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
http://www.evalbum.com/2158
Here is the correct picture and specs. on Luke’s car.
I own an original Bradley GTE (GT2 Electric). Nothing special here. It sounds to me like he just bought a kit and installed it. The vehicle may be rather unsafe, depending on his battery placement, and the type of battery boxes he engineered. The factory GTE’s had a slightly different body to accomodate the batteries (16 6v flooded cells). The 45mph top end is pathetic, unless he’s limited the speed intentionally. My factory GTE has clocked 73 on GPS.
Looks like he’s using 12v batts, if so I doubt the 40 mile range claimed. They dump alot of power quickly, but don’t have the range of 12 8v or 16 6v batts. And, the massive torque has nothing to do with the batt configuration. Electric motors have all their torque as soon as full current is applied, unlike ICEs which have to build up to it.
Ryan - have you ever priced Lithium Polys? It would cost $16,000 for a 96 volt set!! Yeah, I’ve priced them, and Yeah, I’d love to install a set in my GTE. But the increased run time isn’t worth it. Nickel Metal Hydrides MIGHT be worth the extra cost for the increase in range and weight reduction.
Funny that they didn’t even take a new picture of the car, that pic is from the BradlyGT2 website, when Steve still owned it:
http://bradleygt2.com/gallery/thumbs.php3?owner_id=3
Jeff,
Please follow the link above your post. The car will do 65 and yes!!!! it has a 35+ range. The batteries are securely placed and no, it’s not dangerous or I would not let him drive it. Kudos to you for getting a factory GT2 electric. Yes, it was a kit but a 16 year old installed it. It would be really cool if we could all go out and buy a ready made electric car like you did. Give Luke some credit instead of knocking his car. We did not supply the picture…. I don’t know why the author of the article, which was written by David Uhler of the San Antonio Express News( no credit given might I add)did not request a picture of the actual car.
It’s people like you with a ” that won’t work” “you did it wrong” “mine’s faster than your’s”,That ruin it for the next generation. How about “Great job kid” If only more young people took the time to try to reduce the size of the carbon footprint our generation is leaving, they might save the planet!
I don’t know who Rick, I sure haven’t seen in print where did anything like this. It does seem like a big deal to me!
Luke is not the problem with the story it is the author.This person should have done their research.Bradley made about 50 electric GT2 most were kits with parts made by GE,96 volt systems. Bradley also made a few complete ready to drive GTE”S as they were called. Range was from 40 to almost 100 miles if you drive careful top speed was about 75 mph. I know this because I own a Bradley GTE all original parts.
Great job Kiddos!
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Congratulations on a beautiful conversion. One thing that automakers are working on is an electric car that travels at normal highway speeds in excess of 80 mph and the car engine assembly.
[...] Texas Teen Buys Car Off eBay, Makes It Electric [...]
The look of that car reminds me of an electric Corvette conversion that preciously had a 740 hp V8 by an owner previously preoccupied with 1/4 mile times, who probably now focuses on travel range.
My recent survey of 50 home brew conversions found the average range to be about 35 miles, which the Bradley beats.