Glen Innes Examiner
26/03/2009

An electric car has hit the streets of Glen Innes with Howard Eastwood proudly behind the wheel.
Mr Eastwood took ownership of the first electric powered motor vehicle in Australia in November and was able to take it home for the first time yesterday.

The vehicle known as an ‘evMe’ was developed by Armidale based technology company Energetique over the last four years and was launched in Armidale in November. The company held on to Mr Eastwood’s vehicle following the launch to further refine its features and yesterday it finally changed hands.

The ‘evMe’ made its longest trip to date from Armidale to Glen Innes to be delivered much to the delight of Mr Eastwood who had been searching for such a vehicle for a number of years.

It has the body of a Mazda 2 with a unique liquid cooled hybrid synchronous motor under the hood. The outlet for charging takes the place of where a fuel tank would normally be with a range of 200 to 300km per charge.

Mr Eastwood said he looked forward to testing out how far the vehicle could go.

“It has been a project of mine for a number of years to find an electric car and I’m now interested to see what its limitations are because it is so close to being a long distance vehicle,” he said.

“In the future I would love to take it from Wallangara in Queensland to Melbourne crossing three states.”

Energetique CEO Phil Coop and chief technical officer Norm Boessler delivered the car to Mr Eastwood in Glen Innes and were expecting it to be the first of many that will soon be on the roads.

“We have had serious discussions about selling quite a number of them both to individuals and businesses,” Mr Coop said.

“They are powerful vehicles that will outperform a fuelled vehicle on everything besides the range it can travel and we are working on that.”

The company will continue to monitor the performance of the vehicle by digital means and will work further on improving the battery life in upcoming months.

Mr Eastwood said the vehicle would be on display at Glen Severn Holden Monday to Thursday next week from 12noon to 4:00pm to enable the public to have a closer look at it.