Part of watching electric vehicle, EV related news is about seeing what people are doing facing rising gas prices. Some convert sooner than later.
The gist, converting yourself to electricity is easy, doing it for your car takes a little more homework and math. Many have already converted their older (and lighter) cars to electricity, and even some pickup trucks have swapped their gas hungry engines for electricity. Though we have already looked at plenty conversions, here is yet another one that makes sense.
Electric Golf. All puns intended, the electric golf cart is and was both a catalyst for the EV revolution and also a bane. It showed an already existing platform and feasibility of the electric car but it also associated it with low performance. Then, how about converting a VW Golf to electricity? That’s what Pete Cox did, according to the HickoryRecord.
How did he do it? Simply enough, he bought a used and cheap 1991 VW Golf on E-bay for $1,100. He yanked out the gas engine, replaced it with a 40 hp DC motor and seven car batteries in 12 hours.
The numbers, with a range of 20 to 30 miles per charge, it can reach 50 mph, which is more than reasonable for city driving and at a $1 a day, it sure beats $50 and upwards of gas to fill up every week. The conversion parts cost him $4,000, which makes his city EV come up to $5,500. Not bad for a buck a day!
I want more miles. We see you snicker and cringe for more miles. Want more miles? No problems. Either you put more batteries in your EV or if you happen to have an F150, you could convert it to a plug-in hybrid, PHEV. We covered a while back another F150 conversion. According to GreenCarCongress, a company called Envia can convert your friendly gas guzzler into a more economic version.
The gist, the company has a kit that will turn your F150 from a 15 mpg to a reasonable 43 mpg truck.
The numbers, with a choice of up to 20 kWh in battery packs, the electric only range is 38 miles with a top electric speed of up to 37 mph. How much? Between $15,000 to $25,000 depending on the range.
Now why can’t mainstream company achieve numbers like these instead of increasing to only a measely 1 mpg? Surely, they could do better.