Electric Car Home Conversion

Hi, my name is Pete and this is my personal experience with converting my standard gas powered car to use an electric motor.

Like a lot of people, I was struggling on a pretty small income, with the cost of running my car taking a big chunk.

Click here to see the electric car conversion kit I used to save a fortune on gas bills.

 

Given I was travelling over 50 miles a day to and from work, I figured the easiest way to reduce my costs, would be by reducing my gas bills.  I looked into all sorts of different options, ranging from trading to a much smaller vehicle, moving house closer to work (not really an option given what I could afford) to converting my gas engine to electric.

The more I looked into electric car conversion kits, the more I realised that this was the easiest and definitely cheapest and best way of drastically cutting my fuel bills.  I don’t know why I didn’t think of the electric car option earlier on, but I guess I had stereotypical view of electric cars being clunky and not very practical.  Boy, was I wrong.  Electric car technology has certainly improved massively in recent years.

So what was the best way of converting my car to run on electricity?  The answer was a DIY electric car kit, as this was going to be the cheapest option and certainly not difficult to do (as I found out for myself).

Different Kits For Converting To An Electric Car

However, there are so many different types of electric car conversion kits out in the market, some with very similar concepts and some that use slightly different technologies.   Generally, when I want to do something or buy something, I tend to research the heck out of it (I’m often accused of being a little obsessive at times), so when it came to electric car conversions, I read through as many reviews as I could find and visited various forums to see what experiences other people had.

After a lot of reading, out of all the various electric car conversion kits, one particular electric car conversion manual seemed to keep popping up as being very good.   Based on that, and hearing what other people had said about electric car conversion kits, I decided to purchase a conversion guide and try it myself.

Of all the electric car conversion kits I looked at, this one certainly seemed to be the most detailed and as it turned out, the guide was very clearly written with plenty of detail.

I’m no mechanic but so long as you know how to use basic tools, I don’t think it’s a difficult job to do an electric car conversion.

All up, the cost of batteries and other parts was around $300, which I thought was a pretty small outlay for the potential savings.

As golf cart batteries are the most popular source of batteries for electric cars, I highly recommend this golf cart battery guide as it has some great information on maintaining your golf cart batteries and extending their life.

I converted my car around 4 months ago and I’ve had no problems at all in that time. The best thing is that I’m now saving so much money because recharging the batteries is so much cheaper than gas. I did a quick calculation the other day, and based on average of 300 miles per week with my car (2001 Nissan Maxima) that gets around 20 mpg and a gas price of around $2.50 per gallon, I was spending around $150 per month, or about $1800 per year!!

Note I’m basing my calculations on gas prices in the the middle of 2010 when gas prices were lower than they’d been for a very long time.  If you look at the following graph, you’ll see that the trend of gasoline prices is definitely on the up.

I think it’s a pretty safe bet, that the long term trend for gas prices is just going to continue to rise.

I’m so happy I that did a car conversion to electric, as my savings will only increase over time and it gives me more money to spend on other things.

Click here find out about the electric car conversion kit I used