New Zealand grandmother creates her own electric car for $24,000
Penwarden bought a 1993 car body from a wrecker’s,
$24k for a 30 year old car is quite a lot really. And there is that other cost:
Without free labour, he says converting a car is not a financially viable option
Ah. Time does have a value, d’ye see?
The project took her and a friend more than eight months of solid work and tinkering.
That’s a long time…
A longtime environmental campaigner, Penwarden says the time and money she devoted to converting her car isn’t possible for everyone – “I’m in a very privileged place”
Just another XR-type who spends loads of time, that other people don’t have, haranguing people for not spending the time they don’t have doing what she wants them to. At least she realises that she is privileged. that’s a point in her favour.
While Penwarden believes the car will pay itself off – she had once spent up to $100 a week on petrol for commuting – she says it wasn’t a cost-saving exercise and called on the government to support conversions.
Will it pay itself off?
I doubt it.
Spends $100 a week on commuting. Car cost $24,000. That’s 240 weeks of commuting required before break even. That’s 4.5 years approx.
And from this article…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/128765504/the-granny-who-made-her-own-electric-vehicle
The car could travel about 120 kilometers before it needed to be charged.
That’s about 75 miles… So fuck all then.
Not much use to anyone who actually needs to go anywhere.
Much of her days were spent gardening, harvesting and wine-making.
Sounds like she’s retired and spends most of her time at home. So she has 8 months to tinker and play with the car. Meanwhile, those of us who have to work would have to pay someone else even more money for the joy of owning a 20 year old shitbox with bugger all range. I’ll stick with my diesel pickup thanks.
And if she’s retired, i suspect she isn’t spending $100 a week of fuel any more…
I presume she grows her own batteries? There seem to be a large number of them in that car? How much did they cost and what was the environmental impact of making them? The lack of numbers in the story makes it seem even more redolent of bullshit than it already is
“She packed the back and front with batteries”, so (not only can you not go very far, but) you can’t take anything with you…
If she was really Green it’d be powered by lemons with electrodes stuck in them.
Fine for sheddie-style hobby tinkering – none of my computer tinkering makes money, and I would never deny somebody the joy of playing with real engineering – but as people say, not viable for real world use.
Rosemary Penwarden says the vehicle, powered by home rooftop solar
Presumably in Jacinda-land the government subsidies for installing Chinese-made panels are even more bstshit crazy than those originally promised over here by Cameron & co until reality came a-knocking.
Still begs the question of where she sticks her car when the sun don’t shine.
I wonder how the car and driver would come out of an accident now that it is loaded up with a ton of batteries the shell was never designed for…?
The thing I don’t get about electric cars, is why anyone with half a marble thinks a means of transport that has to stop for a lenghty period every 300 miles or so (and that is a good and expensive range for such a thing) is a good idea. Its not like there aren’t other ways of getting electricity into an electric motor! Personally I Think this is a prime example of why most of government is a bad idea.
‘A New Zealand grandmother has converted a 29-year-old wreck into a homemade, solar-powered electric vehicle’
Oh yeah?
‘The project took her and a friend more than eight months of solid work and tinkering.’
Her ‘and a friend’.
‘Penwarden bought a 1993 car body from a wrecker’s, and took the combustion engine out herself.’
Really? A 60-year-old granny had the knowledge and strength to do that, did she? She must be one of these strong confident women I keep hearing about.
‘Refrigeration engineer Hagen Bruggemann, who helped Penwarden convert her car, has now converted about eight cars to electric engines’
Ah.
The bloke must have a granny fetish, or something.
The Guardian: not content with lying about climate change, or the real cost of home made electric cars, has to pretend that dopey women can do it.
The only surprise is that they didn’t adapt Hagen Bruggerman’s name to something more Maori (or, ideally, Somali).
Ah. Time does have a value, d’ye see?
hmmm. A lot of labor goes into failed efforts which might then be sold for scrap. If you’re into it, you can pick up lovingly restored cars from someone who needs the money for not much more than the parts they’ve put into it.
I just looked, and it’s a boxy Honda. For all that effort she might at least have converted something nice looking, interesting or fun.
@Interested
“Really? A 60-year-old granny had the knowledge and strength to do that, did she?”
Block & tackle. Electric hoist if you’re flash. £20 Turfor winch if you’re skint.
Anyone can pull a motor. Uncouple the plumbing & electrics, undo the mounts, out she comes. Takes about an hour.
What would be required to put in an electric drivechain, I’m impressed. Putting in non-standard engines is hard enough.
@BIS I bet not one 63 year old woman in a million could do it without help. And she didn’t.
I can work out what’s required to do it. If one’s going to stick with the simplest solution. FWD as the car was made. It’s a case of coupling the motors to the drive shafts. Not as easy as it sounds as the motors will deliver the same torque to the structure of the car as they do to the road wheels. Every reaction has an opposite reaction. Probably use the existing engine mounts as they’re designed to take it. Then some tricky electrics & electronics. Something controls the motors & thus the rate the wheels are turning. Acts like a software differential. And it’s one of those jobs one’d be learning as one went.
I’m older than her & I’d tackle it for amusement. No reason a woman shouldn’t have the basic skills. Used to know a girl a damned sight better welder than me.. But I think she’ be sensible enough not to waste her time & money doing it.
Going on a trip in a few weeks, will be about 2,200km split over 3 days all roughly equal so 700 to 750km a day.
Would take me a lot longer using electric
I knew a girl who was a good welder, a rare skill among professional engineers. She used it to establish her cred with male workers in Portugal who had never before found themselves answering to a woman (at work, at least).
A good qualification – answering to a woman (at work, at least). – for at home they most certainly would. Supposedly patriarchal, masculinist, societies tend to have a problem when the supply of nookie, clean clothes, food and children is concerned. It might be wrong that it is this way, it may even not be apparent, but my experience of two such apparently so societies (Russia and Portugal) is that no man is stupid enough to think that he has any say inside the home at all.
For those interested in such things, there’s a TV programme in which some competent mechanics convert classic cars to electric.
It’s called Vintage Voltage and it’s on Quest.
I recently took a 3 day trip from Dunedin to Christchurch and back.Can’t remember the mileage but it was a long way.Took most of the day to get there and most of the day coming back traveling at the speed limit of 100kph. I did it on one tank of petrol doing 58 mpg (the car is a Mazda 2GSX).There is no way that an electric vehicle could do such a mileage without long stops for recharging.
The thing is that everywhere in New Zealand is a long way away from everywhere else.