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Time for Open Source Community EV's to Be Made. Anybody want to do something like that?
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this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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do they make kit cars that are hybrids or electrics or have fancy safety features?
because i was looking at a real fancy lotus for like six grand a few years ago, but it was just an ice manual. i've built those before, those are easy. i do not know all these fancy new cars with regenerative braking and shit.
There are "electric truck" conversion books from the 1970s. (Only trucks as they used lead acid batteries, which are still extremely heavy for useful amounts of stored energy.) This indicates it is not extremely complex, though possibly still very complex. (My reason for this assessment is from reading a few of them, but never implementing any of it.)
As for a detailed answer on the rest: I have no idea.
regenerative braking is literally just a power supply to get the spinning energy of the wheel back to the battery. in concept, electric cars are way simpler than ice, the gizmos they put in modern cars make them look more complex.
Yeah but I ain't built an electric nor a hybrid and I ain't programmed one neither. I built an ice engine before and those are simple. Fun too. I figure the programming is the hard part.
I don't want a car without the fancy safety features like checking your blind spot sensor or the backup camera or the dash cam or the adaptive cruise. For one, they lower your insurance rates.
you first need something that moves.
You can retrofit electric drivetrains to basically any car but it’s not cheap and takes a decent amount of research and expertise in fabrication
i wonder how much more practical it would be to do this kind of stuff if we standardized cars under an open platform.
Likely a lot. I posted elsewhere, but there were books on this in the 1970's.
where did you post it?
Elsewhere in this thread. Anyway, here is what I had said:
Anyway, here is a title to look for, from 2011, " The electric vehicle conversion handbook : how to convert cars, trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles : includes EV components, kits, and project vehicles" by Warner, Mark, ISBN: 9781557885685 1557885680.
2021's "Convert It!: A simple step-by-step guide for converting any classic car into an electric vehicle." by Ron Toms, ASIN B093CH8HR7.
Neither are from the 1970s, but both are likely more useful anyway. There are also likely others that I cannot immediately find. I have read neither, yet.