If you are building your own Do It Yourself (DIY) electric car, having an on board battery pack made of rechargeable lithium batteries would be a dream come true.

At present, lithium ion batteries are considered an ideal choice for homemade electric cars because they are light, last longer before recharge, generate more power output etc.

The list of benefits rechargeable lithium batteries have over deep cycle batteries is very long. The reason DIY electric car builders don’t use them is the astronomical cost. Why are lithium batteries so damn expensive? Do they lack economies of scale or are they simply cost a lot to manufacture?

As a matter of fact, lithium batteries lack economies of scale and cost a bomb to make. Firstly, even though most modern electronic gadgets runs on small rechargeable lithium ion batteries, their demand is still relatively small compared to car lead acid batteries or marine deep cycle batteries.

Another reason why lithium batteries are so expensive is the manufacturing process. Making a lead acid or deep cycle battery is relatively easy and does not require sophisticated equipment.

Building lithium batteries require both precision chemistry and manufacturing which require special custom facilities. To build a lithium ion battery manufacturing plant would require the investment of hundreds of million dollars.

If you have the budget, you still can build an electric car using lithium battery pack. Your investment cost will be somewhere around $5,000. But for most people, that would have burst their EV conversion budget. Until the cost of lithium batteries comes down, EV enthusiasts would have to use deep cycle batteries for the time being.

Convert Your Own Electric Car

Want to know how to convert a conventional automobile into a plug in electric car? If you do, download the 20 DIY Electric Car Conversion Videos e-book.

The e-book will show you videos of homemade electric cars and the different components needed for the conversion project. Click on the link below to download the free e-book now!

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Have you ever wonder how long the batteries of a DIY electric car will last? If you are doing your own electric car conversion project, the cost of buying the batteries for your EV will take up a large portion of your budget. Wouldn’t you want to know how long the batteries will last before you have to replace them?

There is no exact answer to the above question. Different homemade electric cars will have different life span. It all depends on how the batteries are being used.

If you were to drain the battery bank and recharge them many times in a week, generally, the batteries would have a shorter lifespan.

Here’s an example, if you have 15 units of deep cycle batteries on your electric car and you use your EV for daily driving, you may have to recharge the batteries every night in your garage.

If you were to install 25 units of batteries on your EV, with the same driving usage, you may only need to recharge every other day. This means you cycle through your battery bank lesser and in result the batteries will last longer.

Should you install more batteries on your DIY electric car? When your battery bank has more batteries linked together, it would have more stored power hence does not have to be recharged so often.

But more batteries also means more weight on your EV. The key is to find the balance between weight and power availability from the batteries. Unfortunately, this is no easy task.

The best option, if you have the money, is to invest in premium grade deep cycle batteries for your electric car. They are more expensive, but they are capable of storing more power therefore you need to recharge less often.

DIY Electric Car Conversion Tips

Looking for more DIY electric car conversion cost saving tips? If you are, check out Gavin Shoebridge’s Electric Conversion Made Easy e-book.

Gavin is from New Zealand and is well known for converting his old Mitsubishi Tredia into a pure plug-in electric car in his garage.

During his EV conversion project, Gavin did have much money and had to be very creative coming up with ingenious ways to save cost on his EV. Some of his clever ways were included in his EV manual. For more information, click on the link below.

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A DIY electric car is very different from a conventional automobile because it does not use an internal combustion engine to generate the torque needed to move the vehicle. Instead of the engine, an electric vehicle (EV) uses an electric motor.

To transfer torque to the wheels, the electric motor is bolted to the existing transmission system. Power from deep cycle batteries will be used to power the motor. To charge the homemade electric car, all you have to do is plug it into your home power supply.

When charging the batteries, there is one component that you should never leave out and it is the charge controller. Why do we need a charge controller for a Do It Yourself (DIY) electric car?

The main function of the charge controller is to fully charge the deep cycle batteries of your electric car and at the same time prevents overcharging. Overcharging the batteries is a bad idea because it will damage the internal plates and shorten the life of your batteries. Since an electric car use from 15 – 20 units of batteries, overcharging them can be an expensive ordeal.

How does the charge controller prevent overcharging on the batteries?

Inside the controller, there is a transistor that acts as a shunt. When a battery being charged reaches a fixed voltage level, the shunt will open therefore severing the charging circuit and stops electrons from flowing into the battery. This process is automatic so you do not have to look at the battery charging state constantly.

A homemade electric car with 15 – 20 units of batteries will give you approximately 50 miles of driving before it has to be recharged again. Charging the batteries in your home garage will usually take overnight. By using a charge controller, you can rest assured the batteries will not be damaged due to overcharging.

DIY Electric Car Conversion Guide

Do you want to know how to convert a normal car into an electric vehicle? If you do, check out the Convert2EV e-book by Les Oke.

Les Oke and his family are from Canada and they have been using pure electric cars for traveling. To save cost, Les does all the electric car conversion work in his garage.

The Convert2EV e-book was written based on his many years of experience completing EV conversion projects. For more information on his EV guide, click on the link below.

==> Click here to visit Convert2EV now!