Ehime Electric Vehicle Project

On Friday, I put on my suit and went to the first meeting of the Ehime EV Promotion Council, of which I'm now a member. The goal of this council is to promote the Ehime EV Project for establishing an electric vehicle business in Ehime.

This is a very grassroots sort of endeavour, represented by the concept of 'Small Hundreds' put forward by Yoshihisa Murasawa of the University of Tokyo. 'Small Hundreds' stands in opposition to the 'Big Three' of U.S. car making, and instead of a few large corporations slowly moving to introduce EVs, hundreds of small organizations will convert the existing vehicle fleet to electric use.

Yoshihisa Murasawa checks out the interior

And since this is an Ehime-based project where fishing and agriculture are major industries, it's not limited to cars. The goal is to electrify fishing boats and agricultural equipment too.

Kazunobu Saito of Ehime University has already converted a small, high-performance electric car from a Daihatsu petrol two-seater.

Murasaw-sensei and Saito-sensei talk to the local media

This is a very positive development. When Matsuyama started promoting the Saka no Ue no Kumo project, I thought at the time it would have been better to have begun some sort of sustainability-related project based on resources available in Ehime. I'm glad that something of the sort is now under way.

These scooters are also electric. See = Want

Another conversion job being recharged