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Meet Frankie, “the ute that looks like a Ford Ranger, acts like a Nissan Leaf and drives like a dream”.
It was brought to life by Takarua Mutu from Mountain Bike Rotorua and Ra Cleave from engineering firm RippleTech and, as Mutu says, it’s an attempt to take the company's decarbonisation efforts a step further and do something a bit more meaningful.
The conversion features a 40kWh Leaf battery and 110kw Leaf motor and, come December, it will be operating in the forest as a 4WD transport vehicle for bikers.
Rather than send vehicles that are nearing the end of their life to the scrap heap, Mutu says there is an opportunity to revive them, just as Mike Casey did with his 1989 Toyota ‘electrolux’.
“I’m supposed to give it up for work, but I love it,” he says. “It’s the first electric vehicle I’ve owned and I feel like I’ve started at the top.”
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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