Backstory: From gas-powered to electric auto in 36 hours flat
We ride along as entrepreneur Greg Abbott turns a 1978 Triumph Spitfire into a completely clean, zero-emissions electric vehicle. Part 1 of two.
from the March 19, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
Because he wants to make the point that, even though this may sound like rocket science, it isn't. He wants to make this point because he is the owner of a company called Left Coast Electric, and it is his plan to mass-produce conversion kits so that just about anyone can transform any car into an electric vehicle.
To carry out this extreme motor makeover, Gadget needs three basic parts – the electric motor (it's about the size of a breadbox, but heavier), lots of car batteries, and something he designed called "the box." It houses a controller, an electric converter, and the rest of the whatnots.
Gadget has just one problem this morning: The electric motor has not yet arrived from his supplier. He seems unruffled. He's confident that it will come today. Confidence, it turns out, is something Gadget has plenty of.
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Gadget is middle-aged, trim but solidly built. He sports a Vandyke beard and flashes a mischievous grin that gives him the look of a swashbuckler, though he's more adept with a torque wrench than a rapier.
Gadget is like a lot of backyard tinkerers who are trying to solve the nation's energy crisis one volt at a time. As oil prices have boomed, the new wave energy gurus are trying everything from tapping the power of ocean waves to make electricity to using French fry grease to power cars.
None of these technologies on its own will solve the nation's energy ills, of course. But the impending decline of the fossil-fuel age, coupled with the rise of concern about global warming, is leading to a burst of entrepreneurialism, not unlike the early days of the computer revolution.
"Just as Microsoft and Apple came out of garages, the new cars of the future are being made in the same places," says Edwin Black, author of "Internal Combustion."
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