Bondville model village near Bridlington to become electric
The attraction in Sewerby will be transformed this weekend and the public are being invited
Bondville model village near Bridlington is going to become electric - in a world first - this weekend.
The attraction, based in Sewerby, has over 200 miniature buildings include a castle, ruined Abbey and Harbour. The miniature masterpiece was originally developed in 1987 and took two years to build. It is owned by Tim and Jan Whitehead now, being the third owners the village has had.
Direct Line and Zoom EV have teamed up with them to raise awareness about the future of electric vehicles.
Tim said:
"It's quite an honour actually with those big companies to choose us. We're quite flattered for the opportunity to support them and hopefully support the idea of getting emissions down and solving one of the problems that the planet has at the moment.
"There's still quite a few sceptics about it and the idea that we've put together is to produce a fictious village with all electric vehicles, where the public can come in and see how easy the transformation is from petrol to the new electric vehicles.
"It won't be a permanent thing because it would be very hard in our village because obviously it's an attraction. We're going to use a lot of the pathways and stuff like that as roadways to show exactly how these vehicles can run so easily on the road and how easy they are to drive. We're obviously going to have expert people there.
"The idea is to get the public with the people that are professionally educated on these matters of electric cars, albeit from the cars themselves, how to charge them, how it's going to be with insurance etc. There's a lot of unanswered questions that people want an answer to and this will act like a forum."
According to the Department for Transport, there are currently more than half a million ultra-low-emission vehicles on the roads, with Ofgem saying that a further 6.5 million households plan to buy an electric or hybrid vehicle.
Direct Line says it has created the village to highlight just how easy this can be, on the back of new research showing that 7 out of 10 Brits strongly believe all cars will turn electric soon, with over half saying that their next purchase of a car will be electric. It says not surprisingly after recent circumstances, 22% also worry about future fuel shortages.