A New Zealand woman has created her own electric car. This New Zealand woman actually converted an abandoned car into a homemade, electric vehicle, “to show it can be done”, she said. The cost of the car and conversion was about $24,000.
Rosemary Penwarden is from the South Island and has been driving her electric car for about three years. The conversion project took both her and a friend nearly eight months of solid effort. “You do have to be a little bit mad,” she said. “I want to thank the oil companies for the motivation,” she said with an easy laugh.
Total Conversion
Penwarden started by purchasing a 1993 car body from an auto wrecker, and she actually took the old gas engine out by herself. She replaced it with an electric engine and new gearbox. Then the real work began. She and her friend packed the front and back of the car with Lithium batteries. There are 24 under the hood, and 56 in the trunk.
The project, ended up costing her $24,000, including the paid labor, which is not bad for a new car. This especially since she will save on oil changes and gasoline forever into the future. The car is fully paid off and warranted. Her project recently came to the attention of local reporters who saw her driving around the area.
Rosemary Penwarden says converting a car isn’t possible for everyone, but she wanted to illustrate the possibility.
Two Person Job
The one who helped Penwarden convert her car is refrigeration engineer Hagen Bruggemann. He has now converted about eight cars to electric engines. “You can talk as much as you want about all this environmental crap, but you have to implement it,” he says.
Without the free labor, he says converting a car is not a financially viable option for most people. However, there is a strong need for converting the commercial trucks and larger vehicles. This is where the body tends to be worth much more than the engine. Converting a diesel truck, he said recently, would pay off within five years. That makes it worth the effort. Then he added a new perspective, “really, the polluters should be paying – I don’t see why they’re not,” he said.
Making a Point
Penwarden is longtime environmental activist and realizes that her investment in the time and money to converting her car just isn’t practical for everyone – “I’m in a very privileged place”, she said. Still, as the world grapples with the climate crisis, she wanted to make a point of the possibilities. She goes one step further and charges the car with solar panels at her home.
Penwarden believes her investment in the car will pay for itself. She compares the total cost to $100 a week on petrol for commuting. She called on the government to support electric conversions. “Just to be able to show that it can be done is a priceless thing,” she says. “The biggest thing is to help stop the biggest polluters as soon as possible – and nothing that we can do as individuals I think matters quite as much as that.” She has proved that a woman with an idea and determination can make a difference.
The granny who made her own electric vehicle
Penwarden, who is a grandma, converted her 29-year-old car to solar electric, which she charges at her home. Penwarden, 63, expects the car, a Honda Civic named ‘Frida’, will pay for itself.
“I suppose I should thank the oil companies. The ones my group ‘Oil Free Otago’ and I have been opposing for many years,” she said.
“It motivated me to become independent of oil, and show them they’re not needed here.”
Seen and Not Heard No More
Penwarden, who is a well-know local activist, said she’d been told her whole life what she could and couldn’t do. She grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, at a time she said children, “particularly girls” were to be seen and not heard. “It takes a long time to punch your way out of that,” she said “to say, I know what’s important.”
‘Just Say No’ to Polluters
She believed saving the planet demanded confronting the biggest polluters, but she couldn’t stop them. Almost half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are likely caused by just 10 polluting companies. The next best thing, was independence from those companies. This was something she could do and she did it.
A Little Help from Her Friends
Penwarden got the needed parts and with the help of some friends, got the technical expertise required to convert the old Honda herself. She dug out the old engine and put in the new with her own hands.
She worked on it at a co-op in Dunedin, the Valley Workshop, which she helped found almost six years ago. Nearby was her friend James Hardisty, (owner of EV-lution), an electric car conversion business.
“It [the car] sat in the workspace for close to two years,” while she worked on it. It took us probably 8 to 10 months of pretty solid work,” she said. She was totally into the project. “Once you get going on something like this, it’s just infectious. You can’t stop.” She said her partner had to keep on top of her to ensure she’d take a break and go home for dinner.
In the end, she is really pleased with her work. There are 56 batteries in the back with an external charger, and 24 batteries in the front. The car can travel about 120 kilometres before charging.
She said her car is similar in size to an early Nissan Leaf, which in 2010 was one of the first electric cars to be available to the masses.
The comparison can’t stop there. Her car totaled just $24,000. In 2021, the cheapest new electric car was just under $50,000.