Interview: Physics Teacher Shaun Howarth

[00:00:12] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving and much much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host. And on this episode, I sat down with Shaun Howarth, who is just a really nice guy like Shaun and I have been

[00:00:37] emailing back and forth for, I don't know, a year and a half or so. And he was talking about how he's from New Zealand. He's traveled all of the world as a physics teacher. And

[00:00:51] he's lived all over the world as a physics teacher. And then he resettled back into New Zealand. And he bought an electric vehicle, bought a new house, equipped the house with batteries and solar panels. And I kind of wanted to get a different perspective because

[00:01:09] obviously I live in North America, which is, you know, in the Northern Hemisphere. This is a very Northern Hemisphere perspective show. Like, I don't talk much about the Southern Hemisphere, although I do love New Zealand and all the other countries and places

[00:01:26] in the world that are in the Southern Hemisphere. I don't think the show has much representation in that regard. So one day I just asked Shaun, I was like, do you want to come on and chat

[00:01:38] about your experiences with your, you know, renewable energies, kind of electric motorcycle? He has a Model 3. And I was just curious what that experience was like in New Zealand. Like let's get a different perspective on the show. And Shaun happily came on and

[00:01:57] we had a nice chat. And honestly, this is a chat. It's not an interview. This is just a conversation that Shaun and I had. And I think you're going to enjoy it. But before

[00:02:06] we get to the conversation, I do need to let you know that even though Shaun currently lives in New Zealand, he is in the United States right now. He's in New Hampshire, or at least he

[00:02:20] was at the time of this conversation. So he's going to make references to different places that he's lived, but he's going to say something like, well, where I'm at right now or here we

[00:02:34] have this. He's referring to New Hampshire, not New Zealand or any of the other places he's lived. So if he says, you know, here we have a motorcycle rally, that's in New Hampshire

[00:02:44] at the time of the interview. All right, let's go ahead and welcome Shaun to the show. Thank you very much. Good to be here. All right, so you and I were just chatting. And so I've gotten to know you just a

[00:02:55] little bit. We've emailed back and forth. And over the last five or so minutes, we really got to know each other. Can you just take a few minutes and tell the audience a little bit about yourself so they know who's talking?

[00:03:09] Okay, yep. Originally from New Zealand. And what we do in New Zealand when we turn about 23 after we've got our degrees in there, we did this thing called the Great OE, which is just the overseas experience because New Zealand is so far away from everywhere. A lot of

[00:03:28] people go to England and work in London for two years, then come back to New Zealand. Now, my father was English, so I had a New Zealand and a British passport. So I didn't have to worry

[00:03:38] about only working for two years. So I left New Zealand in 1998 and finally went back there in 2020. So I was away for a little bit longer than two years. And as I was trained as a school

[00:03:55] teacher, a high school physics teacher, I did, I taught all around the world in numerous countries, including the US three times actually, in North Carolina, Colorado and Indianapolis and Indiana. And I get pretty much right around the world working and living in places rather

[00:04:18] than being a tourist actually. So yeah, it's nice to give us that's a that's a nice perspective to have, you know, I've lived in Arizona for 20 years, and it's the place that I've probably lived the most of my life

[00:04:34] except for Alaska, which is where I was born. I'll have to do the math to see if I've crossed over, but I've only lived in like four or five places my entire life. So being able to live

[00:04:44] in a bunch of different places and and experience what it's like at different places around the world as more than just the tourists is awesome. That's what I look for when I go out of

[00:04:53] town. So you move back to New Zealand in 2020. I'm assuming you bought a house. It sounds like you bought some solar panels and some battery. Why don't we talk about that just a

[00:05:04] little bit? What was the what was the like driving factor because you you were just coming back as energy expensive in New Zealand? Was it an environmental thing? What was your motivation?

[00:05:15] Not not really. As I said before, I used to be a physics teacher. I probably still am a physics teacher. But so, you know, I was aware of solar panels and how they worked and all

[00:05:28] that sort of thing. And they're a lot more efficient than they were saved even 10 years ago. And I thought I'm not big on living off the grid, but I like to be independent from it as

[00:05:42] I possibly could. And I thought solar panels or wind power, for example, would be another thing. And I thought solar panels would be a better thing to have a look at because of course, they require no major. Every now and then hosing them down, they got a little

[00:05:58] bit dirty. And I just bought a house to be honest. As a 47 year old and living all around the world, I didn't own houses. So coming back to New Zealand, I realized I was going

[00:06:13] to pretty much probably stay here, say there, sorry. And I thought what the heck? Maybe I should buy a house. So I bought a house in a small town, literally in the middle of

[00:06:24] nowhere, which is similar to where I grew up when I was young. I was small town. So I'm quite happy not being in a big city and I've worked in big cities around the world.

[00:06:37] So that was no problem. And yeah, I just thought environmentally, the good thing about New Zealand is that most of the electricity, like 80% of the electricity is from renewable sources anyway, whether it's hydro, we have a bit of geothermal in the Northern Ireland.

[00:06:54] We have a lot of wind farms as well. We still burn the odd bit of coal, but 80%, 85% of it is renewable sources. So I thought I might as well make my own renewable energy. And

[00:07:11] first of all, I put I think about four kilowatts of panels on the roof. And in New Zealand at the time, I'm pretty sure you can have more than five kilowatts. But if you're not

[00:07:24] home and it's really sunny, the most you can send back to the grid, not that you make huge amounts of profit from sending electricity back to the grid anyway, they will only accept five. So you're wasting any extra you have. So I increased that to five. I also

[00:07:41] installed I think 10 kilowatt hours of batteries as well. So when I'm not at home, I'm out at work or whatever it stores in the batteries. And to be quite honest, I increased that as well to 50 RT ends up being 15 kilowatts. And during the summer, that would

[00:08:00] fall up by 10 30 in the morning. So that would fall up first before it has sent anything to the grid. So nice. And then when it gets dark at night, which during the summer is probably 9 30 at night, I live off the batteries.

[00:08:19] Nice. And you were telling me that you have an EV and your wall connector goes straight from the batteries to your car? Yeah, I think I think Tesla does that if you have their

[00:08:30] wall connector in there, you know, power power on that sort of thing now, we I think you're not for that in their little in their app in their app. But yeah, I've got a Chinese who made a

[00:08:46] EVSE and it's it's connected with a little CD clamps to the power that's coming in for the solar panels. And so it knows to direct it to the car if it's plugged in until the car is fully charged.

[00:09:00] Yeah, well, another thing I've got a I've got a Tesla Model 3. And I don't know. I think you have these in the US, but we're a lot of them in New Zealand have the LFP battery, which you can charge to 100% every time.

[00:09:15] So I never have to worry about, you know, keeping it at 80 because I'm not going to use it, you know, occasionally or things like that. So I reckon the LFP battery, although apparently it's not as high

[00:09:31] performance. But then again, do I need to get from 0 to 100, not to 62 and two and a half seconds? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My my my model Y Long Range doesn't have the best takeoff when you compare it

[00:09:46] to other EVs, but it's got better takeoff than my friends cars, their gas cars. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it still throws you back in the seat a little bit. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. You also had an MGS EV SEV and what you say that was

[00:10:02] the ZS? Yeah, I was a yeah, it was the MGS. Yeah. Okay, there you go. And what was your thoughts on that? Because you you bought that one first and then you went with the Model 3. Yeah. I'm trying to think when they

[00:10:17] when they first came into New Zealand at the end of 2020. So I got one of the first ones and it's only a relatively small battery, I think to be honest, I think it's only 44. The one the version that I've got was 44. I think the newer version has

[00:10:34] maybe 55 or maybe even higher than that. I can't remember. But I drove that from where I used to live in the North Island down to the we have a ferry that goes

[00:10:45] across to the South Island and drove right to the bottom of the South Island where I live in New Zealand. And that's like six or 700 miles. And the good thing in New Zealand is that the DC

[00:11:00] fast charges, they all work. And they're not the fastest though. I mean, I know in the US you have like 350s or that depends on what you can't one be able to take that.

[00:11:15] In New Zealand, most of our like a lot of our charges are just for like 50 kilowatts. We have a few 350s but a lot of them are 50 kilowatts. But so I mean, I had no problem.

[00:11:29] I was in no mad rush to I don't need to I don't need a two second break to follow my car and get on my way. I mean, sure. Well, that kind of leads me to my next question was which is what's the charging

[00:11:44] infrastructure look like there? It sounds like you're up times great. Can you find a charger when you need one? Yeah, a lot of the time there's only one charger. And of course,

[00:11:56] you know, most of them have a chat about and and CCS we have CCS two, which is something as your CCS one, except the one of the ports is slightly different. It's smaller. And I think I think CCS two, which is what New Zealand and Europe has.

[00:12:15] And I think Australia as well is I think it's a bit more there are a few less bugs than the CCS one. But I've never had any problem. Well, yeah, I think one problem numerous times have used them

[00:12:28] and just call up the we don't have one 800 we have 800 numbers and just call them up and caught up and they can reset it remotely. And it's usually good to go. There are very few

[00:12:41] times where I've come across one that hasn't been like they can't get going again. And that's that sometimes there's more than more than one in that city. And like the big cities is lots. If you're traveling up and down the outskirts of the islands,

[00:12:59] they say there's one every 75 kilometers, which is about 50 miles. So this is DC Chargery for every 50 miles minute. Okay. That's nice. Yeah. Yeah, that's nice. The I once had after I got my car, my father and I went to a movie and we pulled up to this

[00:13:23] blink charging station. It's level level two, no big deal. So I plug in, I get on the app. I can't find you have to tell it which one you're at. I can't find the one that we're sitting at

[00:13:35] and sitting in front of there's like five or six of them there. It's in front of an office building. And I was like, Oh, I'll just call them. And they're like, Where are you when I tell them

[00:13:43] the cross streets? And they're like, Yeah, we don't know what you're on. This is a terrible experience. This is an absolutely terrible experience. And my father, a lot of who I'm trying to convince to buy an EV, he's like, Okay. This was this was not a great experience.

[00:13:58] And it was like, you're right. I was listening to another podcast today where people were saying quite a lot. I might have been English one, actually, where they were saying a lot of those charges were put in years ago because the government was giving them incentive like a

[00:14:12] paying paying a certain percentage of their of the cost to put them in. And unfortunately, they paid for them to be put in, but no one looks after them. Oh, yeah. So yeah, there are sort of big

[00:14:29] Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's kind of a good time to mention this because I was going to talk about it on the show that we did on yesterday. But I guess the biggest problem with all of

[00:14:44] the IRA money that's supposed to go to the infrastructure charging infrastructure here in the US is it's very difficult and time consuming to fill out the paperwork and then get the proper

[00:14:53] approvals at the federal level. So it's difficult at the local level if you're just going to pay for it all yourself. And then it's even more difficult at the federal level. So we have seven

[00:15:03] seven fast chargers that have been deployed in what was a year and a half or so here in the US. Yeah, which is not a great number. Yeah. No, speaking of incentives, the we've done we

[00:15:19] general election at the end of last year. So we and we changed the government was a labor government, which is like your Democrats, and has now turned to a more conservative. They call themselves liberal and conservative. Well, I'll call them that. But they're pretty

[00:15:36] much middle of the road, to be honest with it. Would you have your choose? And the good thing is about in New Zealand, the government we have only a three year term. So if we don't like them,

[00:15:46] we give rid of them after three years. But when the previous government was in they had you could get if you bought an EV they gave you I think when I got my while I got my first

[00:15:58] one there was no incentives whatsoever. And that service 2020 then I think they had a clean car discount or rebate. And all you had to do was buy a car, supply the receipt for the car,

[00:16:14] show that it was registered, you know, and all those other things. And then tell me a bank account. And all of a sudden, I think for the model three that I bought, I think I got all of a

[00:16:25] sudden there was eight almost $9000 deposit in the bank here. Nice. So there was none of that. I know you have tax, what is it? Sorry over there. I'm here now over here. So you have

[00:16:40] you have those 7500 tax. Yeah, the tax credit credit. That's right. Yeah. So yeah, you go for your taxes. So sometimes you wanted to wait for a year before everything goes through in New

[00:16:52] Zealand. It was like, no, you prove you bought the car, you've got the car, the car's on the road. Okay, we'll give you the money. Like it took less than probably a month to get it.

[00:17:05] Yeah, here I had when I bought my car, I had to wait till I filed my taxes. I actually had an accountant and the the I gave them to the lady all the stuff and she said, okay, we got this.

[00:17:21] I'll get this done in a couple of weeks. And I was like, great. And then she called me back up two days later and she goes, I don't understand how to do the IRA tax credit for your car. So you can

[00:17:32] either pay somebody else and I think it was going to be another $300 to pay somebody else to do it, or you can just come get your taxes and have somebody else do it. And I went and grabbed

[00:17:41] my taxes and I found an amazing tax person that way. But I don't know what it looks like on the tax side. But that's one of the reasons why we went to an accountant this year or a

[00:17:50] tax professional this year to do our taxes because I didn't feel comfortable doing it either. I didn't want to do it wrong. Yeah, yeah. So it's good that it's streamlined and easy. Let's let's talk politics.

[00:18:01] It used to be. Let me tell you what happened. Okay, go ahead. When the new government came in, I think it was in October last year, they said, okay, that pay because the payment had gone down

[00:18:11] to seven and a half at that stage of things. They said, okay, that's going to stop in December. December 31st is going to stop. And so a lot of electric cars are being bought before the 31st of

[00:18:26] December. And then looking at the numbers before and then after 31st of December, there's quite a dramatic drop in the amount of cars that's so the government it's funny the government isn't the center the government can give you incentives but when you think about it,

[00:18:45] it's the same thing that's the same over here. It's actually money that you're giving the government to give back to you. Yeah, they're allowing you to have your own money back. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was thinking about that today. I was thinking what you're doing is actually

[00:19:04] allowing the government to give you back your money. But anyway, that stopped on 31st of December. And the government before they came in, and I'll tell you that they were told they told

[00:19:18] everyone that it's going to end. They said, but we're going to put 10,000 don't quote me on this. It was definitely a lot anyway, maybe 10,000 charges around New Zealand. And I'm not I don't know how many they've put in yet, but I don't think I've seen an

[00:19:35] increase of 10,000 charges. What's the like we'll talk about the public sentiment as far as EVs but first let's talk about the government outlook. Like what's the political I guess is a better way to put it? View of EVs what are the politicians saying? Is it like here?

[00:19:58] I'm trying to I it's not a big issue that's brought up very often. So I don't think there's a bit of it. I don't think there's animosity against it. But it's definitely not like everyone everyone knows we should be green and everyone knows but

[00:20:24] you know a lot of people people that I've even worked with educated people. I told them I didn't do college so those things always catch on fire. So there's all this crazy how much how much and I

[00:20:36] said really and I said oh and all the batteries there's a place in France where there's this pile of batteries from used EVs I said really can you where have you got that information

[00:20:44] from? Well I'd like to see that and of course if that's when they go oh someone told me like geez you should really investigate some of your sources you know and so there are people

[00:20:56] that still have the old editors that oh yeah they're no better than fossil fuel cars. But and they might use more resources to make them but as soon as you start driving them they're not making any more pollution or anything like that. So yeah there's that right around 40,000

[00:21:21] kilometers it kind of flattens off. Yeah. So is your answer the same for both of those questions? Is that the general public's point of view too is we need to go green?

[00:21:42] Yeah yeah I think a lot of people like I'm not an evangelist like I don't preach blah blah blah but if anyone asks me about it I'll say okay this is how I found it. They go oh they don't go far

[00:21:55] enough. I said I've driven up and down the country numerous times. I said and they said oh but you have to wait for three hours to charge it. I said really? I said I've never waited for three

[00:22:06] hours to charge a wiker. There's just so there are some missing there's a lot of misinformation out there and yeah it's like when I I've got to let you motorcycle which we'll probably tell

[00:22:19] me later and the longest I ever stopped to charge that was 13 minutes. Yeah yeah you know it's interesting that you say that because I was talking to Jamie who is a Patreon supporter

[00:22:34] from Ireland and we almost had the same exact conversation over email this week. Yeah. In terms of people know you need to go green but also there's a lot of misinformation out there. Yeah and it's not like they're totally against it they just don't have the right information.

[00:22:51] Yeah I remember one of the places I worked in I said oh I've told some teacher that I had an electric car and he goes oh I need to drive up to Nelson which I know was 600 miles away

[00:23:03] he says I can't I can't do that with an electric car. I said why not? He goes oh I have to recharge it and things like that and I'm thinking well don't can you drive all the way out there in a car?

[00:23:15] Don't you ever have to stop? And he goes oh yeah but yeah but you know as soon as you try and get some people to think about what they're saying they're like oh

[00:23:29] sometimes they get frustrated by being told the truth. Yeah yeah and I think a little bit of this you know it's kind of scary you know they're really expensive it's kind of scary

[00:23:43] a lot of people don't deal well with change and you have to look at it you have to change your mindset when it comes to your vehicle. Like as I told you before like I didn't test drive

[00:23:54] any electric car before I bought one. I just as I said I reshoot the topic I mean YouTube wonderful resource not always true but I mean you'd look at one video and I look at 20 videos about

[00:24:13] similar things and so I when I got my vehicle I knew exactly how to plug it into a DC charger. I knew I had to get these little those little fob things you know those little RFID things

[00:24:27] or you could just use your phone to start the charger if you just said that the companies whose DC fast charger was um yeah maybe I'm not too not really stuck in my ways and other

[00:24:41] people but yeah I knew what the limitations were and I didn't consider them to be limitations to be honest. And that you know what you bring up uh something that I didn't even consider are

[00:24:54] their Tesla superchargers in New Zealand? Yeah where I am in the south island yeah there's um in the north island there's quite a few in the south island um there was when I first got mine

[00:25:09] there were four okay which and in the south island is the biggest island but that's where less people live like less than a million people live there um but uh there was one there were a

[00:25:23] couple in the big uh big tourist centers Queenstown is one of the big tourist centers in the south island wherever it goes to ski and all this other thing there was one oh well yeah you

[00:25:34] know you have banks in the US where there might be 30 charges in New Zealand you go to a uh we've only got um version two ones oh there are some version three ones but most of most of the

[00:25:46] places version two you know the the older ones where you read they're one A and one B and you have the hundreds of kilowatts yeah yeah people charging you have to split the the current the the

[00:25:58] energy yeah and uh I can and why not like a lot of the sites I've been to there's only four so there's two two banks you know two of them two appear two pairs yeah right so but um

[00:26:13] I'll be honest um I when I got my car I went up to the one in Queenstown and I because I wanted to charge it I want to try it again so easy just plug it in

[00:26:24] same as they are in the US just plug it in it knows who you are builds your credit cards no problem at all whereas the other ones of course you have to use your phone to

[00:26:34] but the good thing is um dissimilar to the the US um our charges for um Tesla's are the CCS two ones which is the same as every other electric car so we uh originally of course

[00:26:50] Tesla charges were only able to be used by Tesla's but I think they're all open in New Zealand now and of course the good thing is Tesla's could use Tesla ones and Tesla could use non Tesla ones because

[00:27:02] we all have the same uh yeah same stock it yeah the having the same you know connections is uh is a huge benefit we like I I understand why we want the CCS

[00:27:20] one and Chatham and Tesla's charger our connector here because at the time Tesla did its own thing and the Society of Automotive Engineers did something and then uh what was it uh Nissan that did

[00:27:37] they did the Chatham oh yeah yeah they had their own thing so I get I get why we have so many different connectors but it makes sense just to have one Europe and New Zealand and all the other countries

[00:27:49] that have CCS twos kind of did it right we all have different wall socket plugs oh yeah there's more of them than there are uh different days yeah that is that is that is true that is true

[00:28:03] you know I think one thing I find interesting is that um even if you use miles and gallons and all that thing over there over over here we're finally bringing you into the metric world by kilowatts

[00:28:15] and kilowatt hours so well done don't tell anybody that it will have to change it to something else imagine if I mean if someone said to you how many how many in calories were in your battery

[00:28:30] because calories is a measurement of energy right so yeah yeah or we could uh we could go steam pump and measure everything in BTUs or whatever oh yeah yeah yeah actually what is BTU says for

[00:28:46] something like British thermal units or something that's the it's the amount of heat I think it's one gallon of water one degree Fahrenheit or something like that so tell me about your motorcycle what do you got there okay I've got and actually I've got the only

[00:29:01] one in New Zealand um actually there is another one but it's an older version of it um in in a uh energica what is it now? Energica which is an Italian Italian oh you might have heard the word

[00:29:15] energica okay yeah if you open up your internet and just type in energica which is energy like CA actually there's um there's a you can buy them in the US there's an energica of New England

[00:29:33] and he um he sells them but I have the road bike version of it you know there's the MotoGP which is the you know the motorcycle road racing sort of circuit and um energica had the

[00:29:50] they had the electric version of that where every rider had to ride the same bike the same maker bike oh nice and they did that from I think it was 2019 to 22 I think Ducati is now

[00:30:02] their sole bike used in there but um it's uh I think it has a 21.5 kilowatt hour battery which I think you can use about 19 and over the Christmas period I rode that from my place up to my

[00:30:21] brothers which is about 600 miles and um it probably gets about 200 k which is about 120 miles on a charge but um as I said the charges are like 75 k's away or 50 miles away I mean

[00:30:40] and I went up the the west coast of the South Island which is the more isolating part and um yeah I had no problem nice yeah how does it right it looks like a friend of mine had I think

[00:30:53] it was a I think it was a Yamaha uh a road bike that kind of looks similar to this yep yep yeah it's um they are quite heavy like I'd say they're probably a little one and a half times heavier than a normal

[00:31:07] bike of the like a normal ice bike um because the battery it just weighs so much but um as soon as you get up to any speed which it gets to very quickly um yeah uh you don't notice it

[00:31:23] yeah the only time you ever really notice is when you're doing very slow turns yeah but yeah that's what I was going to ask how the battery changes the handling for that yeah in terms of speed anything above like 30 miles now you wouldn't notice

[00:31:39] but when you're doing like very slow five kilometer turns you know um it's you feel a little more although it does have a reverse oh yep so uh yeah if you don't want to if you don't want to push it back

[00:31:55] you just put in reverse and slow reverse then it has a slow reverse and a slow forward so if you want to do some quick maneuvers you know just in the car park and things like that what was the

[00:32:05] benefit of this slow forward is it just more torque or is it just like if you if you want to if you got in a parking parking area you just hold a certain button down it goes into reverse

[00:32:17] and if you hold it again it goes into forward it's just slow so you can just move around because literally if if if you're standing if you're standing there and you've got the bike engaged and someone comes up and if some little kid comes and twists the handle

[00:32:32] it'll just fly out from under here it seems like New Zealand would be the kind of place that would just I mean people would just be going nuts on a motorcycle just because of the

[00:32:46] how beautiful is it? Well when I drove up um I drove up the west coast of the South Island which is the more rugged part because that's where the weather comes from right because the

[00:32:56] the western part of the island catches all the rain and all those sort of things and it's always very green um our southern Alps which were on the length of the South island come pretty much straight out of the ocean straight up into the hills so it's very

[00:33:10] picturesque very green and um but the problem is it rains quite a lot and it was the middle of summer which well Christmas is the middle of summer for us down there and I thought it'd be a great time to go

[00:33:21] up um over that summer period I think I cycled for about a motorcycle for about 14 days and I think 11 of them rained yeah so yeah which is not the I mean it's not the worst I mean it's not the worst

[00:33:37] but it's definitely not the best way to experience a motorcycle yeah yeah no but uh I don't know if if I don't know how familiar or with American uh culture in terms of uh motorcycle culture

[00:33:52] but when I was a firefighter in Nevada and I used to work with a bunch of guys that would go to like Sturgis and they they do these big giant rides and there was one guy that that he was injured on

[00:34:04] the job so he trailered his his bike and then would stop like 15 miles out of Sturgis and drive in but everybody else drove their bikes and uh the the um the idea of riding 14 days even in the

[00:34:19] rain to those guys was it's totally worth it that's exactly why you buy a bike um and then you have the other people here in the United States who will trailer their bikes and again the one gentleman

[00:34:31] was retired and he he got uh an injury so it's not like he he could do it for that same amount of time but there are people who are perfectly healthy who trailer their bikes in and stuff like

[00:34:42] that so yeah I don't know if you're seeing that uh at the motorcycle rally where you're at now but no no idea I'm I'm not sure whether people do well who knows um one one thing um years ago

[00:35:00] as you had noticed this there used to be a ferry that went from here at um Portland, Maine up to Yarmouth in Nova Scotia and I decided uh one time when I finished working here

[00:35:11] that I'm gonna bike so I biked from here over to Portland then caught the ferry across to Nova Scotia and cycled all around on a bicycle not on a motorcycle on a bicycle in Nova Scotia

[00:35:22] and there are a bunch of um a bunch of Harley riders that were uh coming back when I was coming back and um all they could so all I could talk about was how they couldn't believe they had

[00:35:32] to wear helmets in Canada. Yeah. It was very so I think it and I was already I was on a bicycle and I was already at home but I was thinking my god if you guys never fall off and hit your head

[00:35:44] yeah yeah yeah the uh my friends who were firefighters knew exactly what happens when you fall off and hit your head on the bike and they still didn't wear helmets. Yeah yeah every now and again uh maybe they put one of those that's barely a brain bucket on

[00:36:05] on the state but yeah they they didn't want to wear helmets. Well in New Hampshire as well you don't have to wear a helmet and it's funny how the state lotto is live free or die

[00:36:15] but you'll be live free and die. A lot of libertarians up there in New Hampshire. What's it? A lot of libertarians up there in New Hampshire. Yeah. Uh excellent Sean is there anything that uh I didn't ask you that we were gonna talk about did I forget anything?

[00:36:33] One thing I'm about uh uh what was the thing about um but yeah um yeah we're talking about before about some misconceptions and people were saying oh you know electric cars don't uh don't go far enough

[00:36:47] um I I used to as I said we talked about four I used to have an MG and I think it used to get maybe 200k so 120 150 maybe if I had a tailwind and um now I have like the lowest um

[00:37:05] yeah the lowest oh range that's what I want to talk about the lowest range of all the Tesla's and I never have a concern I've never had a concern even when I first got an electric car

[00:37:19] about running out of charge I've ran out of petrol in a car sorry gasoline in a car more times than I've run out of uh electricity in a car yeah uh this is this I've run out of gas

[00:37:35] so many times that was not because of uh any problem with the vehicle or the gas station that was I didn't have any money in my pocket I was trying to push it to somewhere and uh

[00:37:47] yeah but as far as uh running out of energy goes for the electric car it's it's not even ever been close like I think uh when I first got my car I had a level one charger I didn't have the level

[00:37:59] two installed yet because it's trying to go a month on just level one to see if I could do it and in the heat in Arizona yeah you can't do it when it's hot here maybe I could have done

[00:38:10] it if I were about the car in December when it's cooler but you can't do it here when it's hot because your range goes down significantly I think uh when I charge to 80% my range in the

[00:38:21] winter time is around 250 miles 252 in the summertime my estimated range is in the 230s and that's you know that's optimistic it's it's less than that so like more to be honest my range I'm trying to think about the change in temperature is um let's say freezing to

[00:38:41] uh in the winter I'd say in the morning if you got up it might be freezing um then I'd get up to maybe 85 90 in the summer where I live and I noticed very little difference in range

[00:38:57] yeah summer and winter yeah yeah Sean do you have social media do you have a place if people want to connect with you do you have that stuff not really I mean I do have them

[00:39:08] but I never use them so that's fair yeah yeah um look I have my facebook page it's pretty simple there's just Sean out I mean if you um if anyone searches that and they see a guy with a bike on

[00:39:22] a bicycle then that's probably me well Sean thanks for coming on and sharing your experiences with us and I appreciate you reaching out and uh agreeing to be on yep no problem overall thanks so much okay

[00:40:10] all right I want to thank Sean for coming on the show and sharing his story with us Sean did share some links with me for you know some videos that he's done in the past so I'm going

[00:40:21] to put those links in the show notes and hopefully today's conversation gave you a little bit more perspective on what's going on out there in the world I hope you enjoyed listening to it as

[00:40:30] much as I enjoyed recording it so thanks again Sean if you want to email me you can it's Bodhi B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com if you want to follow me on X I am at 918digital I also have

[00:40:47] another podcast called Beyond the Post where Rob Dunwood and I interview creators and we talk about just the process of creating podcasts or social media or you name it like the the goal is to

[00:40:59] get a wide view of what it's like to create a digital content and on our latest episode we had interview one in two with Lamar Wilson and I'll put links to the show in the show notes

[00:41:12] but if you're interested in that kind of thing I think you're really going to enjoy it Lamar is the CEO of unboxing he's got over three million followers across different social media platforms

[00:41:22] and he's a lot of fun and a genuinely nice human being so hopefully everyone goes and checks that show out all right everybody that is it for me this week I guess it's Friday taste Friday

[00:41:34] so on Tuesday's episode it will come a little bit later in the evening because it's a Tesla earnings call day so we got to wait for the earnings call to actually be recorded

[00:41:44] and then I got to listen to it and then I got to make notes on it and then I got to you know record the episode and get it out so that will go out on Tuesday night and then we'll

[00:41:53] go back to our regularly scheduled news on Friday I hope everyone has a great weekend and I will see you on Tuesday