I really like the type III VWs

Still nothing going on but I did look into the Type III (3) VWs a little more. The more I think about it the more annoyed at myself I get for letting my friend sell his. The type III fastback is a great looking car and it has a drag coefecient of about .32 and that is right on par with small modern cars. Add to the fact that the car can handle about 882 pounds of payload and that is a perfect EV donor. Once all the internal combustion stuff is out that gives you about 1400+ pounds for your electrical stuff.

on board

Two new developments this week. The first is my father-n-law sounds very interested in this project and may want to build one. Calee's Grandpa Jerry also has been talking about electric cars. So moral support is always a good thing. It fas the flame. I also may have a lead on a "feild full of VWs". Kevin and I will go check it out if it ever stops raining here - that is if it actually exists.

Looking for a VW

Even though I don't have the cash for a new project car I am still keeping my eyes peeled on www.thesamba.com Ebay and craigslist for cheap classic VWs. I would pretty much take any pre 1979 VW. The beetle was my original intent just for the fact that there are so many of them and there are so many new parts made for them it would make a good choice. On the downside it sounds like the beetle has some of the worst aerodynamics of any car that size. That is pretty surprising to me. You would think with every thing being round it would do well in that department. I also like the looks of the type III fastback and since my friend had one in high school that makes it kind of nostalgic for me. Then there is the type II bus. My friend Paul in Mexico had one and I totally fell in love with it. They are on the heavy side though so It probably would not be the best choice, though if I found one close for a good price I would jump on it. On the plus side they can hold more batteries than the beetle. I have been doing most of my research on the bug. Rust is going to be a major concern. I think I could handle floor boards, I can weld but not well and its never pretty. All I have is a stick welder. The heater channels are what scare me. They are part of the structural strength and they tend to rust out. I don't know if I would trust myself to do it right. So the thought of finding a rust free car is very appealing. I did get in contact with the guy with the $500 1967 bug. It turns out its almost totally gutted and is pretty rusty. To add to that the 1967 beetle was full of one year only parts so finding those parts may be extremely difficult and expensive. On the plus side he said I could have it for 300 bucks. I will go check it out Sunday probably.

-Conspiracies-

I downloaded and watched "Who killed the electric car?" and it is pretty shocking. Its kind of hard to figure out what is hippie tree hugger junk and what is real but I think its pretty safe to say that there is some serious corporate greed/cover up going on. Why would GM go through so much trouble to destroy a car? I think GM realized the Saturn EV1 was actually a good car and they did take it off the market because they wouldn't make money on it. At least they wouldn't make money on it the way the like to. Not only do car companies make money on the sale of the car but they make a good chunk of money on maintenance. Since electric cars have very very little maintenance it would cut a huge chunk of profit out of GMs bottom line. Not only that but electric cars will theoretically last much longer than a gas powered car. That means selling less cars. It seems the video portrays every one loving the EV1. I am sure thats not really the case. Its hard to figure out what was going on but for a company to go so far out of there way to destroy a car, seems a lot fishy to me. Why not sell them with no warranty?

My thoughts as of today: EV dreamin'

I have come to the conclusion that confirms my thoughts over the past year. EVs are totally awesome. I would love to have one, I would love to build one. So one thought leads to the next and I am thinking of all the cars that might work well for an EV conversion. I could go the Geo metro/Suzuki Swift / Ford festiva route, it would be cool but but I would still be driving around a geo metro. I would still be proud of it but just because I built it and who has an electric car but I would not totally love it. I wouldn't want to wash and wax it. It would be cheap. I could probably find a great donor with a blown motor for a couple hundred bucks. I could Also go with an older honda civic, that would be better than a metro in my opinion. Then I started thinking of older cars. Most older cars are big but there were some good imports. There would be some advantages to an older car. They will have less wiring than a newer model and it would be easier to pull all the all the old Internal Combustion Engine wiring out. The dash is simple ect. Reliability would almost be a non issue with an EV since I will be replacing most of the stuff that tends to brake any ways. So after all this pondering I have got my mind stuck on an old classic bug. They can be found every where and they are relatively cheap. They are light weight and there is an abundance of used parts out there for them. They also have been modified to go fast so a modern brake upgrade would be an easy add on. Its also a super hippie kind of car and going electric is a pretty green hippie thing to do. It seems like a perfect car for the job. The bad part is I found one in springfield for 500 bucks. that just makes me want to do it even more. To bad the funds are non existent.

What I have learned

I have been logging some major hours researching the EV (electric vehicle). I have learned a lot and I have driven my wife nuts in the process. I stumbled across an excelent (for youtube) video documentation of a car that gets converted to electric. The Guys name Is Gav and he lives down in New Zealand.


If you have time I highly recommend watching all 20 videos in his series. They get very exciting by the end.

My first major surprise was how incredibly simple an electric car actually is. It is almost laughable. An electric motor can go for a million miles or more and your only maintenance going to be the batteries and new brushes for the motor every 50-100 thousand miles (thats a $20 part). You have no oil changes, no spark plugs, no fuel system no cooling system no heat sensor, no air intake (aerodynamics can improve dramatically)- nothing. Its just incredibly simple and simple is a beautiful thing.



An electric car will be extremely quite. Electric motors are almost silent compared to an internal combustion engine. Cars that are designed from the ground up to be electric like the General Motors Saturn EV1 can be extremely more aerodynamic than a car that has to use the air circulation for intake and cooling. The front of the car can be completely streamlined. That means air runs smoothly around the car on the highway and wind noise will be much less than what we have today.


Batteries do indeed really still suck in the grand scheme of things. There have been a few advancements but Lead Acid batteries are still the standard for things that require big power like a car (That is most likely what you are using to start your car). That is pretty sad considering they were invented over 150 years ago. The newest and best battery out right now is the Lithium Ion battery. That is what you have in your phone and laptop. They are quite a bit better than batteries of the past but the price is insane. You would spend $15,000-$20,000 to power a car. The EV1 from the late 1990's had a range of 75-125 miles Using lead acid batteries. The new Tesla Roadster witch has lithium Ion batteries will have a range up to 220 miles. You will still have an issue with fast recharges though so they are by no means road trip material. I have also learned that the average American drives about 30 miles a day. Your average Home built electric car can do 40-50 miles a day some as high as 60. Lead Acid batteries can recharge up to 80% in 3-4 hours on a normal 110 outlet. A 220 outlet will get you there twice as fast. topping the batteries off is going to take another 3-6 hours. It will take another 3-6 hours to finish topping them off when they are depleted. A home built EV will need 500-1000 pounds of batteries. The good news is there are several small companies that claim they are on the verge of major breakthroughs in the battery department. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

If you are going to convert a gas powered car to and EV you are going to want to find something with a standard transmission. Cars with automatics will shift to soon and will make the motor very inefficient. Automatics also need to idle to keep the oil flowing through the transmission. An Electric motor will totally stop when you are at a stop light. Also when driving an EV you don't have to have a clutch with your manual gear box. You can put it in 2nd and start from a complete stop. Electric motors like to REV up and they are very efficient running at 5000 rpm. They also produce torque from zero rpm allowing you to start in gear with out a clutch.

You can build electric car for Less than $1000 but thats not the norm it is rather inspiring though:


The average person will most likely end up spending between $3,000-$1000 to convert a car. If you run lithium Ion batteries You are going to spend over 20k.

My History

I have always been a big fan of great gas mileage. My first vehicle was a 1979 chevy 3/4 ton 4 wheel drive truck. That thing got 7 mpg. Thats not a typo. It actually only got 7 mpg. I was busy working and saving for a "new" car. So after about 6 months of driving the truck I upgraded to a 1967 mustang. I was doing pretty good then. I was getting about 14 mpg and that was not to bad considering gas was cheap. I can remember filling up at 74.9 cents a gallon or 4 gallons for 3 bucks. That was in the late 90's. I remember when gas crossed the $1 mark. It was no big deal though I could still afford it. I went to California one summer to visit my friend Zach. Gas was outrageously priced at $1.50-1.75. I had a hard time figuring out how any one could afford to drive out there. After a year and a half of driving the mustang I decided that a reliable car that got good gas mileage was in my future so I sold it and bought a 1991 Honda prelude SI. Once again I doubled my mpg. I was getting 28 mpg in the car and I was a happy camper. By the end of high school gas kept going up very slowly but so did my pay check so I upgraded once again to a 1993 Honda civic EX. After a few tweaks I was getting 41+ mpg on the highway. I still have the civic and it is our cheap transportation. In the past couple years gas has doubled. Crude prices are setting records. It all got my brain spinning. I knew very little about Electric Vehicles 6 months ago but I was touting it as the direction out transportation should be heading. My knowledge was limited. I knew electric motors were very efficient. I also knew the main limiting factor to electric vehicles or EVs as they are known is the batteries. To be work in a car they need to hold more power and they need to recharge fast. Battery technology has really stumped me in the past. Why are they so stagnant. Why can a computer processor performance increase 10 fold in ten years but batteries have had very few break throughs. I also knew that regardless of what oil prices did If we were driving electric cars it would have minimal impact. Electricity is energy independent. We can use Wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, hydrogen or even coal or oil. It doesn't matter, and we have options keeping prices low. I wouldn't call myself a tree hugger but I am not opposed to keeping the environment clean either. Even if we get our energy from a 100% coal fired plant it would still be cleaner than all the cars on the road. It is easier to control emissions from one plant than millions of cars.

I will end this with an interesting quote from EVworld.com

"Even charging the car with power from the average U.S. electricity grid — half of which comes from coal — the yearly carbon emissions would be one and a half tons, significantly less than gasoline’s four. Even in the wildly unreasonable scenario that an electric car was charged with one hundred percent coal-fired electricity, emissions would be two and a half tons per year, still less than corn ethanol’s three. Regardless of its source, electricity is the cleanest transportation fuel."