Posted by Its commonly believed that you need to be a qualified mechanic in order to make an electric car, but as I will show you, this isn’t the case – just some relatively basic tools and a good set of instructions will do.
But you may be asking, why would I want to build an electric car anyway? Well, for one thing, you will save a lot of money. Unless you have been living under a stone for the past couple of years you will have noticed that gas prices have sky-rocketed. Well, electricity is cheap and renewable, its also clean and exceptionally quite, so not only will you save money, you’ll also help to save the planet.
Ok, I’m convinced, what do I do then?
Number 1 – and most important – get a good guide.
Number 2 – many hands make light work – its good to get a friend involved for some of the heavier stuff
Number 3 – get a suitable place to work – make it under cover this job normally takes a couple of days and you don’t want the work stopped by bad weather. Make sure its well lit, in fact, just a normal garage will be fine
Number 4 – get some basic tools- cordless drill, saws, wrenches, maybe a socket set…
Of course its best to also have a suitable vehicle. Small compact cars are best as they are lightweight and relatively simple to convert. A problem with small cars is that the batteries do take up quite a bit of space, but a good guide will show you how to get around this problem.
The parts are all readily available from most auto stores, so that shouldn’t be a problem, but if you live out in the boondocks, there are plenty of places to get the parts on-line. Again a good guide will help here. All, in all, it took me about a week to complete the work, and now my car runs on electricity!
With gas prices predicted to climb as high as 7.00 a gallon by the end of next year, its never been a better time to convert your car to run on electricity.