Finance delays electric cars
A lack of capital is delaying the production of electric vehicles in Christchurch. A Northland-based firm, Natural Energy Electric Vehicles, Ltd, applied for a loan of $50,000 from the Development Finance Corporation last June, but it is still waiting to hear if the application has been successful.
Until it gets the loan, the company cannot take on the five or six staff members that would be needed to produce an electric truck, said Mr C. Horsfall, one of the vehicles’s inventors.
“There are a lot of people who would likv to place firm orders for the truck, but there is no point in ordering it yet until production can start,” said Mr Horsfall.
He declined to say whether the company had received any firm orders, but he said that councils, power boards and individuals had shown “a lot of interest” in the truck. The Wellington Hospital Board wanted to take delivery of two vehicles immediately for evaluation and tests, he said. The firm moved to Christchurch late last year after it failed to obtain the finance it needed to start production
lin Northland. One truck has already been built and sold to a Christchurch business land six more were now being prepared. A public relations firm has been engaged to prepare a pamphlet on the electric vehicles which it is hoped will arouse further interest in the project. “There is a lot of enthusiasm from people who are interested in the trucks, but unfortunately that is not all that is involved in building them,” said Mv Horsfall. He added that /.here was no problem in making the trucks or in selling them, only in obtaining finance to establish the factory. Mr Horsfall, his brother, and Mr K. Edgecumbe, the other inventor of the vehicle, are “just plodding along, doing what we can” until finance arrives to pay for extra staff.
The trucks are expected to retail for between $6500 and $7OOO, and up to half of them would be sold in the South Island, where the flatter nature of many towns is suited to electric vehicles. They would be powered by a 60-volt battery, which would give them a range of about 80km for inner-city running.
Finance delays electric cars
Press, 16 February 1980, Page 7
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