# Sunny Nelson's 3rd EV Meeting



## Wingnut (May 17, 2008)

Hi all,
Yesterday the NZEVA boys of Nelson got together again for a 3rd time in as many weeks. This time for a visit to a local private car collection and museum organised by EV'er Rex Nowland. 

The owner/custodian Ray Win kindly allowed us to visit his private collection of vintage cars, trucks, EV's and other historical memorabilia.
We were joined by another half a dozen or so interested friends and collegues to slowly walk through Ray's "Aladdins Cave" which contained amongst others, many rare examples of vans and trucks from Jowett.
Also a couple of Trekka's, Citroens, Morris, Austin, Riley, Dodge, Lada, ... not to mention a quite a few older makes I have never heard of, or am too young to recognise. 
Also on show was an extensive speedway bike collection and memorbilia, some wartime uniforms and other NZ and Nelson historical artifacts and pictures of times gone by.

Of special interest were a few historic EV's, namely a couple of EVMilkfloats, a small EVtruck with a mid 80's Sinclair C5 EV(remember those?) pirched on its deck, an Electric Forklift/tug, and an old example of a custom built EV using a Triumph Herald rolling chassis as a base and a custom made fibreglass body. Not a bad conversion by all accounts. (It gave us a chuckle as it still had its ICE exhaust system attached!)
Ray Win was a member of the old NZEVA quite a few years ago, and has more than a passing interest in Electric Vehicles.
Up against the wall were examples of old electric motors, contactor assemblies, relay banks and batteries. Which just went to show how far we have come.... but not really much to show for over 100 years of EV innovation. Something which one would hope will change in the coming decades!

Thanks to Rex for an interesting Saturday afternoon had by all!

Last week we were together for a 2nd time at the IPENZ Seminar on EV's at the Rutherford Hotel to listen to Waikato University Senior Lecturer Dr Mike Duke. An interesting night. And Rex Nowland's "Voltsy" made yet another public debut to a very interested crowd in excess of 100.
Not a bad turnout for Nelson.
MP Nick Smith announced he has placed one of the first orders for the Mitsubishi MIEV to arrive in 2010/2011. 
We also met another EV owner Eric Sears at the seminar who owns a Daihatsu Mira EV. So now Nelsons club number grows to 5!

Looking forward to the 4th meeting..... 

Cheers
Chris


----------



## Zevflow (May 24, 2008)

Thanks Chris for a great posting. It's good to have fellow enthusiasts to bounce ideas and projects off. Nelson isn't doing to bad for EVers per capita. I'm sure EVers will go from a very small minority to the majority over a period of years, especially as oil goes up in price and technology makes the EV more viable.


----------

