It’s electrifying: first ever electric car club in Wales rolls into action

Area:

Wales

Programme:

Village SOS

Release date:

5 4 2013

Thanks to nearly £25,000 awarded from the Big Lottery Fund’s Village SOS programme, the Cilgwyn Community Group near Newport, Pembrokeshire, have purchased a brand new electric vehicle and have established a new community electric transport club in the village of Cilgwyn.

Between 4pm and 5pm at Newport Memorial Hall on Sunday April 7th, the residents of Cilgwyn, Newport and the surrounding area in Pembrokeshire are invited to the official launch of the Newport Car Club and meet the new electric Nissan Leaf car which will be available for the whole community to use in an innovative new car sharing scheme.

With the aim of alleviating the need for second or unused cars and offering the whole community an alternative transport scheme, local residents will be able to book the new electric car online or over the phone at an introductory price of £2.50 per hour and five pence per mile. A software programme will work out what they owe and the car will be opened by using a smartcard. Onboard telemetrics will feedback each customers driving style to protect the battery life.

The enterprise will generate income from membership fees and mileage charges which will be re-invested into the project to make it self-sustaining. The new Nissan Leaf also has a solar panel on the roof to contribute to the power.  It can be charged from a domestic plug with an official range of about 100 miles per charge. Fast charging is already available in nearby towns like Haverfordwest and is expected to be installed shortly in other towns and routes locally.

The group also aims to associate charging with spare renewable power. In Cilgwyn it will take advantage of spare wind power from a turbine, especially at night. And in Newport, it will use spare solar power generated by panels on the roof of the Newport Memorial Hall. A second electric car is also due to arrive shortly, with other vehicles to follow if the demand overtakes availability.     

Club founders hope that this scheme takes off and that similar environmentally friendly car clubs will be established throughout Wales and beyond.

Explaining the importance of the project, the Secretary of the Cilgwyn Community Group, Vicky Moller, says: “In rural communities such as ours, car use and car ownership is embarrassingly excessive. And the numbers of buses coming through Cilgwyn are dwindling. We are really excited and it’s incredibly needed.”

“The nearest town, Newport, is three miles away and the bus route is two miles distance and only runs hourly and not at all in the evenings or on Sundays. People are therefore deterred from travelling if they do not have anyone who can provide a lift. This project is a green solution to a problem and provides a cheaper and convenient car sharing service.”

Looking forward to the launch and the grand unveiling of the brand new Nissan Leaf, Vicky added: “Almost every Welsh community could produce the fuel to drive their own cars with renewables. What’s really exciting about this is it brings car ownership within everyone's reach. Who can't afford £5 a month? There are no bills, tax or insurance. It’s shared ownership, admittedly, but this leads to the other innovative thing about our car club, it will encourage lift sharing.”

She added: “The Electric Car Club allows a community full use of a car, making top quality green cars affordable. As car ownership and driving costs go up, car clubs and electricity as a fuel will come into their own in future. Electric cars really have just one main advantage. We can make electricity, we can't make fossil fuels. That is an argument stopper and a key to veering off the climate destruction path.”

Since the first National Lottery balls were rolled out in 1994, the Big Lottery Fund has awarded over £45 million to over 760 projects in Wales which help communities to reduce the impact of their carbon footprint whilst improving the lives of people most in need.

Highlighting the importance of funding projects which tackle the impact of climate change, Big Lottery Fund Wales Director, John Rose, says: “Whilst we appreciate that this is a global issue that needs to be addressed on a much broader scale, projects such as this one demonstrate that everyone can make a positive contribution to reduce the impact of their carbon footprint. We want to see more communities reducing their carbon footprint and adapting to the consequences of climate change. Ultimately, we want to ensure the money we award has a significant long term impact and makes a big difference to the environment and the lives of people throughout Wales.”

For further information about the Newport Car Club, email cilgwyn@ecocymru.org or call 01239 820971.

And for further information about the Big Lottery Fund and how you can apply for funding visit www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Further Information:
Ben Payne - Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 02920 678 224
Out of Hours Contact: 07500 951 707
Public Enquiries Line: 08454 102030                           Textphone:  0845 6021 659
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available at: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Ask BIG a question here: https://ask.biglotteryfund.org.uk
Follow BIG on Twitter: www.twitter.com/biglotterywales
Find BIG on facebook: www.facebook.com/biglotteryfundwales 

Notes to Editors
• In Wales, the Big Lottery Fund is rolling out close to £100,000 a day in National Lottery good cause money, which together with other Lottery distributors means that across Wales most people are within a few miles of a Lottery-funded project.
• The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004. It was established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.
• Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to Good Causes. As a result, over £28 billion has now been raised and more than 383,000 grants given out across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.

Tags