How do you build your own electric car from your home garage? If you own a car, you will be concerned about the gasoline prices. With the limited crude oil supply, gas prices are expected to go up and down in the near future. The gasoline bill can be a large portion of a household expense because an average American family has more than one car. Many car enthusiasts are exploring the concept of using an electric vehicle (EV) for their daily commute. Unfortunately, the current models of new electric car from the manufacturer are still expensive and not very practical. Most of them falls under a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (NEV) which are slow and basically is a souped up golf cart. For practical usage, one can convert their existing gasoline driven car to run purely on electricity.
To build your own electric car, all you have to do is to removed the internal combustion engine and replace it with an electric motor. Without the engine, other components such as gas tank, exhaust pipe, fuel lines and radiators have no usage can to be removed as well. The electric motor will be connected to the transmission to generate torque to turn the drive shaft to move the car forward. To power the motor, a series of batteries are used. An average sedan EV would need about 20 units of batteries to achieve a mileage of 150 miles per charge.
For someone who is not familiar with car parts, all the above information may not make any sense. To enjoy the benefits of owning an EV, you can send your car to a professional workshop to be retrofitted. The biggest cost in the conversion process are in the electric motor and the batteries. There are many ways for you to locate used or recondition electric motor and lead acid batteries. To get more of these cost saving ideas, you can purchase electric car conversion guides from the web.