One of the things that I have been wanting to do for quite awhile now was learn how to build an electric car. I went online and found several different sets of plans. I realized after I bought them that I had made a huge mistake... I couldn't understand the plans at all. So I returned them and bought another set. I think I was lucky because this time I got plans that I could actually understand.

The great thing about learning how to build an electric car is that it's really not that hard and you don't need to buy any special tools to do it either. All you need is your standard wrenches and some screwdrivers to do the entire conversion. I would also suggest that you find somebody to help you as it makes the entire process go at least twice as fast. I used one of my friends and promised him that I would help him with his conversion.

I wanted the range on my electric car to be about 200 miles because that way I could do all of my regular driving as well as do trips to visit my relatives. It was very important to me that I not need to use gas at all unless I was going on a really long trip in which case I would rent a car.

In order to get my desired range of 200 miles the plans said I would need around 20 deep cycle 12 volt batteries. Normally this would cost around $2000, but the plans showed me how to find free sources of batteries. It was great because in the end I ended up paying nothing for all of my batteries and I have 7 spares!

It takes about two weeks to do an entire electric car conversion, but it's time well spent because you'll never have to go fill up at the gas pumps again. In addition, you'll save at least 75% on your gas bill. I used to spend around $150 per month on gas, but now I spend less than $30 to charge my car up every night. I'm sure you may be thinking "yeah, but it's probably not as fast as a gas car". I can pretty much beat any car off the line (unless it's a sports car) because the electric motor has a lot of low end torque. The car tops out at around 50MPH so I can drive on the highway as well.

If you want to save on gas I highly recommend learning how to build an electric car. It's well worth the small amount of time it takes.