A Do It Yourself (DIY) electric car would normally have 15 to 12 units of deep cycle battery. That will provide approximately 50 to 100 driving miles before the batteries have to recharge.

Are there anyways to extend the mileage of an electric car?

The simplest and the most effective way is to maintain a proper air pressure in the tires.

In order to check and maintain the right pressure in the wheel, you will need a tool to assist you. I found a really cool programmable digital tire gauge on Amazon that looks like a device from Star Trek! It’s the Accutire MS-4350B.

The Accutire MS-4350B is a programmable tire gauge capable of reading your tire pressure with exceptional precision. Maintaining proper tire pressure is essential for your safety and extending your EV mileage.

Properly inflated tire can reduce the wheel resistance and reduce tire tread wear. Similar to a conventional car, good tire pressure will increase an EV efficiency.

Tire can lose up to 10 lbs of pressure in the course of a few months. Once they drop 8 lbs below the recommended level, they are considered a safety hazard.

Having a reliable tire gauge such as the Accutire gauge is essential because you can’t tell if the tire is under inflated just by looking at it.

To measure the tire pressure of your electric car, just remove the cap from the tire valve and press the “set” button on the Accutire. A reading of 0.0 psi appears until you place the gauge over and on to the valve.

The digital tire gauge will beep when it has displayed and lock and accurate reading.

The Accutire gauge is also programmable meaning it allows you to record and store the factory recommended pressure of your tire. With that information, you can set the pressure for the front and rear tires.

Because the weigh distribution of your electric car may not be equal due to the placement of the batteries, the programmable feature will come in very handy to determine the exactly pressure for both end of the wheel.

Where can you get the Accutire MS-4350B?

It’s available from Amazon.com with Free Super Saving Shipping. If you are looking for a way to extend the drive mileage of your electric car, get the Accutire gauge today.

==> Click here to visit the Accutire digital gauge at Amazon.com!

Related web pages:

1) Electricity4gas Manual – Is Peter Millward Electricity4Gas e-book a fraudulent scam?

The kind of battery most suitable for EV is the deep cycle type. It is the same kind of battery used on marine boats. Deep cycle battery is more robust and is capable of handling deep level of discharge.

A homemade EV would require at least 15 to 20 units of battery. That will give you an average driving mileage of approximately 60 to 100 miles. To ensure you have good mileage on your EV, it is best to check the batteries on a regular basis.

How do you check the battery condition?

The easiest way is to use a battery hydrometer.

The battery hydrometer is basically a glass tube with a suction ball at one end. It is used to draw the electrolyte from the battery into the tube.

Inside the glass tube, there is a float with multiple color markings. You can see a long red strip, a narrow white strip and then a wider green strip.

When the float in the tube is at the green level, that means the battery is in a very good shape. In other words, the more the float sticks out of the electrolyte in the glass tube, the stronger the battery is.

When the float is at the white marking, your battery is in a fair condition. If the float goes to the red area, the battery is not in a good condition. There is something wrong with the battery and you have to take it out for servicing.

In a situation like this, you have to bring the battery to a shop to get a full recharge.

Use the battery hydrometer to test all the batteries in your electric car. A faulty battery in your EV may affect the total driving mileage because it is not giving any power to the electric motor, and yet it is taking up space and weighing your car down.

DIY Battery Reconditioning Guide

Do you want more tips and strategy on how to maintain the batteries on your electric car? If you do, check out the battery maintenance guide on this blog.

It will show you step by step on how to maintain your battery and how to bring a dead battery back to service life.

==> Click here to visit the Battery Reconditioning Guide now!

Do you own a Toyota Prius hybrid car?

That is the current craze nowadays with Toyota heavily pushing its green cars especially the Prius model.

Do you know the hybrid batteries have a limited life span of 8 years or 150,000 miles on average?

Many Prius owners do not know that because like most of us, they don’t bother reading the car manual.

How much would it cost to replace the battery pack?

Since not a lot of workshops know how to replace the Prius battery, you have to go back to Toyota authorized service centres. And the cost of the battery pack replacement is about $4000!

That’s a lot of money, isn’t it?

If you own a Toyota Prius and the battery is dying, what other choices do you have?

You can try to rebuild the battery pack at a fraction of the cost.

Here’s a web site that I found at www.hybridbatteryrebuild.com. The creator, Pete, will show you how to rebuild your Prius battery versus replacing it.

Pete is a professional mechanic and he has been rebuilding Prius battery pack for his customers for under $500. That is a great savings!

What Pete will show you in his guide is how to take newer cells with a better design out of the newer Prius battery pack and then put into your current battery pack. Think of it as changing the battery of a cell phone.

It is understood that not a lot of people will be able to do the battery replacement on their own. Pete’s guide was created with step by step instructions in great detail how to do it using pictures each and every step of the way. Imagine someone holding your hand throughout the process.

If you need more help, there is a support forum that you can have access to. In the forum, you can talk to Pete and his partners if you have any confusion during the rebuilding process.

If you own a Toyota Prius and the battery pack is about to expire, check out Pete’s web site. You don’t have to spend a ton of money replacing the battery.

==> Click here to visit Pete’s web site now!

One of the key areas you want to work on during an electric car conversion project is the transmission. The transmission is a little more challenging.

The transmission was originally designed to coupled to a clutch plate. When you are building a Do It Yourself (DIY) electric car, you are not going to use a clutch. The electric motor will be coupled directly to the transmission.

The main thing the clutch does for a car is allow you to leave the internal combustion engine running when the car isn’t moving. With an electric motor, you can just switch it off.

The other reason you don’t want a clutch is to minimize the amount of mass or the amount of weigh the electric motor has to spin because that will cost you valuable energy.

When the electric motor has to spin a bigger resistant, it will consume more electricity hence making your EV less efficient and it won’t go as far.

When connecting the electric motor to the existing transmission unit, most EV retrofitters will use the Lovejoy metal coupler. Putting the coupler on the motor shaft is easy. But how do you put the coupler on the transmission shaft?

Reason being, the end of the transmission shaft has grooves and teeth while the coupler doesn’t.

To solve this problem, you need to have some creativity and do some modification. You start out by removing the old clutch plate. Look at how the plate is attached to the transmission shaft. You will see a little coupler in it that had ridges that matches up to the shaft of the transmission.

Cut out that small coupler and weld it to the center of the Lovejoy coupler. Make sure the weld is strong so it does not spin. The Lovejoy coupler with the old clutch plate ridges can now be fitted to the transmission shaft. It is a lot of work, but that’s how you solve a problem in a DIY project.

Once you have all the couplers in place and the rubber spider separator in between, you can now connect them together and be able to transfer power from the electric motor to the wheel of your electric car. One of the advantage of the Lovejoy couplers is it allows for a small amount of shaft misalignment.

If your electric motor is not perfectly align with the transmission, it is not going to create much problem. It would not handle too much misalignment though, only one of 2 degree, but it’s better than trying to hard weld two of the shaft together on a straight line. You will never get the line perfect.

DIY Electric Car Conversion Guide

Looking for more information about DIY electric car conversion? If you do, check out Gavin Shoebridge ‘s Electric Conversion Made Easy e-book.

Gavin is from the land of kiwis, New Zealand and he has personally converted his old Mitsubishi Tredia into an EV in his garage.

For more creative tips and tricks to convert a gas guzzler to EV, check out his manual.

==> Click here to visit Electric Conversion Made Easy now!

One of the trickiest processes of a DIY electric car conversion is coupling the electric motor to the transmission unit of the car. To make the connection work easier, it is recommended for you to take out the transmission and put in on a workbench. It involves a lot of work, but it will save you a lot of time and unnecessary headache.

When the electric motor and the transmission is on a workbench, you can now handle the alignment, get the holes drilled and get everything working.

To start of the connection process, there are 2 things you need to consider.

1) The physical piece of the electric motor.

You have to find a way to somehow bolt the motor to the transmission. The motor will be using an “L” shaped motor mount.

A lot of electric cars use a motor that mounts off the face and you’ll actually end up with a piece of metal plate between the electric motor and the transmission.

2) Connecting the power from the electric motor to the transmission.

When doing this, you will notice two different size and very different shaft. You will need to come up with a way to connect both together. The most common way electric car converters are adopting is to use a brand of connector calls Lovejoy connectors.

The connector comes with 2 pieces of steel with finger. There will be a piece of rubber insert that sits between them. The Lovejoy couplers are not very expensive and you can get them from Amazon.com.

You can order the steel pieces independently with different size hole to match the different shaft.

The Lovejoy couplers are designed for industrial work and are made to go right on the shaft of the electric motor. Look closely at the electric motor shaft. It is smooth except for a groove in it. That is where the “key” goes in.

The key is what keeps the coupler from spinning once it is on the motor shaft. That is how you connect the electric motor to the transmission unit of the donor car.

DIY Electric Car Conversion Guide

Do you want to find out more on how to convert your gas guzzler to a pure electric vehicle? If you do, check out Les Oke’s Convert2EV manual.

Les and his family live a green lifestyle and use an electric car for their daily commute. Les has converted numerous conventional automobile to EV. The Convert2EV e-book is all his EV conversion experience penned down.

==> Click here to visit Convert2EV now!

It was a dreadful experience going to the gas station. If you own a large SUV, the experience can be darn right painful.

Will the price of gasoline increase again?

That is for sure, it is only a matter of time.

To cushion the impact of rising fuel prices, many vehicle owners are looking into alternative energy such as electricity. However, a brand new electric car from the dealership is still very expensive. Many people are not ready to make that kind of investment.

A cheaper alternative is to convert their existing vehicle into a pure electric car via a Do It Yourself (DIY) approach. That has lead to the creation of many DIY electric car conversion guides on the web.

One of the most popular EV conversion manual available on the internet is George Christodoulou’s Gas2Electric e-book.

Is the manual any good?

That is the reason I am writing this post, to give you a quick glimpse into the guide.

George Christodoulou is a self-proclaimed environmental activist and DIY car converter. If you didn’t know, you can find his web site at www.gas2electric.net.

The Gas2Electric is basically a step by step guide to convert a conventional gas guzzler to run on only electricity. According to George, by using an EV, you can cut your gasoline bill down to zero.

This is a fact because by using an electric car, the only time you will stop by the gas station is to buy a pack of cigarettes or use the wash room.

Is DIY electric car conversion suitable for everyone?

Sadly, the answer is no.

If you are not good with hand tools or you have no knowledge whatsoever on automobile, doing your own EV conversion project may not be a good idea.

In this case, you can outsource the conversion project to a professional mechanic. The money spent here will save you a lot of time and unnecessary headache.

When you are engaging the service of a professional workshop, the Gas2Electric will come in very handy for you. After you’ve read the e-book, you will have a better understanding on what’s involved in an EV retrofitting process.

With your new found knowledge, you will be able to have a discussion with the mechanic without looking like a dummy. At least you will know when you are being charged for unnecessary parts or work done on your car.

So what’s my verdict on George Christodoulou’s Gas2Electric?

If you are new to the concept of DIY electric vehicle and you want to know how it’s done, go get a copy of the e-book. It’s a good read and you’ll get to expand your car knowledge.

==> Click here to visit Gas2Electric now!

In this article, I thought of doing a quick review on the e-book Gas2Electricity. If you didn’t know, you can find its main web site at www.gas2electricity.com.

I have been doing a lot of research on Do It Yourself (DIY) electric car for more than a year now. I have bought many electric car conversion plans either from the internet or from the book stores.

One of the EV manual I came across on the web is Gas2Electricity. From the web site, the guide was written by 2 professional mechanics, Jarrod and Jerimie.

If you have never bought any information product from the internet before, you may not know this. Jarrod and Jerimie may not be real persons.

A lot of web publishers create fictitious character to promote their product. The reason they do this is to give a human face behind a digital product. I have a feeling this is the case for Gas2Electricity.

However, you have to remember this. When you are buying an e-book, what you want is the “information” inside the manual, not how they market it. Therefore, I wasn’t too concern about this.

There are 2 things I want to highlight in this review. First, it is the EV mileage per charge promised in the web page. Gas2Electricity claims you can get 100 – 200 miles per charge. This is not an impossible figure but you’ll need to have 2 things.

To achieve the mileage claimed, you’ll have to make a very big battery bank and use a very light electric donor car. To build a large battery bank, you may need 30 or more deep cycle batteries!

Carrying so much dead weight on an electric car may not be very feasible. For your information, generally, a Do It Yourself (DIY) electric car has a net driving mileage of about 50 miles only.

The second thing I want to highlight is the cost for the EV conversion. Gas2Electricity claims you can get it done for less than $280. This is outright incorrect!

I doubt this is achievable even if you were to use all old or recycled parts and batteries. That small budget is not even enough to purchase a reasonable electric motor.

If you are planning to build an electric car in your home garage, be prepared to invest upwards of $5000.

So what’s my conclusion on Gas2Electricity?

Personally, I’ll give it a pass. The information that has been claimed on the web site is way off the mark. Nonetheless, if you are looking for some basic knowledge on EV conversion, you may give it a go.

DIY Electric Car Conversion Guide

The best electric vehicle conversion guide I’ve seen so far on the web is Gavin Shoebridge’s Electric Conversion Made Easy. Gavin is from New Zealand and he is known as the EV Guy.

He has personally converted an old Mitsubishi Treadia into a pure electric car. He has also documented the entire conversion process into a step by step instructional video series.

The Electric Conversion Made Easy is Gavin’s EV experience penned down. Everything is based on actual situation with actual EV parts and components. If you want a precise EV retrofitting guide, check out Gavin’s guide.

==> Click here to visit Gavin Shoebrige’s web site!

Hybrid insurance discounts are available to you just for purchasing your fuel-efficient vehicle – and can save you up to 10%!

Major insurance companies know that people who purchase fuel-efficient vehicles are less risky; hybrid insurance discounts are available.

Receiving a 10% hybrid insurance discount leads to significant long-term savings on your auto insurance policies.

Receiving hybrid insurance discounts from major auto insurance providers is a distinct possibility. The Green philosophy has been firmly integrated into all societies planetwide – and that means that governments and insurance providers are being very accommodating.

In fact, almost every insurance provider offers up to a 10% discount on hybrid vehicle policy premiums. You see, the world is becoming less dependent upon fossil fuels; it must. The entire international automotive industry is being revamped to manufacture more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Electric cars and trucks (EVs) and hybrid vehicles are taking over – and they are forming the automotive design basis for the future.

EV and hybrid insurance discounts are in place to encourage the masses to get involved with helping to protect and preserve this planet’s limited natural resources. If they are depleted fully, there will be widespread environmental devastation – not to mention wars, economic collapse and more.

Major insurance company providers know that environmentally responsible people, like those who choose to purchase electric and/or hybrid vehicles, present less financial risks to insure than do their non-eco-friendly counterparts.

Facts about getting discounts on hybrid auto insurance policies:

• In addition to saving up to 10% for your hybrid insurance discount, you can save significantly more on your auto insurance premiums by qualifying for and receiving the following types of discounts:

◦ Safe driver discounts;
◦ Automotive safety feature discounts;
◦ Low mileage discounts;
◦ Senior citizen discounts;
◦ Good student discounts;
◦ Multi-car policy discounts;
◦ Antitheft device discounts;
◦ And more…

• You can receive your hybrid vehicle insurance discount whether you are purchasing or leasing the vehicle.

• Having a strong credit rating will save you even more money on your insurance policies for electric and hybrid vehicles.

• As you would expect, having a excellent driving record will save you significant amounts on your insurance policies as well.

• Always remember that any insurance policy is based primarily upon the value of the vehicle to be insured. So don’t expect to insure a $50,000 dollar hybrid vehicle for less than you would a a $10,000 dollar non-hybrid vehicle.

Final tips for locating and receiving hybrid insurance discounts:

• Take your time and do not rush the process of locating quality automobile insurance for your hybrid vehicle.

• Comparison shop online to receive side-by-side comparison charts of the best rate quotes from major automotive insurers.

• Make sure that you understand the small details of all discounts that you qualify for on your insurance policies. Remember that these discounts are not offered freely; you will most likely have to ask.

Receiving hybrid insurance discounts on your automobile insurance policies is a pleasant, money-saving reward for your environmentally responsible actions.

Helping to save the planet, making less trips to gasoline pumps and saving 10% on your policies for hybrid automotive insurance is definitely a winning combination. Enjoy it!

The problem is COST!

Unlike conventional automobile, you can stop by the gas station to refuel and continue driving. Since there are thousands of gas stations around the country, a vehicle using an internal combustion engine has virtually unlimited driving range.

For an EV, the case is very different. A DIY electric car has to carry its power source on board. The power is stored in the deep cycle batteries. To have longer drive mileage on your electric car, you’ll need more batteries.

If you are planning to put extra batteries in your EV, it will inflate your conversion project cost, not to mention the extra dead weight your vehicle has to carry.

The key here is to find the middle ground or the “sweet spot” for your cost versus drive mileage. To determine your EV range, ask yourself the following questions:

1) How far will I need to drive each day?

2) Am I going to use the car for work commute or for unpredictable usage?

3) Is my driving route terrain hilly or flat?

4) Is there a recharging point at my work or at my destination I can use?

5) Is my choice of donor car a big heavy truck, or a small hatchback?

If you’re unsure of the distances, try recording them on your car’s odometer or on a GPS system to give you an estimate. By doing that, you will be able to gauge your daily driving needs.

When you have the figure, you can now design a battery storage system to give you the desired driving mileage for your DIY electric car.

DIY Electric Car Conversion Guide

Do you need some help building your own electric car at home? If you do, check out Gavin Shoebridge’s Electric Conversion Made Easy manual.

Gavin is known as the EV Guy from New Zealand. He has successfully converted an old Mitsubishi Tredia to run purely on electricity in his home garage.

Gavin also shared a lot of tips and strategies on how he managed to reduce his EV conversion cost with some very creative solutions when converting his car.

If you are planning to convert your car to EV at home, check out Gavin’s web site first.

==> Click here to visit Gavin’ web site now!

In this blog post, I am going to write about how to decide on your electric vehicle (EV) conversion needs and budgeting. Typically when it comes to converting a car to run on pure electricity, you have 3 main options:

1) A good range.

2) A high top speed.

3) A low conversion cost.

The fact is, you can only choose 2 of the 3 options above.

This means before selecting your parts or selecting a donor car, you need to decide what your goals are.

Let me elaborate further on the 3 points above.

A Good Range

The typical DIY electric car that runs on lead-acid batteries has an average driving range of approximately 40 – 50 miles before it has to be recharged. The mileage is due to a combination of multiple factors.

The biggest factors being the size & weight of the battery pack. Other contributing factors are the vehicle aerodynamics and your driving condition. Driving on hilly areas will definitely need more juice therefore reducing your net mileage.

To get a good or practical EV range, you need to understand your driving needs. Too much range, and it’ll cost you money because of the extra batteries needed. Too little range and your EV would not be practical.

A High Top Speed

How fast can an EV go? As fast as you want!

Unlike driving range, a high top speed for an electric car can be achieved without too much extra cost. It all depends on how much power is available from your car’s battery pack and how much power your car’s controller will allow through to the motor.

An EV with large enough power and current flow will out sprint a gasoline driven car. A Tesla Roadster will always beat a Ferrari Modena on a straight sprint!

Low Conversion Cost

The overall cost of the conversion of an EV will vary from car to car, and from country to country. Some of the costing factors are shipping and freight costs, the strength of your currency for buying parts from overseas sources, labor costs to fabricate battery racks and a motor-to-gearbox adapter plate etc.

There are many ways you can save on your DIY electric car conversion project. Some are straight forward while others require some creativity.

For more tips and strategies on how to save money for a DIY electric car conversion project, check out Les Oke’s Convert2EV e-book.

Les and his family have been living off the grid for more than 15 years. To live a green lifestyle, Les has been using a pure electric car for commuting purposes.

Throughout the years, Les has converted numerous automobile to EV. The Convert2EV manual is his years of EV experience penned down.

==> Click here to visit Convert2EV now!