An Indianapolis man has built his own electric car, US television station WRTV reported recently. Patrick Roth adapted his Ford Escort to run on electricity alone after conceiving the idea while running his hybrid Lexus.
He said; “I found myself constantly trying to trick the car to run on the electric motor as much as possible, which got me thinking,” Roth said. “Why not just have a second car that’s purely electric?”
After discovering that many of the electric cars available on the market come with a sizeable price tag, Mr Roth decided to try the conversion to electric himself.
Roth explained that he checked with his insurance company and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and found that his converted Escort is legal.
While adapting cars to run on high doses of biofuel is fairly common place, DIY electric cars are not. But Patrick Roth told the broadcaster:”If I can do it with no mechanical ability and no engineering degree, no electrician’s degree, then certainly anyone else can do it with basic skills.”
The conversion took Roth around ten weeks while the car bought especially to convert cost him a total of $13,000 including the cost of the adaptations. Roth claims the car now costs him the equivalent of just 75 cents a gallon to run.
