My name is Chris Robison, and I’ve created this site to document a project I’m working on, to convert a 1999 Isuzu Hombre pickup truck to run exclusively on rechargeable batteries.I’ll be posting articles about progress on the project in the weblog, as well as random things I’m thinking about, mostly related to this project and other EV stuff I’m doing. Some of what appears in the weblog will then be reproduced on permanent pages like this one, for future reference.

A different idea

Unlike most folks in the minitruck scene, I’m not interested in doing a V8 swap or “slamming” my truck (though I think this stuff is pretty cool). The modification I have in mind is perhaps a bit more eccentric; I intend to replace the stock 4-cylinder engine with an electric motor. A big electric motor.

As you can imagine, in this process I’ll be changing much of the remainder of the truck’s parts and systems to support this modification. Gone will be anything related to the internal combustion engine, including the fuel tank, exhaust system, radiator and more. Added instead will be the motor, battery racks to hold the truck’s new form of energy storage, and many incidental additions necessary to make the vehicle complete.

Implementation

The conversion of “normal” gasoline powered cars into electric vehicles (”EVs”) is not unique or new — people have been doing this for decades and today, the practice is growing in popularity among folks who are beginning to realize the value and benefits of clean, quiet, and convenient transportation. However, the hobbyist conversion of a vehicle to electric power tends to be done using some well-tested techniques from which I will be deviating to some degree in this project.

Because of this, I expect to run into snags and difficulties not usually experienced in converting a vehicle to electric power. And although I’ve been involved with four other successful EV conversions to date, this will be the first I’ve built for myself, and the first I’ll have had the major part in designing. I don’t expect the process will be easy, but either way the adventure will be documented here.

My background

What kinds of people get into building EVs? The field is pretty broad, from wage-earners to engineers, high-school kids to retirees, librarians to ranchers to computer network administrators. I’m a thirty-year-old software programmer living in Austin, Texas and I have been interested in the idea of electric vehicles for a long time.

Many years ago when I was a kid, I saw one of my neighbors carrying a radio-controlled car. It was larger than any car I’d played with up to that point, with its knobbed tires, angular body and huge wing on the back. When he set it in the grass and started it up, I was amazed. What I saw broke a preconceived notion I’d had. Unlike the little D-cell powered cars I was familiar with which would scoot along on smooth pavement at maybe a couple feet per second, this one leaped to life and flew across the grass and the road, navigating bumps and flying off curbs with ease on its oil-filled shocks. It would skid, drift and lay rubber. It wasn’t a soulless, gutless mockery of a car — it was every bit as cool as the type of real car it resembled, only smaller. Though I didn’t think of it this way at the time, a seed of an idea was planted in my head — “electric” doesn’t necessarily mean slow and boring.

Fast forward a few years to high school. My friends and I enjoyed playing various role-playing games, one of them called Car Wars, your typical Road-Warrior type theme where you load up a car with weapons and roll dice to see how well it does, pitting heavy armor and laser weapons against spikedroppers, flamethrowers and machine guns. What I found really great was the inclusion of electric powerplants in the game, and modifications like capacitors for short emergency bursts of severe, motor-damaging power. There was something really appealing about that, which would sit in the back of my mind until much later.

I started pursuing electric vehicles in earnest several years ago when I joined AustinEV, our local chapter of the Electric Auto Association. After assisting with the conversion of a 1998 Ford Ranger, a 1987 Toyota MR2, and a 1985 Jeep Cherokee, I knew I was hooked. From my experience with the [extremely powerful] MR2 and seeing first hand some of the legendary vehicles in the NEDRA drag racing scene at the annual Nationals in Woodburn Oregon, I also knew that if I am going to do this, I am going to build something fast.