[ausev] New electric car conversion business in Texas?

[Aaron Choate]

I would be glad to contribute to such an effort both through the time that I
already volunteer in my efforts with AustinEV and through the business that
I am trying to get rolling.  If the local community wants to document and
support some common, open designs, that makes life MUCH easier on people who
want to get things out there.  While, to be honest, I would like to make a
living (or at least supplement one), my personal goal in all of this is to
get EVs on OUR roads in OUR town.  It is heartening to see them being
developed in California and such.  However, they could be on the roads HERE
so easily.  If it takes starting a business to support the effort... So be
it.

I think that what I am personally working on would complement something like
this quite well, particularly for those people who want to do something that
doesn't fit into the mold or don't want to do it themselves.  I DO want to
do conversions for people who don't want to do them for themselves and that
is what I will be doing.  However, I think there are a bunch of motivated
people just itching to do it themselves if they had some support.  The more
we can do through AustinEV to support that, the better!  That's what this
group is here for.  That's why we started doing the open garages.  We are
growing in membership AND expertise.  So now, perhaps it is time to do
more?  Perhaps this could be a topic for discussion this Saturday?  I have
calls in to two of the branch libraries for meeting space and am awaiting
calls back.  So I still don't know the exact time or place, but we are
scheduled to meet for an hour and a half or so SOMEWHERE between 9 and 1 on
THIS Saturday.

Cheers,

Aaron Choate

On 5/8/07, rah at h-consulting.com <rah at h-consulting.com> wrote:
>
> All,
>
> I believe that it's rough going to make a profitable business doing
> full out conversions, but that there is plenty of room to make some $
> supporting local conversions (welding, machine work, installation, etc).
>
> How would people feel about starting a community "open source" car
> conversion project?  If we can settle on a small set of gliders and
> drive trains then this would allow an a wide range of people to
> contribute to the design.  Once the design was proven, people could
> pay local mechanics and EV enthusiasts to do much of the work.  Since
> the design is known, the budget and work would be predictable.
>
> For example, I'm trying to make it much easier for someone to follow
> in my RAV4 conversion with the RAVolt blog.  Ideally, someone else
> will convert a RAV4 and update my designs.
>
> This approach overcomes the liability issues of selling conversions
> because the car owner is the lead builder.  It also keeps the costs
> low and predictable.  We'll also be able to iterate on the design to
> make incremental improvements.
>
> Thoughts?  Comments?  Flames?
>
> Rob (RAVolt.com, EVAlbum 995)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AusEV mailing list
> AusEV at austinev.org
> http://www.austinev.org/mailman/listinfo/ausev
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.austinev.org/pipermail/ausev/attachments/20070508/c8b2c9ce/attachment.html