The EV2 is a vehicle powered only by electrons (also called a “stand alone” electric). Our purpose is to build a car that will give us...between charges...a travel distance of about 6o miles. This distance will allow us to go to work and back...which also includes a stop at the grocery store on the way home. Incidentally, this also allows us NOT to stop at the gas station (except for a coffee or a “Big Gulp”).

In addition to the above, we want the EV2 to operate at freeway speeds, recharge overnight (4-8 hours) and to do this while giving us a very large dose of reliability and consistency.

Our solution for the EV2 leans toward using a light weight vehicle platform that is capable of carrying a significant load...as the battery group weighs a lot (hopefully, this may change in the future). Clearly, the significant weight of the battery group represents the well known “800 lb gorilla in the living room”. We chose to locate this “gorilla” in a single location for ease of maintenance, simplicity, and to forward our determination to compartmentalize function.

In summary, our build philosophy is as follows:

1. SIMPLICITY

2. INEXPENSIVE

3. EASY TO BUILD

4. COMPARTMENTALIZE FUNCTION

5. VERY LITTLE MODIFICATION TO DONOR VEHICLE.

There you have it...except for one thing...which is really the MOST IMPORTANT thing. We want every body in the world (we aren't kidding) to do this. With this in mind, we go out of our way to use common building materials that are available to most people. A lot of our original parts were made out of wood. Wood is a great material...but we relented to duplicating these parts out of aluminum because of the horrified reaction we experienced from the hardcore “car “ guys. Still, wood is good. We recommend it.

With this said, this is what REALLY happened.

Our donor light weight vehicle platform turned out to be 1989 ¼ ton expanded cab Isuzu pickup truck.

This is good. It's light weight, it can carry 4 people (2 adults and 2 children). We uprated the rear suspension to carry the additional battery load.

We preface this commentary with this statement: We're just ordinary people (Yes, we do have more tools than most). In accordance with our “build philosophy”, we stuck with that “NO MODIFY”

criterion No. 5. We do this because cutting metal is difficult for most people. Mounting brackets, however, must be made. Brackets are used to position the various electrical components (motor mounts, etc.). We attempted to design these necessary brackets to fit the form of the truck and to fit the original holes provided by the truck.

Except for the essential EV parts (motor, batteries, etc.), we purposely tried to find all of the building materials and parts from readily available sources (as mentioned before). We used hardware stores, large home remodeling outlets (Lowes, Home Depot, etc.), surplus stores, wrecking yards, and any other place...including the back yard. We won't go into any detail here, except for one example (for which we are most proud). It goes like this: we used 4 inch fans ($5.00 each / surplus store) to exchange the air above the batteries. We needed shrouds for these fans and we're (surprisingly) able to buy them from Lowes. They cost about $3.50 apiece...but Lowes called them “toilet flanges”.

This is a very satisfying project...the creativity is exhilarating... TRY IT YOURSELF ...e-mail us.