Charging ahead with Hayden Paddon – Episode 2

Music and sound of revving car engine: Opens with branded rally car doing donuts spraying dirt. The words “Charging ahead with Paddon – EV roadie” with the Meridian Energy logo appear on screen.

Scene changes to show Hayden Paddon from Paddon Rallysport staying in front of a building that has a Paddon Rally Sport Group sign on it. There is also a white EV in the background. Hayden is talking to camera, then see a white Hyundai EV driving up a dirt road to Meridian’s White Hill wind farm.

Today we’re going on a Meridian EV roadie down to a windfarm to see where some of New Zealand’s renewable energy comes from.

See Hayden and Kirsten standing at White Hill wind farm with the EV parked in the immediate background and wind turbines turning on the hills in the far background.

Hayden looks around and says to Kirsten: How cool is this. We got here, and we’re at Meridian’s White Hill wind farm.

See more views of the wind farm.

Then see Hayden in full safety harness and wearing a helmet standing inside the bottom of a wind turbine. He is accompanied by two wind turbine technicians in full safety gear and high visibility overalls.

Hayden says: We’re going to head up one of Meridian’s turbines and check out the view.

See Hayden climbing up the internal steel ladder near the top of the turbine. He gets to the top and climbs out of a hatch under the turbine gear box.

Hayden says: This wind farm here in White Hill is capable of powering all of Invercargill. So quite a bit of power is generated from this one little hill alone.

See arial views of the top of the wind turbine and see Harden’s top half of his body sticking out the top of the turbine and the incredible view from the top.

Changes to inside the turbine and Kirsten Corson, EV enthusiast, is talking to the camera wearing a full safety harness and a helmet. She is smiling and says: That was so cool! I couldn't believe it. It was amazing to see right across the countryside and to see the technology used for creating power. Awesome, loved it!

Scene changes to show Hayden standing outside again, next to the parked EV with the wind turbines on the hills in the background. He’s taking off his yellow safety helmet he wore for the turbine climb and putting on his rally driver helmet that is sitting on the car roof.

He says: Now that Meridian have shown me what they do best, I thought I’d show them what I do best in my fully electric rally car.

See a the fully electric rally car speeding down the road at White Hill towards a wind turbine. On screen are the words ‘Performed by a professional in a controlled environment. DO NOT attempt.’

See a shot from inside the rally car as it drives down the direct road to the wind turbine. See the rally car doing a wide donut around the base of the wind turbine. See it spraying dirt.

Scene changes to show turbine spinning with countryside in background. Hayden wearing a helmet talking to camera: Now we will go see the other side of power generation with the hydro power up in Waitaki, which is heading back the direction we came. So, it’s time for another road trip.

See white EV driving on the road then switches to show Hayden and Kirsten sitting in the white EV talking as he drives. Hayden speaking to Kirsten: So obviously on a road trip like this, it’s quite nice to be in this nice new luxurious EV car but I guess realistically, you know, it’s not achievable for everyone to have a car like this so what’s the second-hand EV market like? Like is there a good market out there? Is it more realistic? Do the batteries still have good life?

Kirsten: There’s actually heaps of EVs and it is growing second hand market available. So, if you think through from, you know, five years ago, the Nissan Leaf was pretty much the only choice on second hand EVs but now we’re generating our second-hand market which is great and we’re still importing EVs out of the UK and Japan as well. So, they’re becoming you know far more accessible and obviously far more affordable, and the neat thing is that there’s still the Clean Car Discount.

Hayden: I guess the thing that you’re probably nervous about when you buying a used electrical car is battery life. Like obviously it’s not going to have the life that it once had when it was new but is it going to still be sustainable to do your daily travel?

Kirsten: I think there’s two things there. Every year your battery does degrade slightly but it’s anywhere from one to three percent degradation on your battery range and when you’re buying a car you can get that tested to see what the range is on the vehicle. And then, I guess the other piece that lots of people are worried about is what actually happens to that battery at the end of its life. EVs are still relatively new but it’s interesting talking to some friends who have had their batteries replaced already. So, I know there is a company in Auckland that does it. And they just take the battery and use it in home storage.

Hayden: We’ve found obviously with our rally car – so much less moving parts, so much less maintenance and therefore the longevity of the car and the value of the car keeps up as well.

Kirsten: One hundred percent. So, I don’t know. How many moving parts have you go in your rally car?

Hayden: I haven’t counted

Kirsten: Your petrol one?

Hayden: I haven’t counted but in the petrol one, a lot, thousands. But in the EV car we’d be lucky if there’s a hundred.

Kirsten: Yeah, yeah, typically there’s around...like in this EV we driving today, there’s around twenty-five moving parts in this engine. And where if there was equivalent petrol car there’d be around two thousand. So, the cost of maintenance is taking it for a service, it’s at least half.

Hayden: Yup.

Kirsten: Yeah, that of a normal petrol service.

Hayden: Right so all the wear and tear.

Kirsten: Yeah

Hayden: Combustion decay, you have a lot of wear and tear and EV electric motors are completely different.

Kirsten: And it’s interesting when I’m tralking to people at charging stations, as you do when you’re an EV driver. There’s actually a lot of elderly that have been buying EVs because they not travelling that far in their car, they can plug it in every evening and it’s that really reliable cost when they’re budgeting as well.

See an ariel view of Waitaki dam.

Hayden voice over: Don’t miss our next video where we’ll cover off more of your EV questions.

Music ends. Merdian logo on screen with the words ‘The Power to Make a Difference’.