Sometimes it’s helpful to take a step back, stop obliviously patting yourself on the back and take a look at what you’re really doing and how it compares to what other folks are doing. Helps keep you from getting a swelled head unless you really deserve it.

I like to think of what I’m doing as building a sort of hotrod pickup truck. Or as first suggested back in 1998 by the GhiaMonster’s Steve Marks, a “wattrod”. Although a lot of the techniques involved are unique to a high-performance vehicle with an electric powerplant, most of the real work is typical hotrod stuff. Identify the stock parts designed for fabrication economy and driver comfort, which will fail under extreme stress, and replace them with stronger and more expensive parts that won’t. As much as I’d like to think I’m doing something unique, the reality is that most of this is stuff people have been doing for decades.

So let’s pick a standard with which to compare my efforts here. Being no expert at all and having no real insights as to what qualities such a standard should possess, I’ll pick an S-10 project I randomly stumbled on via Google. Now this project may or may not be exemplary of the highest levels of the art; it might be fairly average in the scale of what folks have done to their cars in the name of quick acceleration and high style — I honestly don’t know. But to someone with a background as non-automotive as mine, who only a few years ago found a high sense of accomplishment in changing my own motor oil, a project like this puts this fellow among the pantheon of car-hacking gods. Looking at what he started with and how it finished, one cannot be unimpressed. Merely on the basis of the effort and skill involved in its construction, whether you agree with its aesthetics or not, this is one sweet vehicle. Will the Ohmbre be this awesome?

The short answer is “Um … Sure.”

The more detailed answer we’ll explore here is “Absolutely not, for the following reasons.” My honed HTML coding skills will now impress you with some more bullets.

• Talent. I don’t want to dwell on this, but we need to get it out of the way. This guy has it. If I attempt my own paint job for example, the truck will invariably end up bar-coded in drips and runs, perhaps some in paint colors I don’t even have. It’s only a question of the viewing distance from which the result would look respectable, and I’m not betting on anything closer than twenty feet.
• Design goals. This at least sounds a little more legitimate, but may in fact be a bargain with mediocrity. I’ve chosen to make the Ohmbre into a street/strip high-performance demonstration vehicle, which will involve a mixture of features that don’t entirely fit in the domain of racing. Notice here the tubs for the wheels and rear axle. Also note how the fuel cell is placed behind them in the bed. All together, this means that the vehicle is no longer useful as a truck — it’s now a full-blooded two-seat dragster in the shape of a truck. My goals include retaining the bed and the use of the truck to haul large items, so this level of modification will not be a possibility for me.
• EV-specific compromises. The fact that this vehicle will be battery powered introduces a major source of design compromise, especially given that this will be a converted gasoline-powered vehicle, not one designed entirely to be electric. Fitting batteries is a task that requires locating space for them. Rectangular space, the sort that’s really hard to find in quantity within the rounded envelopes of today’s cars and trucks. And a high-performance vehicle like mine which is to store a large quantity of batteries, obviously needs as much space as I can find. One of the reasons pickup trucks make ideal conversion platforms is the high availability of such space between the frame rails under the bed. Forward of the rear axle, batteries can be stored in boxes mounted to either side of the driveshaft. So, the S-10 is a particularly good platform since its frame is spaced wide — wider than the Ford Ranger, for example. This means however that modifications like this narrowed frame, built to provide more width under the bed for huge drag tires, will not be an option. If my tires are to be any wider than the wheel wells, they will have to stick out, or I will have to flare the sides of the bed.

So there are some limitations — some naturally occurring and some arbitrarily self-imposed. Still, my primary goal is to develop a vehicle that will be somewhat useful in light duty, which I will enjoy driving, and which will provide a “test bed” for further developments and an effective and positive conversation piece with which to introduce to others the possibilities of minimally-polluting transportation. And I think I’ve got a better than average shot at pulling that off.