designed to change damaging behaviour rather than raise revenue. The revenue can easily be raised in other ways. Through scrapping the CGT exemptions, through increasing GST, or by stopping the incessant income tax cut sugar hits. The revenue gap you seem to think exists is nonsense. I am not sure why you have fallen for this nonsense.
The revenue gap is an obvious reality Mark. Every EV bought and driven in lieu of an ICE vehicle means less excise is put into govt coffers. At the moment numbers are relatively small but that will change over time as technology improves and policies evolve.
Heavy transport does pay excise, and although they are able to use tax credits to offset that they also pay a road user charge on public roads. Some good info on the ATO website for anyone interested. The debate about how to administer a similar road user charge for EVs is currently in play, rightly so imo.
Just did a quick calc on excise revenue which may be of interest.
500,000 EVs in Oz, about half of which are BEVs.
Conservative average km/l of cars they replaced 15km/l.
Average mileage per annum 14,000km
Excise $0.526/l
$122M per year in lost excise or roughly $500 per year per EV sold.
There are obvious swings and roundabouts as Mark said (pollution, health, environmental degradation) but a good proportion of that is out of our control while China, Russia, America, India etc keep pumping increasingly large amounts of greenhouse into the atmosphere and Indonesia and Brazil chop down forests.
Back on to my hobby horse……
That $122M is dwarfed by the billions we forego every year ($45B in 2023 alone) courtesy of lazy, care less, politicians and their determination to give Big Gas a free ride.
Jon,
Yeah, old people wandering about in carparks are a problem!
Had an ev since 2023. An MG. Easily the most enjoyable car to drive we have ever owned (although I did love our Hi Lux that took us all over the country). Given that we replaced our 14 year old Mitsubishi Colt with it there were a lot of technological thingies that discombobulated me to begin with. Fortunately once I got used to them or, in the case of the lane assist feature, turned them off, it became a real pleasure to drive. Charging at home with trickle charge is all we have ever needed. As we have solar panels and battery we charge it for nothing most of the time. Service costs are negligible (as they should be with so few moving parts) and are only required once every two years. As we live in a regional area and have horses we still have a 4wd for towing but nearly all the rest of our motoring is in the ev. I was appalled at the 7.30 Report’s pathetic so called ev road test by their journalist this week. I wrote to them to complain. I gather a lot of people did.
https://thedriven.io/2026/04/21/petrol-tank-mentality-abcs-7-30-report-on-ev-charging-problems-rated-a-fail/
Mark,
That bloody 7:30 article infuriated me, because it was so idiotic. If that is how droolingly incapable the author of that 7:30 piece is, he probably should not be allowed to have a driver’s licence.
Don’t watch 7.30 so I missed that gem of populist tosh. The Driven response was calm and measured and Birmingham’s take down was appropriately searing.
The EV’s tend to have considerable “performance”, as do most current ICE vehicles, it is what I would have classed as “sports” car performance from what I grew up on. There does need to be “headroom” of performance, whether to squeeze out of a mistake, or coping with loads, but too many too used to it helps increase the road toll. Too many “drivers” merely aim the car, poorly. A better driver education, along with a tougher testing, would go a long way to better all round.
I do want an EV, but why scrap the older vehicles with a decent chassis, whether frame, or monococque construction, provided the suspension design provides decent handling. I also want multiple vehicles for different service. Living rurally, 14 Km from a tourist trap town. a small “shopping trolley” vehicle need not have a really big range, but some things I do need something with more carrying capacity. With suitable vehicles, both could be EV, and an extra battery capacity for domestic service. My “go to” ICE vehicle for the shopping trolley was a 1980 Mk I VW Golf GLD, 4.5L per 100 Km, and the petrol Golf, when it first came out, carburetted, was 50 MPG vehicle, despite the aerodynamics of a brick. They were so good because they were under 900 Kg. They did not have so much “passive” safety gear, which is why the current crop are all around the 2 tonne mark. That passive safety equipment is there because of legislation, because too many people do not have adequate skills, both car handling and traffic sense.
As to the roads, we would be better to put a lot of the long haul freight on properly constructed, and properly maintained rail, and electrify that. High speed rail has attractions, but for much of what is needed, that is not cost effective, and the small amount that is warranted, that needs to be considered in light of the total costs to do.
Mark, I read a very brief article only recently about a small business doing conversions, primarily on old classic vehicles. It’s a niche area and probably always will be with China churning out so many new EVs. I didn’t do any further research so I can’t vouch for what I read but I gather some bigger conversion companies have thrown in the towel because of the cost/lack of interest – and presumably the fact that there is no one size fits all option due to the huge variety of ICE vehicles.