NZ grandmother turns wreck into EV

Rosemary Penwarden was fed up with the state of climate action. So she bought a 1993 car from a wrecking yard in New Zealand and turned it into an electric vehicle. It cost about $24000 and she’s been driving it for three years.

Rosemary Penwarden, 63, has been driving her converted vehicle around South Island roads for three years now. The project took her and a friend more than eight months of solid work and tinkering. “You do have to be a little bit mad,” she said. “I want to thank the oil companies for the motivation.”

Granted, she wasn’t paid for her time. If you had to pay a mechanic, it would probably cost more than buying a new EV. But she says retrofitting trucks, where the body can be worth more than the engine, is an interesting opportunity.

Without free labour, he says converting a car is not a financially viable option for most people – but there’s a strong commercial argument for converting trucks and larger vehicles, where the body tends to be worth much more than the engine. Converting a diesel truck, he says, would pay off within five years. “Really, the polluters should be paying – I don’t see why they’re not,” he says.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/27/new-zealand-grandmother-creates-her-own-electric-car-for-24000