My Electric Truck Project

These pages are the chronicle of my Electric Truck Conversion Project. I got interested in electric cars after talking to my coworker Jim Miller who was on the Solar Electric Racing Team while he was at school at Cal-Poly. Because I'm an electrical engineer I've always been interested in new technology so I started doing some research on electrical cars. Through the EV mailing list I met John Wayland who kindly invited me to his house to see his electric cars on a trip to Portland last May. On a return trip to Portland last August I went to the NEDRA Electric Drag Races and saw many other great electric car conversions. I decided that I wanted to do my own electric car conversion because it seemed like a cool technical project and also something I could do to help the enviroment.
    In the spring of 1998 I bought a 1990 Toyota pickup truck with 130,000 miles on it to be my conversion vehicle. I was inspired by John Wayland and Dick Finley's beautiful 1995 Electric Toyota pickup that they call the Red Beastie. I spent most of the fall setting up my garage as workshop for this project and now I'm finally ready to start my conversion.

Updated May 2003: The truck is finally running! I won't say it's finished because I still have a lot of work to do but it's been running since May of 2002. I have over 3000 miles on it without any major failures! I'll try and fill in some of the details of the project on following webpages. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions. Don't forget the EV mailing list, it's a great resource.

My EV Conversion Chronicles:

New Stuff:
The Electric Motor - Mounting the electric motor.
The Battery Boxes - Mounting the battery boxes and installing the batteries.
The Electronics - Mounting the electronics and electrical stuff.
Wiring - Doing all the wiring, includes complete wiring diagram.
Miscellaneous - All the other work I forgot to mention.
Driving - What's it like to drive an electric truck.
Things To Do - All the stuff I would still like to do on the truck.
Conclusions - Some final thoughts on what I would do different and some costs.

Old Stuff:
 January 1999 - Pulling the gasoline engine out.
 December 1998 - The workshop is ready to go.
August 1998 - Pictures from NEDRA Drags.
May 1998 - Visiting John Wayland in Portland.