Are electric cars the future for New Zealand?

With New Zealand's agreement to cut down emissions, the future of our petrol, diesel and LPG powered vehicles seems to be bleak. With the rapid rise in technology it seems that we are almost certain to be driving vacuum cleaners in the future. But is the future of motoring so bad after all?

Take the Tesla Model S for example, this incredibly complex piece of engineering and technology has revolutionised and innovated the electric vehicle industry with the P85D model being so fast that it can outsprint most modern supercars to 100 KMH (The 2,239 KG P85D goes from 0 to 100 KMH in 3 seconds flat!).

However, all these technological marvels come at a price, the Tesla has a base price of approximately $117,522 NZD (Tesla Australia) which is quite pricey considering you could get a similarly equipped petrol powered Audi A5 for $88,500 (Audi New Zealand)

Unfortunately for most of us without deep pockets, we will be stuck with these "fabulous" cars, the Nissan Leaf and the Toyota Prius. I can see where the car manufacturers are going with their new hybrid and electric vehicles as there is a need to curb our carbon emissions drastically as society expands and to prevent the planet from being over polluted but the car companies just don't seem to be able to make the cars look particularly pleasing. Take the Prius for example, it is one of the world's most successful hybrid cars but it just doesn't look too good. The package is there it's just it's not very appealing. If the companies started building cars that have attractive styling just like the Tesla, I believe that people will be more inclined to go electric and will be encouraged to embrace this advanced new technology.

Overall, I think electric power will be the way of the future but the internal combustion engine will never truly die. Petrol, diesel and LPG motors also do not require a lot of specialist equipment to repair and replacing batteries is an incredibly time consuming, expensive and complex job. Also, how could we possibly ditch an engine that can produce sounds like this Nissan S20 Straight six in the Nissan Skyline 2000GT-R above? (skip to 10:10 for the noise!)

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more automotive articles.