Electric car a bonus during a power cut
Using his electric car to power his business, his home and even his wifi proved a bonus for local businessman Steve Greenwood during last week’s 10-hour power outage.
The power cut meant many local companies were forced to shut the doors on a day of income. However for Steve, director of Drive EV, which sells electric vehicles at its Tu¯wharetoa St dealership, it was business as usual.
“The lights were on, the plasma screen was running, and more importantly our wifi was fully operational” said Steve. One of the benefits of an electric vehicle is the storage capacity of the batteries.
“We had over 120kWh of electricity sitting out on the forecourt that day — ready to be used when we needed it. I just attached an inverter to one of the car batteries and I immediately had two power points supplying 1kW ready to go” said Steve. At the end of the day Steve took the inverter home and powered up their appliances until power was restored at around 6pm.
“We had the TV, wifi and the toaster going, and we were able to charge up our phones. It was really like the power cut had never happened for us,” said Steve’s wife Mindy, who is also involved in the business.
Drive EV has had growing demand for electric vehicles since it opened a year ago.
“Our first customers were early adopters who were interested in new technologies and prepared to take a risk. However now we’re selling to a wide range of people. Families love electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf as they are great for running the kids around town and doing the shopping. We’ve also had a lot of interest from people who are getting hit with the high petrol prices. They are just so efficient to run — we’ve calculated that it costs our family around $6 a week to charge up the car and we use it every day,” said Steve.
Electric car driver Katy Glenie says while it took her family a long time to commit to an EV, now they wouldn’t live without it.
”I was a bit worried about how we’d cope during the power cut, but we had a good amount of charge left in the battery so it was no problem,” she said.