Choose What Type of Car You'd Like to Build
With the high price of gas these days, many consumers have decided that owning and driving an electric vehicle will be more efficient and cheaper to run over the long haul. If you decided to build your own, there are plenty of resources available to help you understand and work through the process of converting a gas vehicle into an electric vehicle.
Steps
- Consider the driving conditions, the weight of the vehicle and the quality of the battery. This will determine how many miles you can drive. You also have to consider how you will be recharging the batteries. If you live in your own home with a garage, then charging the batteries is not a problem. However, if you live in an apartment complex with no garage, it maybe a little tougher to charge the batteries every night.
- Consider what type of car you want to use to build your own electric vehicle. Smaller cars would be more ideal, but bigger cars can be used as well. You should also consider using a car that has a manual four speed or five speed transmission, since standards are more efficient than automatics. Interestingly, since electric motors are so deficient, shifting gears up and down constantly won't happen as much as it does in a gas fueled engine.
- Understand that there will be additional weight added to your car. That weight can be anywhere from 200 to 500 extra pounds. Just make sure that the car you picked can handle the extra weight with the modifications, and isn't completely ridiculous -- and well within reason.
- Keep in mind power steering and air-conditioning. The power steering would definitely require another motor to make the power steering pump work. The air conditioning will put a huge drain on the batteries, but you can hookup the air conditioning using a special magnet system to work the compressor.
- Understand that chances are, the price of gas is going to continue to rise and for a lot of people, gas is almost not affordable. So going ahead and take a look at building your own; you may be surprised at how easy it is to convert your gas guzzler into and electric vehicle. The money you will save on fuel will pay for the cost of the conversion in very short order and there will be less pollution in the air too.
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