Yes, my electric car makes me feel morally superior. Even better is burning off at the lights

I had no intention to get an electric car quite so soon. For one, I already had a crappy car with a few more years before it would die. In this economy, you have to run cars into the very ground. But then a group of thoughtful hooligans broke into my house, stole my wallet and keys and nicked the car. Then they drove to Dandenong, where they bought $100 worth of Maccas, tried to outrun the cops in my shitbox and dumped it in an industrial estate.

After some enjoyable repartee with my insurance company (involving a weaponised one-star review), I was left with a modest sum and no car. After lurking at car auction sites for a while, I came across a little-used EV. So I bought it.

It was quite nice not farting out planet-warming gases as I drove, but it was absolutely less exciting than I had hoped.

But what I hadn’t expected was the little Scrooge-like thrill of passing yet another petrol station without needing to stop. Another $80 saved, I would crow to any unlucky child of mine stuck in the car with me. And when I figured out how to charge the car at home off my own solar, my excitement was downright embarrassing. For a man in his 40s, this was heady stuff. I felt a bit like how I imagine engineers feel every day, just floating along knowing how things actually work and how to coax the most out of the system (FYI real engineers: no need to destroy my precious illusion).

Then there was the thrill of flogging a Ford Ranger at the lights. They wouldn’t know about it, of course – not like I could glance over and rev my non-existent combustion engine. But it turns out, zipping ahead of the pack in a wholly unremarkable sedan is catnip for suburban dads.

So far, so good. But where was everyone else? Then I came across figures that stunned me: almost 90 per cent of Australians were still buying new cars powered by petrol, diesel or gas. It made sense for people to keep using their old cars as long as possible (see: the economy). But buying new combustion engine cars with a 30-year lifespan? In the year 2025?

Just a quick recap: climate change is bad and getting worse and worse. Almost everyone tells people who do the surveys they’re worried about what climate change means for them and their children. And almost everyone who buys a new car chooses the ones that fart out the stuff making the problem worse.

One little silver lining about spending decades dragging our feet on climate action is that it’s now very easy to see why it’s not a great idea to make the planet hotter and hotter. Object lessons abound. That’s weird – Canada is on fire again. Did that used to happen so often? And why is Europe burning? Oh good, it’s 43 degrees in France. Why is an algal bloom killing marine life in the seas off Adelaide? How odd. Someone should really look into that – there might be some underlying trend.

Anyway. It’s traditional when having a whinge to blame the government. Fair enough. Look at them. Politicians were made for the job. Veritable blame receptacles. But let’s live a little and smear the blame around. But what if the choice of which car to buy was under our control? That seems to be the case for plenty of other nationalities. Ninety per cent of Norwegians now choose an EV as a new car, and China is up to 50 per cent.

For years, EVs were out of reach for most people. Teslas were the plaything of the rich. But that’s changed remarkably. New models are much more competitively priced, while cheaper running costs mean less pain. Get this – rather than paying for fuel, you can charge at home cheaply or virtually free if you’ve got solar. As a hire-car driver in China told the BBC recently: “I drive an electric vehicle because I am poor.”

So why are we dragging our feet? I reckon one reason is that we reach for the edge case. What if I need to drive to Lake Eyre towing an implausibly large boat? What if I felt a calling to give up my suburban life to go looking for gold in impossibly hard locations in the Australian Alps? There won’t be any chargers on the Oodnadatta Track, will there? Check and mate, EV shills.

Just an idea, but you could simply take the money you save by not buying petrol ($3200 on average a year) and hire a hulking diesel brute in the off chance you actually do these edge case scenarios.

The other reason is probably inertia. She’ll be right – petrol and diesel worked in the past, so it will work now. But the past is no longer a good guide to the future, if it ever was. Old mate climate change will make absolutely certain the future looks very, very different (spoiler: worse).

Buying an EV won’t solve it, of course. But then again, every Australian buying a shiny new Ford Ranger or Mitsubishi Outlander will be a small but noticeable gesture in the Herculean, generations-long effort we’re all engaged in called “making the future shitter and shitter”.

Doug Hendrie is a Melbourne writer.

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