New Zealand: Grandmother converts 29-year-old car into homemade solar-powered vehicle for $24,000

Rosemary Penwarden, a grandmother living in New Zealand, has converted a 29-year-old car into a homemade solar vehicle for $24,000.

Thanking the oil companies for motivation, Penwarden said that she wanted “to show it can be done”.

The 63-year-old, who had bought a car's body from a wrecker, worked on it for eight months along with her friend.

She explained that she is extremely conscious about the choices she makes and their impact on the environment due to which she wanted to do something to reduce pollution from her own side.

The car, which was manufactured in 1993, needed a new gearbox and electric engine which Penwarden changed herself.

Not only this, but she also packed the front and back of the car with batteries and managed to complete the entire project for £12,300 or $24,000.

She received the help of refrigeration engineer Hagen Bruggemann who has now converted about eight cars to electric engines.

“You can talk as much as you want about all this environmental crap, but you have to implement it,” he says.

“Really, the polluters should be paying – I don’t see why they’re not,” he added.

“The biggest thing is to help stop the biggest polluters as soon as possible – and nothing that we can do as individuals I think matters quite as much as that,” according to Penwarden.

(With inputs from agencies)

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