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
@Mark
That car was already like that when he bought it. The previous owner gave the car its look.
EVs have existed for a long time, and obviously the tech exists to make these cars. However, relying on these inefficient technologies will drive technological innovation, which is why companies are spending millions of dollars on R&D. It has nothing to do with oil or whatnot, it just has to do with technological development.
This student shows initiative and drive; however 30 minutes of reading & research on the Internet will show you the parts required and how to build a 60+mph all electric vehicle conversion. Some are easier to convert than others, but once you mate the electric motor to the transmission the rest isn’t too complicated. The author writes this story as though it’s ground-breaking material. Sorry, it isn’t.
Hey ChuckL: it already has been done: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Transportation/1979-07-01/An-Amazing-75-MPG-Hybrid-Electic-Car.aspx
[...] 17-year old converted his car into an electric car over the summer capable of going 40 miles. Via Gas2: “This fall, Texas teenager Lucas Laborde will be driving to school in an electric car he [...]
45 MPH top speed does not make it a highway ready EV. An old 70’s kit car on a VW Beetle frame that has been converted to run on nearly 700 lbs of batteries is not innovative. A 3YO Corolla for $8500 would be a better choice.
Such a smart little critter! Not… The rest of us did this years ago. My conversion website has seen visitors from 8-16 timezones per day for years. Visit http://www.evsupersite.net and follow the conversion diary link. By the time that I started my EV projects many others had gone before. I just did a better job of spreading the information around (free). Check out DailyGrist online ezine for my 5 day article on electric vehicle commuting.
Ken
So some nerd sticks a bunch of batteries into a cheesy looking kit car that could barely chug along on the freeway. I’ve seen kids do full restorations on cars in highschool. This isnt even half as impressive.
This is pretty neat, but I’d hardly call this “putting manufacturers to shame”. Designing a car for sale and use on roads is not an easy task. It costs $Billions to go from “idea for a car” to “car on the road”. And pretty much NONE of the resulting cars have “minor” problems like the one mentioned here (doors won’t close because the frame is twisted from the weight of the car’s internal parts).
For his sake, I hope this kid never plows this car into a tree or another vehicle. It’s going to resemble a giant acid-filled sausage bursting, and it won’t be pretty.
Kudos to Luke, great project, great ingenuity. Wish I had one of these for back and forth to school back then.
To the author - 45mph is not “highway-ready”