Build Your Own Electric Vehicle

List Price: $29.95

Amazon.com's Price: $19.77

You Save: $10.18 (34%)
as of 03/11/2010 16:43 EST

Used Price: $18.00
Third Party New Price: $15.76

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 629.2293
EAN: 9780071543736
Edition: 2
ISBN: 0071543732
Label: McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 327
Publication Date: September 23, 2008
Publisher: McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics
Studio: McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics

Features:

ISBN13: 9780071543736
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Related Items:

Alternate Versions: Click to Display

Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display

Editorial Review:

Product Description:

Go Green-Go Electric! Faster, Cheaper, More Reliable While Saving Energy and the Environment

This new, updated edition of Build Your Own Electric Vehicle contains everything that made the first edition so popular while adding all the technological advances and new parts that are readily available on the market today.

Build Your Own Electric Vehicle gets on the expressway to a green, ecologically sound, cost-effective way that even can look cool, too!

This comprehensive how-to goes through the process of transforming an internal combustion engine vehicle to electric or even building an EV from scratch for as much or even cheaper than purchasing a traditional car. The book describes each component in detail---motor, battery, controller, charger, and chassis---and provides step-by-step instructions on how to put them all together.

Build Your Own Electric Vehicle, Second Edition, covers:

EV vs. Combustible Engine Overview
Environmental and Energy Savings
EV Evolution since the First Electric Car
Current Purchase and Conversion Costs
Chassis and Design
Today's Best Motors
Battery Discharging/Charging Styles
Electrical Systems
Licensing and Insurance Issues
Driving
Maintenance
Related Clubs and Associations
Additional Resources

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Poorly edited, but convincing and comprehensive...
I picked up this book because I was curious. I am a car guy who loves working on his cars, and loves motor sports, especially dirt track racing. I am probably not the target audience for this book.

Still, my thinking on ecology has been seriously challenged by my Church (I am Catholic, and Vatican City State is the world's first carbon neutral country, and the Pope has been adamant about our duty to be good stewards of the planet). This has challenged my thinking. Also, the national security implications of our addiction to foreign oil has also challenged my thinking. I have decided it is time to begin the process of weaning myself and my family off of fossil fuels. After composting and planting a garden, making the house more energy efficient, and adopting a generally more green lifestyle, this is the next step.

I dug into this book, and loved much of it. However, it is in desperate need of a competent editor, and may be a little difficult to wade through as a result, but the content is excellent and is there for you if you are willing to dig a bit.

Let me address the strengths of this excellent book first:

1) The section on the history of the electric car, its technology, and its strengths and weaknesses is comprehensive and very convincing. I was somewhat skeptical at first but after reading this book I am convinced that a) electric cars are the wave of the future, b) my concerns about them were largely misplaced, c) it is probably my patriotic duty to drive one, both because I love the US and support Israel, and d) the environment, and our pocketbooks, NEED us to move away from the internal combustion engine.

2) The mathematical sections, while difficult to wade through and in desperate need of a good educator/editor to make the material more understandable, are actually quite strong if you really stick to them. However, there is so much help out there on line now that you really don't need to do any of these mathematical formulations. Kits for conversion are now commercially available and there are experts out there willing to answer questions for free. This book needed an editor to keep reminding the authors to "keep it simple, stupid."

3) This topic is just fascinating, and it would be difficult for any remotely competent author to mess it up.

4) Despite what you may think about complexity, EV's are actually REALLY simple and elegant, and you are not being ... Read More

Rating:

- Build Your Own Electric Vehicle
D.C. electric cars only get about 40 miles on average per charge. This book still promotes the D.C. electric car.
It has no new noteworthy info on how to get down the road in an A.C. induction multi phase motored car. No gains in the new edition compared to the old. New cover same old story.

Rating:

- Great but could have been better
Much is used from the first edition. I have noticed typos, which seems strange but they don't seem to be too critical. This book is really great for learning how to do a conversion. Don't expect too many details on specific how-to topics like battery ventilation or component mounting; of course you should have the ability to be creative in those somewhat non-critical areas. This is a book where a picture is worth a thousand words and I think color photos would have been a nice touch when looking at engine bays. Overall its great to have updated info over the first edition, yet it is still limited to lower-end hobbyist conversions.

Rating:

- practical environmentalism
This is a great book for anyone who truly cares about taking environmentalism beyon the "I recycle" stage.Or for those taht can't imagine themselves taking a larger role in protecting the planet. Some basic automotive knowledge is helpful but with that this ia a doable project. It is easy to understand and a great advocacy manual for practical solutions to environmental issues

Rating:

- Some real nuggets hidden among less valuable old junk
The first edition of this book was written in 1993 by Bob Brant alone. This second edition, updated in 2008 apparently by Seth Leitman alone, adds a lot of good information. The trouble is, much of the information still dates from 1993, and there is little to show what is new and what is old. So you have to mine a little bit to find the valuable nuggets hidden among the less valuable old junk.

Skimming through the book is the best way to do that. I've only read about 40% of the book, and I'll probably never read any of the remaining 60%. But that 40% has a lot of good information in it. Much of that good information, surprisingly, appears to be from 1993. Some things have changed in the past 16 years. But not, in the electric car conversion world at least, a whole lot.

I'm not a fan of the writing style in the book. For my taste, there were too many "shout outs" to people like Paul Little or Jim Harris for their "great" conversions, especially their "magic boxes" (just junction boxes for wiring). Too many "!"s and too much boosting of the benefits of electric cars. And too much from 1993 that should never have been kept in this new edition.

Still, compared to its competition, this book has taken over top spot, in my mind. Convert It! needs its own makeover to keep up. The rest of the field lags well behind.