The New Hot Rods

This is the car I’m building. It looks like a 1950s roadster. But underneath, it’s entirely modern. In fact, it’s electric.

My car is what happens when you get a confluence of trends and pressures: what in my parlance, is known as an intersection. A coming together of economic, cultural and technological trends to create a moment. A change. And in this case, a scene.

Nothing new under the sun

People have been building their own electric vehicles for over a century. Some of the earliest cars were electric. Did you know Porsche’s first cars were EVs and hybrids? There have been electric racing series for decades, with the fields populated by enthusiastic amateurs. People I know have been converting cars to electric for thirty years.

But right now, DIY EV conversions are having a bit of a moment. Why?

Price Parity

Firstly, there are the economic incentives. A new EV is expensive. Not, actually, more expensive than a new petrol car if - like the vast majority of people - you buy one on finance. Because the residuals are better on EVs, electric and combustion engined cars hit price parity - in terms of total ownership cost - some time ago. If you can build your own EV at a low cost, then so much the better. Especially if you can charge it at home from solar panels.

The price of EV parts has been tumbling rapidly as more and more come to market, and sadly, get trashed. The accident rate for EVs has been higher, not because electric cars are inherently any more dangerous, but because every EV is a performance car by past standards. Imagine if you took someone who had driven a basic econobox their entire life and stuck them in a supercar. Then without any training, let them out onto congested British roads. Understandably, things go wrong, fast.?

When I started building my EV at the start of the 2020 lockdown, the price per kWh of second hand, high voltage batteries was around ￡100-150. Today if you’re smart, you might pay as little as ￡30. Motors and other parts are similarly available at very accessible prices.

I have friends who have built a usable family EV, with 100 mile plus range and fast charging, for less than ￡4000. Including the base vehicle. I’ve spent a little more, through profligacy and a desire to build something really special: I’m going to own this car for life. But it’s still cheap, for what will be a beautiful, unique sports car.

Skills Sharing

So the economics stack up, but only if you have the skills. And it turns out, a lot of people do.?

Dealing with 400V electrics is dangerous, and should only be attempted by those who understand the risks and how to mitigate them. But the rest of the engineering challenge of building an EV is surprisingly approachable. If you’ve done some basic electrics, computing, or worked on a car before (most people come at their DIY EV projects with at least one of these skill sets), then you can pick up the rest. The web is an incredible skills and knowledge development forum - what it was first designed for. Between forums, wikis, datasheets and YouTube, you can fill an awful lot of gaps in your understanding.

Intersection: The Scene

Together the economics and the accessibility of skills create an opportunity, and that alone might spark something. But what makes a moment like this important is the congregation of people around it. And there is very much a DIY EV ‘scene’. This is what excites me the most.

The level of collaborative innovation happening in the DIY EV scene is amazing. People creating new solutions to problems and sharing them with the rest of the community, who then test, refine, and document them for others to learn from.

I talk about the DIY EV scene as ‘the new hot rods’. Not because it’s about a bunch of boy racers building speed machines (though some of the builds are entertainingly powerful). But because it’s a community of like-minded people, coming together in an opportunity created by a surfeit of cheap technology and accessible skills.

Today, people are building their machines from wrecked Teslas and scrapped Priuses, rather than old Model Ts. But I think the spirit of creativity, collaboration - and a little bit of competition - is the same.?