When many hear the names Mercury and Ford Fairlane together, they think of the Fairlane-based Mercury Montclair of the mid-1960s. The Mercury in this story, however, is unrelated to the defunct Ford subsidiary. Mercury happens to be the name of a New Zealand-based renewable energy company, which recently debuted a 1957 Ford Fairlane which it converted to run on battery power, and christened it with the witty name “Evie.”
Evie, is propelled by an electric bus motor, which is advertised by Siemens as being capable of up to 402-horsepower (300 kilowatts) of output. The motor draws its juice from a 218-cell, 50 kilowatt-hour battery, capable of almost 75 miles (120 kilometers) of range, with a quick recharge time of under two hours. The car’s total weight has crawled upward to 2.2 tons, which is well beyond the car’s reported maximum factory curb weight of 3,916 pounds, thanks to the 882 pounds (400 kilograms) of batteries. Those who have driven Evie say she can “get up and go,” but no performance figures are provided.
The car was built to promote the company, and fit into its existing electric vehicle fleet, which make up 70 percent of the company’s vehicles. Every component for the car’s conversion was custom-built; they’re not from a kit one can simply order and assemble. Even the retro-futuristic badging and decals were made solely for this car.
While a common criticism of electric vehicles is that their power is only as eco-friendly as the method by which the juice is generated, Mercury’s emphasis on energy production via green means results in Evie leaving no leaded gasoline byproducts in its wake—only silence and confused bystanders. With worldwide electricity production getting cleaner, and thus, EVs following suit, there may yet be a future for classic cars, even if petroleum reserves dry up one day.