New Zealand is the ideal country to widely adopt the electric
car, and a visiting Hong Kong expert predicts electric vehicles
could be widely used in 10 years. At the APEC workshop on
electric vehicle connectivity, in Wellington on Wednesday, Hong
Kong University's Professor C.C. Chan, touted as the
"grandfather of the electric car", said interest in electric
vehicles varied, generally in response to oil prices, but now
politicians and industry were interested. He predicted that with
continued improvements in batteries and industry co-operation,
the widespread use of electric cars could be 10 years away.
However, New Zealand's problem was being such a small market for
manufacturers, and he suggested New Zealand team up with similar
island nations to standardise the infrastructure and make a
bigger market. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation
Authority's Elizabeth Yeaman said transport is New Zealand's
largest energy consumer, and hardly any of it uses renewable
energy. She said New Zealand was ideally place