Electric Cars

[campbeji]

Hi all,

I came across this site recently, www.300mpg.org, about how to convert your car to electric. I enjoyed it and thought you might too.

Jim

[cye]

Jim - link not working for me.

[campbeji]

Hi Cye,

I've fixed it, I had included a comma in the hyperlink by accident.

[cye]

Thanks Jim, link now working. Looks interesting, but I couldn't glean a great deal about how it was done without going down the route of buying the video.

For freebee info, here's a old japanese site on electric conversion of a citroen 2cv.

www.asahi-net.or.jp/~MR5T-OKB/2ev-e.html

Looks like a lot of work and not cheap either!

I might tackle fitting an electric motor to my pushbike next year to make the commuting easier on windy days!

[campbeji]

Yeah that site does seem to be built around the idea of buying the DVD, which is fair enough I suppose. It does show whats possible with a bit of hard work and ingenuity.

Thinking about the issue of my car and how much it costs to run, never mind the environmental impact, I have always wanted to find an alternative to petrol/diesel. I'd love to have a bash at biodiesel or a vegtable oil type of thing, but of course I run into the old problem of no space to set up a plant.

An electric car on the other hand would not need any additional space or work once converted, just a big long cable to plug it in. The only problem would be the performance of the vehicle, specifically the range, I'd estimate that at least half of my journeys would be within the expected range of an electric vehicle while the other half wouldn't, so I would have to go with a dual fuel system or a second vehicle, probably a second vehicle. I have an old van sitting at the side of the house, I wonder if that is convertible?

As far as I could tell the guy from the website basically ripped out all of the engine, fuel system, exhaust and gearbox etc and then wedged in a forklift engine and built some sort of transmission to get it to run the car. It sounded kinda straight forward, and it probably is until you actually start to do it :-)

Anyway I must do some more research.

Jim