There are many arguments for or against buying an electric car and they will be mostly rational perspectives. Sure, there are great arguments and counter arguments from both sides of the fence and everyone has a point. And they will be mostly good. One will argue that your lifestyle will be severely compromised because you will not be able to drive to Ipoh for the weekend. The counter argument is that, how many times will you actually do that? An advocate for EVs will argue that we should be more focused on what we do 99% of the time, which is to commute to work back and forth and an occasional deviation to a shopping mall or dinner. Ultimately, every argument is a sound one and there isn’t going to be a winner on either side.

Some will say, a hybrid is better because you will have no range problems and the counter to that is that the hybrid carries too much weight around and isn’t really all that green considering you are still consuming petrol 90% of the time. What about plug-in hybrids then? Well.. the plug in hybrid has a much bigger battery capacity, no range issues. EV guy will simply point to the fact that then the engine is pretty much redundant weight being ferried about 80% of the time. See what I mean? They are all justified reasons, for or against.

Ultimately, if the EV fits, it fits and if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t.

What I would like to talk about today is a more emotional angle towards buying an EV such the NISSAN LEAF. This line of thinking struck me one day when I was showing off the LEAF to a few strangers at a local chinese restaurant late one night. There were four men, and all of them were pretty intrigued and curious to find out more about the LEAF. The usual questions came up. And my answers, now pretty well rehearsed, quickly satiated their quick fire questions.

One of them immediately took out his iPhone and started calculating the amount of money that he could save owning the LEAF over 5 years. But what struck me most was when one of his mates told him that the money you can save is irrelevant. We should be buying cars like the LEAF because they are going to help the planet.money you can save is irrelevant. We should be buying cars like the LEAF because they are going to help the planet. It was really odd and ironic actually. While it may sound totally logical that one should be buying the LEAF on emotional grounds. Saving the planet, helping the environment etc. No one had actually said that to me in my 4 weeks of owning, driving and demonstrating the car. It had become too easy to make the choice of buying an EV a rational decision.

Buying an EV is never going to be cheap. Not for the next few years anyways. The cost of R&D, the cost of battery technology and so on is going to make EVs more expensive than its petrol burning cousins. So, it is easier to say, yeah but we will save lots of money on petrol and pay negligible road tax (incidentally, it costs RM36/year for the LEAF). And lower maintenance cost. And no more emissions which are all rational reasons.

I will buy an EV because it makes a statement. Not a rational statement, but an emotional one. The same reason why we will separate our trash. The same reason why we made a compost bin and why we planted as many trees as we could cram into our yard. We are in our own little way making sure that we are responsible for the planet we live in. We have a duty to ensure our children have at the very least enough clean air and clean water. We are INVESTING in a greener earth and we are PIONEERS and we hope that our values and our example can be followed.