As the price of fuel keeps rising and with the government due to launch a campaign for green motorists, Kristina Chetcuti takes an electric car home to check it out.
I spent three days silently whirring around Malta in a quirky, orange blob of a car with headlights looking like frogs’ eyes. For three mornings, the whole of my neighbourhood eagerly circled the Tazzari Zero, poking it, stroking it and quizzing me. Indeed, wherever I went, the car attracted admiring looks and comments.
The Zero is a made-in-Italy new generation EV. It has no internal combustion engine. It runs on lithium-ion batteries and charging them uses a whole lot less energy than producing oil to run a petrol-powered car.
The brochure assures me that “if you own a mobile phone you already know how to charge your Zero. All you need is an electrical socket.” So, no more petrol stations. However, it takes about nine hours to charge the batteries from zero to 100 per cent.
Reuben Zahra, of Fapi motors, importers of the Tazzari, shows me how to take the cable from the front luggage compartment and plug into the socket. Easy.
Inside, it’s very much like an automatic car: no gear lever and just two pedals: a brake and an accelerator. On the dashboard there are four coloured buttons for the driving modes: red is turbo, for maximum power; green is economy; the yellow is for a drive somewhere in between; and the blue is for rain, when road conditions demand a little grip. “If you stick to green, the battery will give you 140 kilometres”, says Mr Zahra.
Once you’ve got over the hefty purchase price – and at €26,800 it is somewhat lumpy – the cost of driving is then unbelievably low. A nine-hour full charge, which lasts about three days, will cost something like €1. Conventional petrol or diesel cars (small fuel efficient vehicles) will use an average of €30 in fuel for the same range.
Running costs are much cheaper. A conventional car has 300 moving parts; the electric engine has only three.
But who can fix an EV if something goes wrong? “The only common serviceable parts are tyres, suspensions and brakes, all of which can be serviced by a normal mechanic. The electric motor in theory can be worked on by auto-electricians because most electric motors are simple,” says Mr Zahra.
So what’s it like? It’s not spacious but, then, no city car really is. It has two luggage areas, one at the back and, there being no engine, there’s also one at front. This is more than enough for a spot of supermarket shopping.
Moreover, it is a hilarious car to drive. It accelerates at a ridiculous pace, capable of an eerily silent 0-60 kmph dash in less than five seconds. There’s no gear changing, no screaming engine, just prod the accelerator and you’re whisked to another place very, very quickly in a dodgem-like way. But it was not a smooth drive all the time:
Day 1
I pick up the Zero. I drive from Attard to Paola, then up to Naxxar and back to Paola. It’s a joy nipping about the roads. Other drivers let me go through in traffic. My daughter loves the colour-coded buttons and we’re switching modes every other second. When I drop her off at ballet, the other children ask their parents if they can have one like it because it looks like a happy car.
Day 2
I had pencilled in a long lunch. I phone all the car parks to check if it would be possible to charge the EV while parked. I want to “graze”, topping up the battery at every lengthy stop, but this seems not to be possible in any car park in Malta. At the Portomaso car park I’m told that they could find me a parking close to a socket but I would have to stay next to it all the while it’s recharging, which defeats the whole purpose. The MCP car park in Floriana tell me I’d have to rent a parking place in one of their garages for about €800 a year. They would then install a meter and I’d pay the bill for the electricity consumed.
In the end, four hours of potential charge are wasted at the Eden car park in St George’s Bay and, later, another two hours are wasted at the Tignè car park. By the time I set out to drive home, in heavy traffic, the display says that I am almost on “reserve”. I select the green eco-mode but the distance/range gap is still shrinking. I get home with about 20 kilometres to spare. I plan to leave the Zero charging overnight but parking space in front of my house is taken up and I don’t have a garage.
Day 3
I phone the local council to see if I’m eligible for a reserved parking place if I own an electric car. They have never had this sort of request: “You can only get one if you are disabled.” I am directed to Transport Malta and informed that “the concerned section cannot accede to this request, therefore, the reserved parking cannot be given”.
At 11 a.m. the parking space frees up but a power cut in the area means I still can’t charge the car. I can now see why people talk about “range anxiety” with electric cars. In the end, I drive to Valletta but don’t risk going elsewhere. In the afternoon, I return the Zero to its showroom.
Without the possibility of a reserved parking place, no national charging points and no garage of my own it breaks my eco-heart to say so: but I can’t live with an electric car – for now.
Incentives for buying an electric car
• A reduction of the annual licence fee from €75 to €10.
• A subsidy of up to €5,000 for the installation of grid-connected renewable energy sources.
• Companies that opt for such vehicles will be eligible for a tax rebate of 125 per cent on the cost.
• A subsidy of 15.25 per cent of the value of the new vehicle, up to a maximum of €2,000 when you scrap your old car to replace it with another one that has little emissions
• A grant of 20 per cent by the Malta Resources Authority on the purchase price of a car subject to a maximum grant of €2,329.