Eighty-year-old gets electric car as birthday gift

John Allason got an electric car as an 80th birthday present from his son.

Now he hopes fully electric cars will one day be as regular a sight as mobile phones, the ABC reports.

The Tasmanian was keen to eliminate petrol emissions to make a positive environmental impact.

“I just thought this is a good state to have an electric car because most of the power made here is from renewable resources.”

Allason charges his Nissan Leaf from his solar panel set-up at his home in Tinderbox, meaning it has cost him nothing to run over summer.

“The car I had before, it used to cost about $10 per 100 kilometres. This one isn’t costing me anything.

“Even when I have to buy the electricity at 28 cents, it’s still about 60% cheaper per kilometre to run.”

He has not had to charge his car outside of home.

“Usually I use it the same as a mobile phone — I come home at night and I plug it in.”
The model can get about 120 kilometres on one charge, so Allason limits his travel to within 50 kilometres of his house.

“I’ve got a big hill to climb coming into town and that eats up the juice … but when I’m coming down the hill it makes power.

“It has an eco-button as well, which gives you the same distance but uses 10% less power if you don’t want to have a lot of speed — and that’s great for around town.”

Allason says the charge gauge needed improvements so it was more accurate with just how much charge remained.
But he hopes electric cars are not far from the norm.

“Give it five years. I think there’ll be quite a change in the whole attitude to electric cars.”