Enright: EVs just don't suit me at the moment

What's stopping you from buying an electric car? My excuse is really simple: the car I want doesn’t exist.

Back in September 2021 I wrote a column where I said “I’d like to see a c.$45K hot hatch or Toyota 86-style coupe that’s decently built and which delivers the goods for a keen driver... Were I to place bets, I’d back Hyundai, Kia or MG to be the first to answer that call. But until then, I guess I’ll catch you at the servo, eh?”

More than two years later, I’m still waiting. Given that EVs currently represent 7.4 percent of total Australian new vehicle sales during the first half of this year, I guess you may well be sitting on your hands too.

MG has indeed come closest to fulfilling my brief with the MG 4. The Essence model retails at $47K and is a rear-drive hatch that can skip to 100km/h in 7.7 seconds. So warm, rather than hot then.

But a sporting hatch it most certainly is not. To get the quick MG 4, the all-wheel drive X-Power, you’d need to spend $60K, and I’m still not convinced that it’s a true enthusiast’s choice. Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 N points the way ahead for keen drivers but it’s $111K and is an awful lot of, well, everything.

At this point, some perspective pays dividends. In 2021, a petrol-engined Hyundai i30 N retailed for $41,400, so the idea of a $45K electric hot hatch was perhaps not so far fetched. Then inflation happened. Try parking your posterior in an i30 N for less than 50 grand these days.

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The price gap does indeed seem to be closing between petrol models and EVs, and it’ll be interesting to see how Porsche prices the incoming Macan EV – an entire model-line switch to electric power that the whole industry is watching with interest.

But let’s pretend for a moment that for $50K I could buy an enthusiast EV. Would I then buy it over, say, that Hyundai i30 N? Would I want to futz over how I made a drive in the Victorian high country work?

I could easily fit a commuter EV into my life where the journeys are predictable but, at the moment, EVs seem the nemesis of spontaneity, of heading off the beaten track: a pastime that speaks right to the heart of the Australian motorist.

I’m no Luddite, but I acknowledge that it might be a while before I find an EV that’s right for me.

The value proposition, the public charging infrastructure and, yes, the products need to do a bit more persuading before I take the plunge with my own money. But it will happen.

Right now, driving to the shops, the school run and the commute represent no drama. These tasks are routinely undertaken by an often second family vehicle and represent a near-perfect fit for many affordable EVs.

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Without wishing to casually stereotype, one key impediment here is that women really aren’t warming to electric cars. US website Edmunds found that 67 percent of EV buyers in the US were men and just 33 percent were women.

Men were also far more likely to consider EVs as their next vehicle – 71 percent compared to 34 percent of women. And while Australia’s market is obviously different, research indicates that those ratios aren’t far off what’s happening here.

Perhaps we need to demystify the electric experience for those buyers who would really benefit from the advantages EVs afford. Funny you should mention that...