How do I get an electric car?

This post is largely a braindump of all of the research I've been doing over the last several months (actually almost 6 months) trying to figure out for myself how I could get an electric car built. There are really 3 different ways to get in to an electric car:
1. Build your own electric car (either from the ground up or converting a gasoline powered car to electricity)
2. Buy an electric car already manufactured/converted
3. Pay someone else to convert a car to electric for you


The route that most people go, building their own electric car, really only works if you have all of the conditions below:

1. Plenty of free time on your hands
2. Good electrical skills, or the desire to learn the skills you don't have
3. Good mechanical skills, or the desire to learn the skills you don't have
4. Someone to teach you all of the tricks of doing a car conversion, or the ability to follow pretty extensive directions from one of several books on the subject, or websites for hours on end.
5. A suitable location and tools for the conversion (sidewalk in front of your condo won't work)

If you do meet all of these conditions then by all means go ahead and do your own conversion. There are many great resources for doing conversions including: Convert It by Michael Brown and Build Your Own Electric Car by Bob Brandt. Both are must have books if you are doing your own conversion, are just interested in how conversions are done, or have bought an already converted car or are having someone else convert a car for you. Build Your Own Electric Car was my favorite, having a lot of great electromotive theory and great graphs showing the relationships between battery capacity and temperature and type of battery. There are some good sites on do-it yourself conversions as well. Some simple Google searches should be all you need to find them.

Option #2: Buy an electric car is probably the fastest way to get your hands on a car. However, it is probably also the most expensive. All of the hype about the Tesla Car is warranted, it is a pretty amazing car, however, it is also a pretty pricey car at $100k. Other places to look for cars is on Ebay. They occasionally will auction off S10's or Ford Ranger OEM trucks that were built by subcontractors of Ford and GM back in the late 90's or early 2000. These vehicles run in the $15-$25k range and are based on NiMh or Lead Acid. They are AC systems so some more advanced electronics knowledge is needed to maintain and work on them, but they are more efficient and generally more reliable than do-it-yourself conversions.

On the subject of do-it-yourself conversions the best place to buy one of those is on the EV Tradin' Post where new cars are usually added every several days or so. The selection is limited, but you might just get lucky and find what you are looking for.

Option #3 Is the route I'm going for my electric car. I did a lot of research online, talked with some people in the local Electric Car Users Group here in Seattle (SEVA) and got some recommendations on who to talk to locally that might be interested in converting a car for me. This route is usually cheaper than buying a commercial conversion, but also more expensive than buying a conversion that someone else has already done.

My next post will be on how I went about selecting someone to do my conversion and the process of selecting the vehicle to convert, as well as an update on the progress of my conversion.