Canterbury Uni electric vehicles featuring at Evolocity

The University of Canterbury will have many of its electric vehicles featuring in Evolocity, the first event of its kind in New Zealand, at Ruapuna, Christchurch, later this month.

The November 30 national event will feature electric cars, electric motorcycles, electric and petrol hybrid vehicles and electric go-kart races. High schools will compete in an electric vehicle development competition.

An electric vehicle rally competition will demonstrate efficiency. Other demonstrations include international record-holding electric drag racing, hill-climbing and new Tesla electric vehicles.

University electrical and computing engineer Dr Paul Gaynor says all the events will show the benefits of electric vehicles.

“New Zealand produces close to 80% of its electricity from low-to-zero emissions renewable sources so electrifying our vehicle fleet will have considerable environmental benefits and will also help the economy by displacing the cost of importing fossil fuels to domestically produced electricity,” Gaynor says.

“We have ongoing electric vehicle based projects at the university which will be beneficial in providing a technology platform that motivates student involvement and gets students thinking about energy efficiency and sustainability in engineering applications,” Gaynor says. “Our students will then take what they have learned and apply this in their future careers.”

Three students from our department, Blair Bonnett, Michael Frampton and Matthew Barham, will take be entering an electric go-kart into a performance-based competition against other karts from other tertiary institutes and the private sector.