Australia's EV BOOM: Affordable Cars, V2G & Why the UK is Jealous | Everything Electric Podcast

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1:05Good morning ladies and gentlemen and listeners at home we are recording this wonderful Everything Electric podcast at the Everything Electric Melbourne event and it's a lovely day and there's lots of people here and there's lots of cars and there's thousands of test drives taking place as we speak and I think all in all for a first show in a new location in a new city that we've never done anything in before. I'm not that depressed. So it's come off all right, hasn't it? It's been pretty amazing. I know, because they are, the first shows, you know, the first show we did in Sydney, it looked okay, but it was, I know what was going on behind the scenes.

1:47There was a lot of, what is that, when the ducks do paddling or something, you know, it was a lot of anxiety and worry. And it's really... The term in football is squeaky bum time. It was definitely that. Major squeaky bum time the day before the Sydney show. And then everyone came. It was fine. Yes, it's not about the public. It's often about the motor vehicles. But we won't go into any details on that. Indeed. It's been a really enjoyable show. We've had a lovely time. We hope that you have as well. This is going to be very informal, which will not come as a surprise to you if you know much about my and Bobby's style of presenting.

2:18But we thought we'd just have a little chat, share some thoughts about what we've observed here in Australia with regard to the EV transition, the state of affairs here. And we might do a little Q &A at the end if that's of interest. You can ask anything you like. Yes. But don't ask when Red Dwarf is coming back because every time someone asks, it goes back by one year. So I swear to God, don't do it. Currently, it's 2098. Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean energy tech are funded by our fun-packed, test-drive-tastic events in the North, West and Greater London and our events down under.

2:52Next up, Everything Electric Sydney 2026. plus check out everythingelectric.store for merch and much more back to the episode roberts what have you observed because the fascinating thing about getting to do these shows in different parts of the world is we get to observe how this ev transition happens in a different way in different places so what are your thoughts on where australia is at because they started late but they sure are making up for lost time aren't they i mean i think the big change that I've observed, say from six or seven years ago, when there were really a lot of Teslas in Australia.

3:30That was very common. There was a supercharger network that was well established. That's grown noticeably since I've been coming here. So I'm a regular visitor. For those of you who don't know, I'm a regular visitor to Australia because I'm married to an Australian. And that has enormous benefits and no drawbacks whatsoever. It's absolutely wonderful. And she's not here today so I get so you can get away with saying that yeah um but uh but I you know I noticed there were a few Nissan Leafs and there were Teslas and that was very and then I obviously we couldn't come for a couple years over the COVID and everything and when I came back I went oh my goodness that's I kept kept seeing these other cars I went this is really starting to change now it's very different and that's what I've noticed sort of in the last couple of visits definitely in Sydney in Brisbane, which is where my wife is from Brisbane is just dripping with electric cars there's a lot more than I would have assumed it would be Sydney and Melbourne that would be the centres of it but there's a lot in Brisbane my sister-in-law and my niece in Brisbane both have an Atto 3 and a Dolphin and they call them cars I think this is really interesting I think we're at this point now where we're starting to see the transition from these are weird new techno electric cars to these are cars and then you can also get cars that burn petrol or diesel you know i think that's so the you know when you see people who aren't aren't like for instance jack and i and maybe one or two people here who are kind of very focused on it we're obsessed with it we know about ranges and battery battery size and charging speeds and all that my niece is an artist she's amazing and creative woman she didn't give a toss about any of that she plugs her car in and then she drives it and that's that's the end of it absolutely and i think another thing that's interesting to observe here another part of the reason why it's happening so quickly having started quite late um is affordability because you guys skipped the bit where everything was just like really expensive and a bit rubbish So you've got really high quality EVs, super affordable.

5:39Cars are so cheap here compared to back homes. Really not fair. We are very bitter. I want you to know that. Yeah, we're not happy about it. But in addition to them being quite affordable, they also have all the Chinese stuff. All the Chinese stuff. Because you guys are basically the sort of test bed for the Chinese auto industry. And I know that most of you don't mind that at all because you benefit from it massively. China will send these new models, these new brands here and if you guys like them, they send them everywhere else and if you guys don't like them, then they tweak them according to your feedback and your responses and what that means is you get the really, really, really affordable stuff first and then you combine that with the fact that there is they got this thing called Sun here I know, it's weird there's a bit of it now it's leaking now, it's terrible one of our team members got heat stroke yesterday because she forgot that if you stand outside for long enough in certain parts of the world Anyway, when you combine the affordability of these really, really, really high quality, often Chinese EVs, with the abundance of solar, with the fact that many of you have solar panels on your roof, you can run an EV so cheap here.

6:46And it's just such an exciting thought to have your own little generator on your roof, feeding power into your car, and then one day in the not very distant future, you'll be selling some of that power back into the grid and making a bit of pocket money from your car when you're not using it. That's going to be the reality for Australians very, very soon. It's extraordinary. I mean, I was on a podcast on this stage yesterday about vehicle-to-grid developments in Australia, and I think you're going to be ahead of anywhere else in the world. In a sense, there was a time when it should have been America that was doing this technology, but let's just draw a very thick, heavy velvet veil over that.

7:22That's not going to happen. But I think we are starting to see the rollout of tests of vehicle-to-grid systems in the UK, similar to yours, but I think yours are going to be earlier, and they're going to be more effective because of the amount of solar you can generate. It just is unfair. So the two unfair things that I get bitter about is how much cheaper electric cars are. We just had an example. The Nissan Aria was at$55 ,000 here. In the UK, it's$70 ,000, we pay the equivalent of, for the same car, and it's made in the UK. so we should be getting it cheaper than you I mean it's just the most ridiculous weird thing We're not bitter about it to confirm Well that's the other thing is the amount of solar you get off the same number of solar panels in the UK with the same inverter I've done a test with a mate in Sydney and I just couldn't look at his results it made me so sad Robert has like a sort of sustainable Bond villain set up in the Cotswolds at his home he has this incredible solar array I mean amazing set up But there are probably people here with a panel on their roof the size of one of my shoes that are harvesting more energy than you are on any given day in the Cotswolds.

8:33It's so unfair. I actually looked yesterday. I got 2.7 kilowatt hours in the day. I mean, it is November in the UK. It is a bit dull and overcast. It's been very cloudy. It's still 2.7 more than I would do. The best in the summer, in the middle of the summer, I would get 64 on a good day. So that's the difference between our summer and winter. And that difference is much more muted in Australia. You know, there is more, obviously, in full summer, but it drops. But it doesn't drop. In the UK, it goes, oh, look at that, and it bang to nothing. So you have that advantage. So if you've got a roof that you can put solar panels on, and you've got a car that you can plug in at that house, and with the systems that I was hearing about from the...

9:18It's not that it's cheap. It can be free to run. and it could almost be you could reach a point where your electric car is free to drive and also makes you money. You know, that is weird. I don't know how long and sustainable that would be, but the fact that it's plausible is crazy. It's a nice idea. It's something Elon Musk has been promising for a decade, isn't it? You push a button, your car goes and operates as an autonomous Uber while you're in bed, and you wake up slightly wealthier than you were when you went to bed. It's a lovely thought. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think just briefly want to mention, I have been in the full self-driving Model Y this morning for the first time I've experienced it.

9:57I've been driving Teslas for 10 years. It's so annoying. I always get annoyed when I have to agree with everyone that's done it before how amazing it is. It is amazing. I mean, it was truly impressive. We didn't go that far and we didn't go that fast. but we had a man pushing two bikes across a road ahead of us and he kind of stumbled a bit and he was nervous and he was sort of right because there was a car coming and it saw the bikes. You could see the bikes on the screen and it slowed right down and we didn't, yeah. So it's very, it went round a roundabout. It steered round a little roundabout better than I would have done.

10:30I'd have curbed it. So it was, yeah, really good. I had my first experience of full self-driving a couple of days ago and I would describe it as terrifyingly good. it's so dialed the guy when he gave me the keys he said it's better than adaptive cruise control it's smoother, it's more confident it's so confident it drives like a really good driver that really knows what they're doing, it's not tentative and cautious and skittish it's just, it is astonishing it is absolutely astonishing and someone was explaining to me that the level it's like level 12 or 13 that you get here they've got one up from that already in China and the US so there's more to come It's just, I'm not the biggest Tesla fan, I'll be completely honest with you.

11:13If you've watched my videos, you'll know. It's a brand that I'm very quick to take the mickey out of if there's an opportunity to do so. Just because I'm a contrarian and they were sort of everywhere initially and it annoyed me. But I have no qualms with telling you that it's the most impressed I've been with a car in a very, very long time. Experiencing that full self-driving a couple of days ago. I think we should do a bit of a Q &A. but any further thoughts before we do? Any sort of profound nuggets of wisdom? What's on your mind? I think it's, I have used this year, slightly self-indulgently, mainly privately to reflect on what's happened over the last 15 years.

11:49So the show turned 15 this year and it is, it would have been so unpredictable to imagine any of the live shows we've done. That was not even on the, there was nothing remotely like that. In fact, I took my Nissan Leaf to a village fate in 2012 and parked it you know the vicar invited me in a village near where I live and I put it in the that's the first car show I did it was my new son leave and you know people could sit in it and look at it and some of them did and that was next to that where you throw the get the coconut shy and the bring it the bric-a-brac sale and the cake competition I did have a cake in the cake competition I got second prize I'm I'm not going to go on about that.

12:32There was only two cakes in the contest. It was a very small fate. So that's how I started out with car shows. And it's very much thanks to Dan Caesar, who's not here, who initiated the idea of doing events like this. And I said, don't be daft. No one's going to come. And I think it's fair to say I was wrong. We remain pleasantly surprised every time that they do. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, that's enough reflection. I don't want to go on about it too much. Who'd like to ask us a question? Are we coming back next year? I think we're pretty much certainly coming back next year. I think it's quite likely.

13:09We were very anxious about it before the show opened on the previous week. But I spoke to Jo, who is, you know, none of this would be here without her incredible energy and input. And the team around her, amazing people who've worked properly, they do work really hard. and for months before we get here. I mean, they're organising everything before we get here. And I said to her this morning, do you think we'll do next year? And she said, I'm not going to say anything yet, but it's definitely not no. I mean, I think they have to go through the spreadsheet and see what happens, but yeah. It is important to remember that people put months and months of effort into these shows, and we just swan in the day of.

13:52I said something slightly kind of misplaced to one of the events team on the build day. I was kind of going, God, they really just spring up out of nowhere, these shows. And he was like, no, they don't. They don't spring up out of nowhere. I've slept in three months. God, this is easy, isn't it? Look at these shows just pop up out of thin air, these shows. This episode is brought to you by Hankook. The Hankook Ion tyre is built exclusively for electric vehicles, engineered to deliver what EV drivers need most, confident grip, quietness, energy efficiency, and long mileage. As the official tyre partner of Formula E, Hancock proves its EV technology is at the highest level of performance and brings that same innovation to every ion tyre on the road.

14:38And now, back to the episode. There's a microphone just over here. If you raise your hand, you're very welcome to ask us a question. The microphone will be brought to you. One thing I wouldn't mind just getting a vague idea from you guys is how do you feel about the venue? Because we actually love this venue. I think it's a really beautiful... Oh, generally approving. Okay. And it's so easy to do test drives around here. I don't know if you've picked up on it. I occasionally get the smell of a small dairy room, of cows, basically, which this had 5 ,000 cows in it not that long ago, which I find really comforting and reassuring.

15:12I think some people have moaned a bit. That's been the only negative comment I've heard at all. It smells a bit cow-like. It's not all the cow-like at all. Occasionally you get a bit of a whiff. Have you not had a whiff of cow? I can't say that I have. A whiff of cow? Yes. Yes, people have had a whiff of cow. I've got a shit nose. Is that what we're saying? Okay. Didn't realise. There's a question over here. Yep. You've raised that in Australia we have some of the most affordable EVs. We've got a huge range of Chinese, but we're struggling to get above 10%, 11 % of the new market. What are your thoughts coming from Britain?

15:50What might be some of the reasons for that, particularly given we've got the sunshine and solar and everything? I mean, I think it's just, it is a process and it's a painful one. I mean, I think we have to acknowledge that there are fairly potent forces that would rather we didn't drive electric cars, which is kind of odd. I mean, and I'm not talking political necessarily, I'm talking economic forces. So the oil industry is obviously very big, very powerful, very global. And, you know, it's not in their interest for us to stop buying their product, you know, which is completely understandable.

16:22It's not even portraying them as evil conspiracists, though occasionally they are. But, you know, there is some pressure. So the stories in the press about electric cars, I think that's the key thing, and that holds people back. They go, I wouldn't mind one of those. We can plug it in. We've got solar panels. And they'll go, oh, no, it'll burst into flames. It will blow. You'll have to throw the battery after three years of all those things. The alarms will just go off randomly. That happens. All electric cars do that. I was about to catch fire over there. Yeah, they're always doing it. But then I think what happens, and I think we've seen this maybe five years ago in the UK, where it was very slow.

16:59It was growth, but it was slow. And then what I've kind of worked out is no amount of advertising or YouTube videos or anything will really push those numbers. What happens is there's a bloke over the road who's got a Renault Zoe. There's one up the street who's got a Tesla. And they're still driving them four years later. And you go, I'm just going to get a new car. well they seem to you know and that that the word of mouth we've heard it so many times and that is where you're at that position now in this country where there's enough people with them that most people will know someone or see someone that they see regularly that drives one and they're not in tears at the side of the road as it burns out or they've run out of battery i don't know how people run out of battery it is an unusual phrase but and it's that confidence that's that's got to grow slowly and the other one is the the charging infrastructure and people think there is no charging infrastructure and there's nowhere i could charge if you can't charge at home and that takes a long time and we still get that now in the uk where there's oh there's nowhere to charge them with this i don't know what it is now we're well over uh 18 000 public charge points with like 27 or 80 no it's not i'm way under it's it's it's in the tens of thousands of rapid chargers in the UK.

18:13They're everywhere. Every motorway service doesn't have one or two. It has 26. And yet still people will say, there's no way to charge them. And we have on-street charging in London is now over 150 ,000 on-street charge point sockets in lampposts, which I've used. Very easy to use. If you can park there, the real alternative for electric cars in London is why are you driving a car? You're an idiot. It's the slowest way to get around, as you know, Jack. Absolutely. I'm not saying you're an idiot. I didn't actually take it that way until you clarified.

18:51I think we have to remember that this technology is quite other, right? It's new, and we hear all this talk about kilowatt hours and kilowatts and charging rates, and it sounds a bit daunting. And if you only consume tabloid newspaper journalism, you may well genuinely believe that they are prone to catching fire and that you'll have to replace the battery in a few years' time for an immense cost and there's no chargers everywhere. We're not blaming people for being misinformed. We simply have to give them better information. And that's why it's so important that all of you who drive EVs, who know what they're about, who know how beneficial this technology is, are ambassadors for it.

19:32We don't have to be moany and preachy. We just have to politely correct when we hear false information. And at any opportunity, show them. Because that's the best way, isn't it? Just shut up and drive that. Yeah, it's good, isn't it? Yeah, great. Thank you. We like to think these shows are all about us on a stage. But it's actually just about people test driving electric cars. Because there's nothing we can say that makes it more self-evident than just experiencing it for the first time. Yeah. Is there? So, yeah. That's my spiel. is just be a good ambassador for it and bring your most cynical friend next year.

20:07Oh, we've got another question? G'day. Just wondering if there's any government policy regulation sort of frameworks that you think Australia could adopt from somewhere else or the UK or vice versa? Really good question. We don't have much more than you guys have here with your new efficiency standards, which is kind of the same thing as we have, where a certain percentage of vehicles have to be small and electric. Unsurprisingly, the Norwegians are quite good at this. They've got a really fun policy where they basically have just slashed the purchase tax off electric vehicles, and then there's incrementally high purchase tax on combustion vehicles based on their CO2 emissions.

20:50So if you want to buy a Porsche Panamera V8 saloon instead of a Porsche Taycan electric saloon, the tax on that car is like 100%. You're paying double simply to sort of, you basically have to go out of your way to be like, look how important it is to pollute for me. And you just have to make it make so much sense to people's wallets that they'll just buy it because it's the obvious financial choice. And then again, they drive them. They're like, oh, this is great. I'd like to see a little bit more stick along with the carrots, I guess is what I'm saying, Bobby. Yes. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah.

21:24I mean, I think I've always been slightly uncomfortable and hesitant. and it might be because I'm not a, I don't know what it is, it worries me that I'm a rampant capitalist, but I'm nervous about, you know, government supporting and funding a technology. If the technology's good, we'll adopt it, and if it isn't any good, we won't. And I think that argument is a very good argument that the forces opposed to what we're trying to achieve can use very easily. Oh, so you have to have subsidies for these rubbish cars that don't work, just to please a tree-hugging holier-than-thou, virtue-signalling, whatever the hell all those boring old terms are.

22:03And so that makes me slightly nervous. And our sales figures were increasing slowly, albeit slowly, but they were going up before we had the most recent government grants announced. And the figures have gone way up. But actually, the figures have gone up more than is justified by the grants. And the grants are very modest, like mostly£1 ,500, so about$3 ,000 towards the price of a new car. The big change that we've had in the UK that you will get here eventually, and that really shifts the market, is second-hand. So when second-hand electric cars make a real impact, and what happened to us really last year and this year is a huge number of leased vehicles, so corporate leased electric cars came onto the market.

22:48They were three years old. They've been well looked after. They're well serviced. the percentage of second-hand vehicle sales went up it was like 412 % which I don't understand percentages that sounds like it that's implausible but a lot and a lot of people who have bought second-hand cars are raving about them are going this is so good and it's done 80 ,000 miles and it's absolutely fine the battery is still at 97.9 % because you can get your battery health checked they are but I'm in the second-hand And there's now a sort of second-hand dealership networks that have grown up that understand electric cars that drive electric cars.

23:28Whereas 10 years ago, anyone you spoke to said, oh, don't get a second-hand electric car. It'll fall to bits in two weeks, and you'll have to replace the battery. Now they're not saying that, and that's made a big difference. A hundred percent. You can now sort of plug a dongle into a used EV and get an exact readout of the remaining percentage of the battery capacity. There's an organization here this weekend who'd do precisely that. But that's such a good point, Bobby. The used market has blossomed in the UK. And who buys a new car if they can avoid it? Most people buy secondhand. It's just the obvious way to buy cars.

23:59It's so much more affordable. It takes time. They need to be new first in order to become used. And that will come over the next couple of years. That's an interesting point you made about not incentivizing things, becoming a useful stick for your opponents to beat you with. I suppose the argument is, once upon a time, they were just more expensive. They were more. And it had to happen early on. They're not really anymore. The equivalent petrol and EV are so similar on price now because battery prices have tumbled. So maybe the need for massive incentives is less these days. I mean, the first, I've just driven it, and I'm not even going to mention the make or the car because it hasn't been the most popular vehicle in the UK in its history.

24:43but there's a recently launched vehicle where the full petrol one costs this, the hybrid version costs that, the cheap version is the electric one, it is cheaper cheaper, not the same cost it's cheaper, about£1 ,000 cheaper than the petrol or the hybrid version which I think is, that's the first one I've come across like that and that is a European built vehicle and I think it's good that I didn't mention what it is, Vauxhall Frontier Alright, thank you That's a good car, that's alright No, it was all right. It was all right. I'll tell you what was interesting about it. It had a digital detox.

25:18You get in it. It's got a speedometer. It's got a radio. It's got air conditioning. It's got heating and a radio, and you can plug your phone in. It's got nothing. And I went, that is so delightful. You start driving, and you go, oh, I know how fast I'm going. That's all I need. I think this is a movement. I actually think there's a sort of… It's got no apps, no fancy… Physical button and switch renaissance taking place. We reached critical mass in terms of how flipping distracting car interiors were, how massive and overwhelming the screens were and how many features were buried inside of them.

25:50And we're seeing it start to go the other way now because no one preferred that. Haptic buttons are much cheaper to manufacture than physical buttons on a steering wheel because it's one piece instead of lots. No one prefers them either. So we're seeing VW kind of put their hands up and go, we're sorry, we messed up with those interiors. We're going back to the old way. Tesla brought back the Stork. Thank goodness for that. It's fun to try stuff, but it didn't work. So yeah, buttons are back. I'm excited about that. I don't know why bring back the stalk makes me... I think I want a T-shirt with that on.

26:21Sophie, have we got someone? All right. Correct me if I'm wrong, but back in the UK, your daily driver is a MG4 and a Polestar 2. If you came and moved to Australia, what would your daily driver be, do you think?

26:38Polestar 4. that's for shopping and I don't know V8 Holden Monaro is that fine to say it's not is it that would be my weekend car

26:54I had the Zika 7X for a couple of days before the show it was absolutely delightful that thing this gentleman's making motorcycle gestures at me also yes 100 % I was very impressed by the Zika I didn't really know what that brand was all about because we don't get them in the UK and it's of course the sister brand of Polestar. Yes. It's a cop-out answer from me. I'm going from a Polestar to a kind of purely Polestar. But I'm a big fan. The Xpeng P... God, you're so much better at them. The one I drove here a couple of years ago. G6, maybe? G6, it could be. I mean, that was such a comfy car. That's when you're driving.