Second charger boosts capacity
A new electric vehicle (EV) charger in Timaru might not serve the local community as much as it will travellers, but it is raising awareness of the vehicles, an EV enthusiast says.
The Timaru Warehouse was one of 21 stores around New Zealand selected to have an EV charger installed in its car park, doubling Timaru’s number of public chargers. An Alpine Energy EV charger station was installed on the corner of North and Victoria streets in April 2016.
‘‘It’s wonderful to see the availability of chargers where people want to go,’’ EV enthusiast Martin Kane, of Timaru, said.
It was unlikely the new charger, which can charge two cars at once, would serve the people of Timaru - as they could charge their EV at home overnight, but would probably be most useful to travellers passing through the region, he said.
Kane said the installation of another charger would increase the awareness of EVs.
Chargers have been installed in Waimate, Geraldine, Fairlie, Tekapo and Twizel since 2016. Kane believed one was going to be installed in Temuka, and that Tesla Superchargers would be installed in Geraldine and Oma- rama, in the near future.
Kane said the number of EVs in New Zealand was ‘‘doubling every year’’, and that the Government was on target for hitting its aim of having 64,000 EVs on the roads by 2021.
The Ministry of Transport website shows there were 3187 EVs in New Zealand in March, 2017 and there were 7233 EVs as of March 2018.
Kane said the new Timaru charger was ‘‘not a hugely expensive unit, but it does the job’’.
The charger was free to use for customers, for the time being, as it was relatively inexpensive to run, he said.
‘‘For an hour it’s about 75 cents worth of power.’’
The Warehouse environment general manager Greg Nelson said Timaru was chosen as a spot for one of its chargers because the organisation hoped that by focusing on smaller New Zealand towns, it would encourage EV use in those areas.
Timaru also had a suitable carpark configuration and the necessary wiring needed, Nelson said.
The charger was installed on February 23, and was being used, on average, once every two days.
Customers using the charging stations provide their own cable which plugs into the charger and links to the vehicle.