Texas Teen Builds His Own Electric Car on $10,000 Budget
This fall, Texas teenager Lucas Laborde will be driving to school in an electric car he built himself. The 17 year old spent last summer converting a conventional gas-powered car to run on batteries. Total cost? Around $10,000.
Luke’s EV is based on a kit car, known as a Bradley GT II, which his father bought on eBay for just $5000 splashing out a further $5700 on electric conversion parts and batteries. The rest was left up to Luke’s ingenuity and technical know-how.
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After 150 hours of work, Luke had hooked up eight 80-pound lead-acid batteries in the space left after removing the fuel tank, as well as several other ‘creative locations.’ He finished up with an EV capable of travelling 40 miles between charges, a top speed of 45mph, (more than enough for the local school run), and heaps of low-end torque. As Luke told reporters, “it has a lot of power.”
The car isn’t without a few ‘quirks’ though; the weight of the batteries has caused the fiberglas body to twist slightly, meaning that the gull-wing doors don’t completely close. However, by using his own initiative, and making use of widely available existing components, Luke Laborde has put many global car companies to shame by creating a working, highway-ready EV, in far less time and on a much lower budget.
Image Credit - Steve Striharsky at bradleygt2.com
Firstly, well done to the kid for doing it! That’s pretty styling.
That being said, it’s not like he did something that hasn’t been done by the big car companies. They’ve had electric powered technology for years but because there is such a reliance on oil, gas and petrol, they have never been allowed to release fully electric cars because it would A) put thousands of people out of jobs and B) OPEC wouldn’t get rich from the toils of the normal folk.
That’s changing though. The future’s looking bright.
How is a car that has a top speed of 45 mph considered to be “highway ready”? It seems much more like a glorified golf cart than something that “has put many global car companies to shame.”
Sorry but this is nothing new.
We need an electric car that is able to travel the same distance as a regular car on a full tank of gas and have the same variables too such as average MPH on high way and city streets.
Keep trying though!!!! Great start! I hope this kid gets a grant!
ChuckL,
You mean like the Chevy Volt?
That’s great, but hope he doesn’t get t-boned! If he’s lucky the car will be slagged by acid and not him along with it.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.wenxuecity.com%2Fmessages%2F200810%2Fnews-gb2312-719207.html
Translated Chinese car link
cool. what do you do with lead-acid batteries once they’re spent? bury them? hmmm.
This is a nice project, but nothing revolutionary. It’s been done hundreds of times before.
I take issue with the idea put forth that this is “highway ready”; the top speed is, after all, only 45MPH. On any highway around here you will get run over if you are going less than 65MPH and really ought to be able to sustain 75MPH to go with the flow of traffic.
Bradley GT II’s (VW Bug kit cars) could have been ordered as an EV kit vehicle back in the 70’s. There are a couple origional EV ones floating around.
I agree that lead acid batteries were a mistake, he should have done more homework. i.e. LiFePO (better for environment and also better performance)…