More car charging stations coming

Driving an electric vehicle in Taranaki is about to get easier with new charging stations being installed around the mountain.

Up until recently New Plymouth had Taranaki’s only public EV charging point, but one has now been opened at Pak’n Save in Ha¯ wera and three new ones will soon be installed in Stratford, Opunake and Waverley.

‘‘Taranaki has been a key gap in the rapidly expanding national electric vehicle charging network,’’ Carolyn Copeland, South Taranaki District Council’s roading service officer said. The new facilities would encourage people to move to electric vehicles and also further open the region to tourists.

Although New Plymouth has had charging stations since early

2016, there have been no others between the city and Te Kuiti in the north, and Palmerston North in the south.

The $192,000 project was being being partly funded by $96,000 from the Government’s Low Emission Vehicles Contestable Fund, with the remainder picked up by a partnership between South Taranaki District Council, which was paying $6380, Stratford District Council, paying $2420, and ChargeNet contributing $87,200.

The councils aimed to have them all installed and operational by the end of June.

The 50kW fast-charging units at Opunake, Waverley and Stratford, would greatly improve the availability of local EV charging facilities and enable greater regional and inter-regional travel opportunities for EVs, Copeland said. More charging stations were also being installed at Mokau, Whanganui and other towns, a map on Chargenet.co.nz shows.

A car can be ‘‘refilled’’ in 10 to

25 minutes, at a cost of 25c/minute

+ 25c / kWh. The average Kiwi driver clocks up 13,000 kilometres and spends around $2500 a year on petrol, but charging a mid-range EV for a year would cost around $500. Taranaki currently has about

89 electric vehicles registered, a Ministry of Transport spokesman said.