Five hours from Perth, deep in regional WA, Matthew Dowling has clocked over 100,000 kilometres in an MG ZS EV – and he reckons he’s saved close to $20,000 in fuel over three years doing it Versus spending at most $5000 on EV charging at home and away.
He’s not a tech enthusiast or an early adopter making a statement. He’s a practical bloke in a farming community surrounded by Prados and Pajeros, who bought an EV because petrol was killing his budget and restricting where he could go.
In this interview, Matthew breaks down exactly how he charges on a Synergy tariff and how he cleverly tops up his car when driving towards Perth to watch footy matches for much less expense than the price of DC fast charging.
He talks through long highway trips to the Pilbara, kangaroo-avoidance speed strategies, and why he’d rather drive slower and pay half the charging cost.
He covers the WAEV network’s surprisingly reliable Kempower chargersand the RFID card trick that keeps working even when the mobile network drops.
He also gets into his solar setup, a 20kWh home battery on the way via a zero-interest WA government loan, tyre choices good and bad as well as a genuinely sobering observation: local diesel is over $3 a litre, farmers can’t afford to fill their tanks, and a gold mine shut down and sent 200 workers home because of a fuel supply problem.
For Matthew, an EV isn’t a lifestyle choice. It’s the only rational one.
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