Posted by admin | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 12-15-2009
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Welcome to our brand-spanking new Electric Vehicle Blog!
For our first post here we thought that we should address the motives behind our (the electric car conversion community) need to convert cars in the first place. Why not start from the beginning, right?
The motive is simple; We want to be green, efficient, do our part to save the world, and save a bit of money, too. We can't believe that everyone doesn't want this, in fact.
The hard part for most people however is how driven you have to be to dive in and convert your first car. Let's face it, everyone wants to be green these days, but few are moved enough to take the engine out of a perfectly good car themselves!
So with that in mind, let's go over some of the things you should really know before you dive in yourself and yank out an engine yourself.
1. Structure
The structure of an electric car is more simple than a traditionally-fueled car, with the major components being the Motors, the batteries, the body (including chassis) and the transmission. Many of these components are similar to a fueled car, and some even identical, but electric cars have different functions and are overall more convenient for you, your family, and the environment. Sadly, this comes at a cost of the Batteries having a shorter lifespan than a fuel-driven car, meaning that every 5 to 1o years you will likely have to replace them all at a considerable cost.
2. Advantages
There are many advantages that are accompanied in an electrical vehicle. Namely, you are saving air of pollutants that would otherwise be spewing into the environment. Electrical vehicles are 100% emission free, and are free of pollution by-products. They provide their power from batteries, and can even be charged with solar or wind energy, and eventually hydrogen fuel cells to make the system fully 100% green.
Electric cars are therefore emission free, compact, lightweight, and currently are about three times as energy efficient as gas engines. They also are starting to achieve excellent range, and are of course safer to drive than sitting on top of an extremely combustible gas tank.
Electrical cars combine the best of both conventional and electric cars for a true winner. They bring more clean energy from the electric motor with the long-range power of gasoline engines, really giving you the best of both worlds.
3. Disadvantages
Just as there are advantages, there are some drawbacks to electrical cars, at least for now. On top of the fore-mentioned battery replacement cost, electric cars tend to require long recharge times, sometimes overnight. This means that you can not move the car while the battery is charging, so it can be a bit difficult to be spontaneous.
Electric cars also tend to have expensive parts costs associated with them, should they ever break down outside the warranty coverage. Of course this can be argued for any new car, until they are mainstream the fact is that all cars have expensive parts until mass produced in China.
The future looks bright on this front however because it can easily be shown that over the years the repair costs have significantly come down. This is partially due to the nature of the auto industry, but mainly to the fact that manufacturers are starting to accept electric cars now and have a better understanding the technology. This in turn ensures that they have become much more adept to building reliable parts.
4. The Technical Stuff
Saving the scariest for last, one thing that all electric car owners need to know in advance is, well, how to do the technical conversion itself.
Unless you plan on buying a fully electric car now from someone else, your current only option is to take a car that uses fuel of some type, a.k.a., an internal combustion engine, and convert it to electric yourself.
This is not easy and requires a roomy garage at the very least to accomplish. Luckily for you, there are lots of instructions available for converting different types of cars into electric cars, and even many electric car conversion kits (like we have reviewed on this website for you already) available.
So, before you get your elbows dirty with axle grease, carefully think about these four points and locate a good set of conversion instructions or a whole kit to use for your own EV conversion.
