Electrical Locomotion
The last few weeks have had everybody
wondering about the future of our
economy. Common sense says that hard times will require a good deal of
sacrifice. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to predict that one of the
first areas most folks will feel the squeeze is in higher fuel costs.
This post will be an attempt to share with you what I've learned about
building your own electric powered vehicle.
I'm sure everybody has seen those futuristic looking hybrid cars on the
road, and I'm also sure that only a small percentage of you have the
extra cash to spend 40 thousand dollars in an effort to save a few
dollars at the pump. There is a lot of information on the internet
these day about home made electric transports, and a good place to
begin is EV Album.com. Here you can
find an easy to navigate collection
of projects including electric powered bikes, motorcycles, cars, and
trucks. There's even a guy who managed to get a small tractor working
with a golf cart motor.
The cheapest way to get moving with electric power is to convert one of
your pedal powered bikes. There are some nifty kits available that use
a small motor that attaches directly to the hub of your bike wheel.
These packages start at around 300 dollars and can go up to a thousand
and more depending on battery size and motor power. I've heard of
several people adapting starter motors to power a bike chain, and if
you're lucky you might be able to get a bike motorized for less than 50
bucks this way, but be prepared to walk home a few times before you get
it perfected.
The next step up in electric mobility would be converting
a motorcycle.
The average low end cost seems to be about 1500 dollars with some
people managing a bit under that and most going several thousand over.
You can expect to get somewhere between a 10 and 50 mile range on each
charge depending on road conditions and how good your batteries are.
The holy grail of electric locomotion would be the elecrtic car/truck.
Once you find the right car to convert and take out its gas powered
engine you should be prepared to spend at least 10 thousand dollars and
100 or more man hours to get something reliable. The maximum range
people seem to be reporting is around 50 miles, which will most likely
improve as battery technology gets better. At the time of this writting
the most popular vehicle for this type of conversion is the Chevy S-10
truck.
I considered what it would take to replace our old Isuzu farm truck's
engine with an electric motor. Once I priced the motor, batteries,
motor controller, battery charger, and other various items I concluded
that it would be easier and cheaper to just buy a used golf cart. We
found one on Craigs list a few months ago and have been pleasantly
surprised at its performance crossing our creek and dealing with the
muddy conditions here. Of course it doesn't have the same power as the
four wheel drive truck, but it's a breeze to get unstuck if you have
someone pushing from behind, and sometimes it just feels better to get
by with less.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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