For $24,000, a New Zealand granny builds her own electric automobile.

A New Zealand grandmother has converted a 29- time-old wreck into a manual, solar- powered electric vehicle, “ to show it can be done ”.

Rosemary Penwarden, 63, has been driving her converted vehicle around South Island roads for three times now. The design took her and a friend further than eight months of solid work and tinkering. “ You do have to be a little bit frenetic, ” she said. “ I want to thank the canvas companies for the provocation. ”

Penwarden bought a 1993 auto body from a saboteur’s, and took the combustion machine out herself. She replaced it with a new gearbox and electric machine, also packed the front and reverse of the auto with batteries – 24 under the hood, and 56 in the charge.

In total the design, including labour, cost Penwarden$(£). The auto is completely inked- off and warranted.

After several times on the road, her design lately came to the attention of original journalists.

Refrigeration mastermind Hagen Bruggemann, who helped Penwarden convert her auto, has now converted about eight buses to electric machines. “ You can talk as important as you want about all this environmental crap, but you have to apply it, ” he says.

Without free labour, he says converting a auto isn’t a financially feasible option for utmost people – but there’s a strong marketable argument for converting exchanges and larger vehicles, where the body tends to be worth much further than the machine. Converting a diesel truck, he says, would pay off within five times. “ Really, the polluters should be paying – I do n’t see why they ’re not, ” he says.

A longtime environmental contender, Penwarden says the time and plutocrat she devoted to converting her auto is n’t possible for everyone – “ I ’m in a veritably privileged place ” – but as the world adapts to the climate extremity, she wanted to illustrate the possibility. She charges the auto at her home, which is completely solar- powered.

While Penwarden believes the auto will pay itself off – she had formerly spent up to$ 100 a week on petrol for commuting – she says it was n’t a cost- saving exercise and called on the government to support transformations. “ Just to be suitable 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 individualities I suppose matters relatively as important as that. ”