The dirty on green evees

Andy le May, who sells e-whizz scooters.

Techno whizz Kyle Venktess meets four early adopters of electric vehicles.

FULL electric vehicles (evees) are easy to market — just mention the fuel price — but difficult to sell.

They typically cost double the price of a similar-sized internal combustion engine and the batteries’ slow charging times can turn any evee into a ball and chain. An evee owner cannot, for example, just drive to fetch a sick child from school if the batteries only have a few metres of charge left.

None of these concerns worried Greg Ball, the first man to buy not one but two Nissan Leafs in South Africa in November.

Ball works “in the green energy business”, and said in a statement issued by Nissan he wants his family to live a completely green life.

Electric scooters in South Africa boast some of the
biggest exhaust systems in the world, like this Eskom
power plant at Arnot in Mpumalanga.  

Both Ball’s house and business run entirely off solar energy, and a water storage system and vegetable garden means the Ball family’s carbon footprint is significantly smaller than that of the average South African household.

Says Ball: “I decided to buy the Nissan Leaf as it enables me to realise my desire to go green and further my efforts to reduce my family’s carbon footprint. Being in the green energy solutions business, I am now also able to set an example to my customers, as well as my two young children, who are learning how to approach their future.

“I have developed what I call a ‘green conscience’ towards everything we do — from small actions such as home waste disposal to large actions like how we build houses and commute. Everything we do must minimise our impact on the planet and make sense economically — Earth is the only home we have.”

Another early adopter of evees is Andy le May in Cape Town. He has been riding electric scooters for the past four years but to save money and time, not the world. He told Witness Wheels the electricity to commute around 10 000 km a year costs him less than a tank of petrol in his car.

He pays around 0,5c a km for power and has very low maintenance costs — just brake pads and tyres every 1 000 to 1 500 km. Le May also aims to make money off electric scooters, which he sells from R22 000 up to R60 000.

Terry Gormley in Durban is a third early adopter of electric locomotion in South Africa. He is the MD of Pedego electric bicycles in Durban, which wheels retail for the same prices as Le May’s electric scooters. Pedego aim their made-in-the-U.S. bicycles at mountain bikers who don’t baulk at paying a small car’s price for a bicycle. They also rent them out at Durban’s beach front for those who do.

In Pietermaritzburg, Witness Wheels editor Alwyn Viljoen is a fourth pioneering adopter of electric mobility. He said while his Whispa electric scooter looks a lot like an old Vespa scooter, it does not represent China’s best design moment. 

“The sealed digital control unit is placed directly over the rear wheel, precisely where it gets the most water spray from wet roads. During 700 km of faultless cruising, capillary action forced tiny water droplets through the cable opening deep into the hot control unit, causing the entire unit to rust inside,” he said. 

The unit was replaced for free, but Viljoen said it took a long time to find an electrician in Pietermaritzburg willing to look for the mysterious fault on an otherwise fully operational scooter; and then even longer to get the replacement unit, which literally came on a slow boat from China.

Viljoen added that unless one used the sun to charge the batteries as Ball does, the warm fuzzy feelings one gets from using an electric motor is mostly due to earth warming and the pollution created by the vehicles.

“Lead batteries are more than 90% recyclable, while I predict lithium batteries will still cause major recycling issues down the line. On top of this, South Africa’s electricity is generated by Eskom, a company that is a world leader in coal smoke distribution.

“Last week, Eskom was in fact nominated by environmental groups Earthlife Africa, groundWork and Greenpeace Africa as the worst corporation in the world at the Public Eye Awards,” Viljoen said.

The awards, hosted by Greenpeace Switzerland and the Berne Declaration, will take place during the World Economic Forum in Davos in January next year.

“This means that while my electric scooter does not have an exhaust pipe, if you follow the power lines upstream you will find it boasts the biggest exhaust system of any vehicle — an entire power plant belching coal smoke.”