With her foot down to show off the acceleration of the zippy electric car, Joanna Edghill spins around the car park before plugging the vehicle into a charging point beneath rows of solar panels converting Caribbean rays into power for the grid.
In the five years since she and her husband started their company Megapower, it has sold 300 electric vehicles and set up 50 charging stations plus a handful of solar car-ports on the 21 mile-long (34 km) island of Barbados.
They are now expanding elsewhere in the Caribbean.
"The main factor with islands is we don't have range anxiety. I can develop and roll out a charging network in Barbados where customers are never more than a few kilometers from a charging point," said Edghill, who previously worked in international development.
"We have at least 220 days of pure sunlight every year, so why not take advantage of the resources that we do have here?"
Burdened by a costly dependence on imported fuel for energy, Barbados and many other Caribbean islands are considering boosting the number of electric vehicles on their roads.
But they face barriers, including high initial costs, stiff import duties on electric vehicles and a lack of regulatory support, say people working in the sector. . . .
