A Honda Civic With no Gas Tank (Video)

It took Dr. Adam Blankespoor two years and $14,000 to convert his 1996 Honda Civic into an all-electric plug-in vehicle. He's an automotive engineer and researcher, but if he can do it, you can probably follow in his footsteps and create your own electric vehicle if you are so inclined. He talks about a 45 mile range, with 30 miles as a practical limit. That's not competitive with the Tesla S, but there's also a massive price difference to consider. This is another person Slashdot met at the Ann Arbor Maker Faire. If you want to see what kinds of electric vehicles other have made, possibly for inspiration, the Electric Vehicle Photo Album is a good place to start. And if you want information on how to build your own electric car, using "electric car conversion" as your Google search term will put you on the track of more electric car information than you can shake a Tesla Coil at.

Comments

An all electric car?!?

[jrmcc]

SHOCKING!

Practical?

[mhajicek]

$14000 buys an awful lot of gas.

Re:Practical?

[afidel]

Since over 50% of US electrical production is from coal it's not like an electrical vehicle produces zero CO2, in fact full lifecycle analysis shows a modern high efficiency non-hybrid may produce the same CO2 as a hybrid.

Re:Practical?

[amiga3D]

They're you go, bringing facts to the argument again.

Re:Practical?

[lobiusmoop]

Lighten up AC. It's the guy's _hobby_, it's not meant to be especially practical, you know? (great fun though)

Re:Practical?

[vlm]

There's a guy locally who did about the same thing for about a fifth that. To a first approximation, something made out of used parts with 10 times the performance of a golf cart should only cost about 10 times as much as a used golf cart. His first conversion project was, literally, take the guts of a used $2000 large electric forklift and put the guts into an econobox with a blown engine. His first upgrade was to a real VFD instead of forklift control.

I suspect the guy is suffering from hobby-economics. So I built me a little carpentry project this summer using $100 of wood and a new $500 saw... Is that a $100 project? Well, no, my bank account is $600 lower, it must be more than $100. Is that a $600 project? Well, no, I only spent $600 for a project AND a slightly used saw so assuming the saw is worth more than $1 the project must be worth less than $600.

Re:Practical?

[Joce640k]

Sure, but paying somebody else to do it for you is like using Windows instead of Linux.

Re:Practical?

[afidel]

Considering emissions on automobiles have been reduced by 99+% (CO, NOx, HC) since the 1970's but SO2 and NOx from power plants have only been reduced by 70% and 60% over the same time period it's actually proven to be easier to do it for cars in the real world =)

Re:Practical?

[jenningsthecat]

You should consider the $14000 + the cost of the original honda civic as the total cost of the finished vehicle. Then compare that cost to a similar quality gas guzzler. The real savings will be found in the difference between those two prices, not in the original cost of the conversion.

When doing a cost analysis, don't forget to deduct the cost of oil changes, filter replacements, and exhaust system repairs/replacements for the life of the electric car. Discount the cost of brake jobs as well, if the car uses regenerative braking. In Ontario, Canada, (and possibly other jurisdictions as well), you can also deduct the cost of emissions testing every two years. And then there's the cost difference between fixing the things that typically go wrong with an I/C engine in the course of a decade or so, and fixing the problems that crop up with an electric motor and controller.

As usual, this is a more complex question than it first appears to be.

Re:Practical?

[mcgrew]

"They are you go?"

But anyway, if you're living in Springfield, IL an electric car isn't environmentally friendly; the power comes from coal and natural gas. But if you're in Clinton, IL, your electric car is nuclear powered. If you live by the TVA your car is hydro powered. Fact is, if every car were electric, we'd be burning fewer fossil fuels, even though over half of the cars would be fossil-powered. Now, almost 100% of cars are fossil-powered.

Re:Practical?

[al.caughey]

> this will never get off the ground

That's because it's a car.... not an airplane. Jeez... look who's the smarty-pants now

Son, you're gonna drive me to drinkin'

[fustakrakich]

if you don't stop drivin' that hot rod Lincoln

Re:Wow, I guess.

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

It is geeky and cool. If you don't get that you might be on the wrong website.
Geeky and cool does not mean useful. In fact most of the best geeky and cool things are not useful at all.

e-Fast & Furious?

[CMYKjunkie]

If it's a '96 Civic with "mods," the de rigeur for that means a 4ft tall wing, garish paint, and a fart-cannon exhaust.

Re:Wow, I guess.

[CMYKjunkie]

Same reason nerds here would hot-rod their PCs or other electronics: the hobbyist does it for passion, not practicality! What these people learn - at their own expense - can inspire and/or educate others.

Re:Street Legal??

[Anaerin]

Oh boy, here we go.

what about the stuff inside and possible outcomes if, say, it gets involved in a serious accident?

Crumple zones and chassis structure are not touched. In a low-speed collision, nothing more happens. In a high-speed collision, there may be some leaking of electrolyte (The same way the lead-acid battery in your ICE car can leak), but there will be no dangerous inflammable liquids spilling around. Electrically, the battery pack is automatically isolated via inertia switch and circuit breakers and isolating fuses, along with contactors which separate on 12v power loss.

Will the car electrocute the jaws of life operator?

No. In an accident, the system is automatically isolated, as noted above. In addition, the power-carrying cables from front to back run along the underside of the vehicle, usually along the old exhaust tunnel, keeping them far away from anywhere emergency services may be operating.

What if it hits an oil tanker?

Oil gets spilled. Some metalwork gets crumpled.

What if it gets involved in a collision with other homemade electric cars?

Some metalwork gets crumpled.

NYTimes reviews Tesla -

[Darth Snowshoe]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/automobiles/autoreviews/one-big-step-for-tesla-one-giant-leap-for-evs.html?hp

Hey, just incidentally the New York Times reviewed the Tesla Model S today. There seems to be a lot of electric vehicle haterz on Slashdot lately, I don't get why, but if you're legitimately interested in the tech, rather than just Detroit astroturf, the NYTimes review is certainly worth a read.

"Put simply, the automobile has not undergone a fundamental change in design or use since Henry Ford rolled out the Model T more than a century ago. At least that’s what I thought until I spent a week with the Tesla Model S."

Re:Wow, I guess.

[fahrbot-bot]

It is geeky and cool. If you don't get that you might be on the wrong website. Geeky and cool does not mean useful. In fact most of the best geeky and cool things are not useful at all.

I now know how to describe my penis - thanks.

Re:Wow, I guess.

[mblase]

I don't understand why this is a story at all.

Did you already forget what site you're on?

Re:OT: where do I turn in geek badge?

[EmagGeek]

It's "Slashdot" represented in 7-bit ASCII, LSB on top and MSB on the bottom of each character.

Re:Citing error

[lkcl]

Dealing with stall currents is tough on EV design.

most people don't know what stall currents are. several wikifascists took issue with improvements to the "wheel hub motor" wikipedia page, recently, when facts were presented that showed that the efficiency of EV motors is far, far worse at low RPMs than any ICE vehicle ever could be.

for those people not familiar with "stall currents", stall conditions for an electric motor is when it is operating at or just above 0 RPM (i.e. stall). not only is the motor not moving (so there's not enough air circulation), but the electric wire, as an inductor, is capable of absorbing far more current. that just means more heat is produced, and that the efficiency is lower. a typical EV motor can be only 12 to 15% efficient (!!) at its lower RPMs! avoiding this worst-case situation is flat-out impossible with a Direct-Drive (Wheel Hub) motor. for a bicycle that doesn't matter so much (you can always pedal), but for a car it's a serious problem.

this is why VW's XL1 concept car has a *seven* speed automatic gearbox. electric motors have to be kept in their optimal efficiency band, just like an ICE does. it's complicated! much more complicated.

Transmission?

[certsoft]

Why does it have a 5 speed manual transmission? I thought that one of the advantages of electric motors was the low-end torque, eliminating the need for gear shifting.

Imports from Canada

[Roger W Moore]

US electricity production is 100% produced from domestic sources, none of it from imported sources.

Really? When did you surrender and become part of Canada then?

Re:car conversion: "don't start from here"

[YrWrstNtmr]

The Smart Four Two is safer in a crash than any SUV ever made, but a lot of people dont have the IQ to realize that.

I suggest you go to youtube and watch some of the Smart crash test videos. Against larger cars, the Smart usually gets punted quite far.
If everyone drove something that size, sure. But mass does matter.

Re:Huge waste of money

[gmhowell]

So you're complaining about wasting time...on slashdot?!

There's a difference between wasting my time and wasting my employer's time.