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'I'm a bogan and I have no problem with the bastardisation of motor vehicles. You can stick whatever motor you like into whatever else you like.' Antz Davies, you are a true boganic Bright Spark and we salute you because it's the bogans that we need to be convincing! Davies is the main brain behind Watt Rods, a Lower Hutt company that converts old cars to electric. "Any and all vehicles, old or new, four wheels or two, big or small, on road or off, fully customised to your requirements."
Just like Mike Casey's electric Hilux, the electrolux, the Mitsubishi ute in this video has had a Nissan Leaf motor added. Rather than going to the scrap yard, they can give these old timers a new lease of life.
There are some who seem opposed to EVs for ideological reasons. But for the mechanically minded, EVs are awesome. There's more torque, more acceleration, more comfort and less danger to those driving them.
He admits it isn't meant to make financial sense (buy a car that was meant to be an EV from the start if you want to save money, he says), but it does make emotional sense and there's growing interest in electric retrofits.
It would certainly help if some of the rules were changed to make it easier and cheaper for more people to do these conversions because at the moment it's largely only the keen beans who have the commitment - and the capital - to do it.
When Mike Casey bought his house near Cromwell, it came with gas bottles on the side of the home for water and an expensive diesel system for the underfloor heating. He replaced both of them with a Steibel Eltron system and it's been saving him money ever since. As technical manager Bhawesh Singh told him at the Electrify Queenstown conference, there has been a big influx in enquiries from homes looking to get off the molecules and onto electrons.
Read moreDownloadConfidence that cutting regulations to make solar power more accessible - won't jeopardise people's safety. A new Regulation Ministry reports laid out a potential blueprint to legalise plug-in solar and reduce the time and cost of panel installation. Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey shares his thoughts with Andrew Dickens.
The burgeoning demand for solar was also a chance to address a mismatch between the numbers of training opportunities available and young people searching for work, Casey said. "The mums of New Zealand are telling me that there's not enough apprenticeships for their kids and the solar installers of New Zealand are telling me there's not enough trained people."
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