14 DAY TRIAL // This Thursday, February 28, Kia went public with the news of their having opened a solar-powered car dealership in South Africa. As the company explains, this facility is the first of its kind for Kia Motors.
Information shared with the public says that, besides its relying on solar energy in order to have its electricity demands met, this dealership is highly efficient in terms of recycling water.
According to Kia Motors' official blog, this particular car dealership is located in Weltevreden Park, i.e. a suburb of Roodepoort, South Africa.
The 288 solar panels mounted on its roof allegedly generate a maximum of 69kW of power on a daily basis. For those unaware, this amount of power is more than enough to keep 22 households up and running.
As the company explains, whatever energy does not get used while carrying on with a typical day's routine is stored with the help of three battery banks and can be accessed later on.
It may very well be that the energy used by this car dealership is produced by harvesting an environmentally-friendly energy source, but this does not mean that Kia Motors is not concerned about not wasting it.
“In line with the dealership’s environmental policy, low wattage luminaires (fluorescent and compact fluorescent lamps) are used in the major areas of the dealership. Standard high base 400-Watt lamps are replaced with 4 x 54-Watt lamps, providing the same light, but using less energy,” the company says.
Furthermore, “Occupancy sensors have been installed in most areas of the building which will switch off automatically after a few minutes if no movement is detected, further contributing to the dealerships’ overall energy saving.”
The water used by this car dealership is mostly collected from whatever rains happen to fall in this region, and once it is used to wash vehicles it is fed into a filtration system which cleans it and readies it for being used once again.
“The Kia brand has shifted to the next level. Not only do we offer consumers a competitive value proposition with our re-designed and re-engineered products, but ventures like our brand new solar powered dealership have given us the platform to become leaders in the industry,” argued David Sieff, national marketing manager of Kia Motors South Africa.