The Low Down On Green Living
September 4th, 2008
Sick of Gas? Convert Your Car To Run On Electricity
Stumble it!
Written by Clayton B. Cornell, courtesy of Gas2.0
If you can’t buy the car you want, then build it.
Gregg Abott (aka Gadget) custom-converts cars for a living, but instead of tricking out cars to run on biodiesel or get better mileage, he’s hacking them to run on electricity. He’s the owner of Left Coast Electric, a Santa Monica based company with a simple philosophy:
“…if electric cars are going to make a difference, a lot of people have to drive them. They have to be made affordable.”
Which means these guys aren’t putting out $100K Tesla Roadsters, but are converting older models to have the same functionality:
So instead of building cars from the ground up, Gadget and his business partner, Roger Wilson, convert existing cars or shells of cars into electric vehicles by supplying or outfitting them with pre-configured kits loaded with everything an electric car needs except a new motor.
Admittedly, this isn’t for the faint of heart. Each kit costs $10,000 and requires the tenacity to dive into major auto electrical work. But if this type of conversion seems like a daunting task, Left Coast Electric will do the work for you—for $17,000 that is, including parts—which means that for the price of a Prius, your old car could be fully electric.
For $30,000, they’ll even convert your Hummer.
Abott uses nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) D-cell batteries, placed on top of where the motor used to be (and in the bed if it’s a truck) to create the battery array. LCE also buys and coverts old cars, which it offers for sale:
Gadget prefers to work with what he calls “Arcane British Cars, or ABCs — Triumphs and MGs and Austin Healys.” He picks them up at auctions for $200 to $300. “We’ll be converting those, and we’ll sell them on the lot,” he says, for the price of a new Prius ($25,000 to $30,000). But Left Coast also has modularized kits ready to drop into Mazda Miatas and Chrysler PT Cruisers for the “build-it-yourself market.” With NiMH batteries, he can guarantee a range of 60 to 100 miles. And one day, he adds, “We’ll move on to lithium ions.”
The biggest question in my mind is how long the batteries will last (landfill problem?). There are also simpler and cheaper solutions for do-it-yourselfers, like using biodiesel or converting a car to run on straight-vegetable-oil.
But there isn’t much question in my mind that if you want it bad enough, you can do it.
For more information, see the Left Coast Electric’s Website.
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Comments
check 123
September 5th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_laBPi9wbA check out these sweet electric vehicles
Perfect X4
September 6th, 2008 at 12:58 am
Thanks for sharing such wonderful info. Have a good one man.
Sean Gaffney
September 10th, 2008 at 6:17 am
This is very interesting, thanks for the update. I wanted to put in a comment about what seems to be your language that suggests continued support of bio-diesel as a “green” alternative.
It is very clear from all UN reports and copious evidence that bio-diesel is a very irresponsible fuel. It has been called a “crime against humanity” by UN experts. We cannot afford leading green sites with growing influence to ignore the underlying problems with this fuel. Do we really still think that it is a good idea to put farm land into cultivation, use precious petroleum and water, continue to pollute rivers and aquifers, all for a fuel that is still producing almost as many greenhouse gasses as diesel and gas? We are putting more energy into its production that we are getting in return!
It was a mistake to think it would work. It is a mistake to think that we will be able to create responsible fuel from wood pulp or other waste products. Here in Massachusetts we are already starting to clear cut our state forests ( Sierra Club and Audubon are in suppoprt) in order to produce a tiny fraction of the fuel to run our bio-mass power plants. How long can that go on? Internal combustion has got to go. We need to be promoting bike riding and public transportation above all else if anything is going to change.We have to use the sun, the wind, and water. We need infrastructure change not feel good shifts in our consumption patterns,
Take care, thanks for putting our so much good vibes and info. Peace. Sean
RAD Scientist
November 18th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I clicked through to their website and the information looks really dated. Are you sure they are still in business? I would love to see this kind of auto recycling going on around the country. Why build a bunch of new electric vehicles when there are tens of millions of perfectly good cars on the road that can be retrofitted to a new electric drivetrain.
I’ve heard that a lot of the utilities are really concerned about the current uptick in interest for PHEVs and pure EVs. They know that any mass adoption would bring the current power grid to its knees. You may want to seriously consider a solar or wind auxiliary power source for you EV charger!
-RADScientist
http://www.voltsjournal.com
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