Electric cars are becoming more common but not so common is one that Chris Northover built from scratch in his Wanganui suburban garage.
And the difference between Mr Northover's and many of the current flock is that his isn't a hybrid. It only uses batteries and doesn't fall back on a petrol engine.
A lawyer who specialises in aviation issues, he and his wife shifted back to Wanganui about four years ago and for the last 18 months he has tinkered with his electric car.
So why tackle this project?
"I'm not a greenie so I'm not doing this to save the planet," Mr Northover said. "I really wanted to have something that goes when the Persians close the Straits of Hormuz and the oil supplies are cut."
Once he decided to make the car, he bought a couple of books on electric cars via the internet "but they were next to useless".
Living in upper Aramoho, Mr Northover said all he wanted to develop was a shopping basket that didn't use petrol.
He bought a secondhand 1993 Nissan Sentra sedan then imported the controller and brushless electric motor from China and the batteries from the United States. Anything else he needed for the modification he had made.
Then it was a matter of stripping the engine and clutch out of the car and replacing them with the electric engine and batteries.
The project has taken him about 18 months from go to whoa.
There is no clutch. Once under way the driver takes their foot off the accelerator and changes up or down through the gears.
Still to be fitted is an amp meter to indicate how much power is being used.
All up the battery-powered Nissan cost Mr Northover about $11,000 and he said batteries should last for about five years before they needed replacing.
Those batteries are re-energised by simply plugging into a hotpoint in his garage. It takes about four hours to completely charge the bank of 10 deep-cycle batteries. Four of them are under the bonnet and the rest are in the boot.
And the plug into the car happens to be where the old petrol filling cap used to be.
These give the car a range of about 50km and a top speed of 100km/h.
How does it drive? Like any other early 1990s car, only a lot more quietly.
The engine only generates 11kW but it's more than enough for what the Northovers use it for, which is generally just getting from their suburban home into the city and back.
And Mr Northover acknowledged the wealth of local talent he could turn to to get "bits and pieces" built for his modified car.
His next project is setting up an array of panels on the house roof to harness solar power. And some of that will be directed straight into the Northovers' modified Nissan Sentra.