Montrealer turns his Mazda into an electric car
Top speed isn’t bad, but range limited by reliance on conventional batteries
Like many people, Michael DeVuyst dreamed of having an electric car, but was put off by the high price.
Unlike most people, DeVuyst decided to take matters into his own hands by converting a gas-powered vehicle into a fully electric car — starting when he was 18 years old.
Seven years and many hundreds of hours of tinkering later, DeVuyst became the proud owner this summer of a street-legal, fully electric, 1990 Mazda Miata MX-5 convertible with the official green licence plate (with green numbers) granted to owners of electric or hybrid plug-in vehicles in Quebec.
“When the hood is open, people walking by (who see a rack of batteries where an engine should be) say: ‘That doesn’t look like it should,’ ” said DeVuyst, 25, who recently found a job at Lockheed Martin in Montreal disassembling and repairing multi-million-dollar commercial jet engines after completing a three-year degree in aeronautical maintenance.
“Then they say: ‘Wow,’ and ‘Good job.’ It’s nice. I’m kind of proud I finally finished it,” he said Friday from his home in Greenfield Park. “It doesn’t have a spectacular range, but upgrades will come and I look forward to embracing the future of what cars should be.”
As the city winds down from hosting the Formula E electric car race this weekend, featuring the pinnacle of electric-car technology funded by the gargantuan budgets of Formula One and its global sponsors, DeVuyst stands as an example of what someone on the opposite end of the e-car revolution spectrum, with a limited budget, a small home garage and a tank-full of passion and determination, can achieve.
He came upon the idea in 2010 as a high school senior living in Virginia, near Washington, D.C., while watching the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car that chronicled the rise and fall of electric vehicles in the United States in the 1990s.
The only fully electric lithiumion powered car on the market at the time was the $110,000 (U.S.) Tesla Roadster. DeVuyst opted instead for a used Miata for under $3,000, and promptly ripped out the engine. This turned out to be a premature decision, because soon after he moved to the Montreal area to live with his father and go to school. He had to tow the car in a trailer for 1,000 kilometres.
With little in the way of printed information, DeVuyst turned to
YouTube videos and online pictures of conversions to show him the way.
He initially wanted to use lithium-ion batteries typically used in laptops and mass-produced electric cars, but couldn’t afford the $10,000 price tag, so he opted for 10 lead-acid batteries similar to those found in gasoline-powered cars, weighing 43 pounds apiece and costing $3,000. He found an electric motor online for $1,800 called the Warp Impulse 9, whose name he suspects was influenced by Star Trek. Most parts were found online in the U.S. He ended up stacking most of the batteries where the engine used to be, and the rest where the gas tank once was. The hardest part was concocting a metal adapter plate (with the aid of a metal worker) and other alterations in order to connect the new direct current motor to the existing transmission.
Then there was wiring, and installing a slew of safety measures required by the Quebec government, which include an automatic cut-off so he can’t drive away while the car is plugged in.
Outside of the satisfaction of success, the main positives are the cost savings and using clean energy, DeVuyst said. The car can be charged on a regular 120-voltage outlet in about five hours at a cost of roughly $2, similar to the price of doing two dryer loads. While his top speed remains a respectable 110 km/h, his acceleration has become “mind-blowingly better” thanks to the direct power the new motor provides to the wheels. The conversion cost close to $10,000 in materials.
His range, however, is only 35 km, which means it’s restricted to close trips to work or for shopping. It runs in the winter (with an electric heater installed to replace the former radiator system), but he figures cold temperatures cut his range by 20 per cent. To his knowledge it is the only converted Miata in Canada.