tHE EV GT
What's better than one DIY electric vehicle? Two DIY electric vehicles!
Not long into building the first project, and completely conscious of the fact that it still had a long way to go, I started thinking about a second one. Since I was building a really silly car - a retro convertible - I figured I might want something marginally more sensible for winter: a retro GT. Still a two seater, but perhaps a little warmer. Plus there is the advantage that if you have two cars, you can always drive one while you're fixing/upgrading the other.
So, without anywhere to store it, or any time to work on it, I jumped back into the market and bought another Z3. Now, there is some method in this madness. Second hand car prices were up, and I'd seen multiple articles singing the praises of the Z3 as an investment. "Now's the time to buy!" they said, so I did, before prices got out of hand.
This proved to be both wise and stupid all at the same time. Stupid because the first car I bought turned out to be rotten as a pear and had to be scrapped, but not before I had made all my money back selling off the engine, exhaust and some of the body panels. And stupid because it was three years after buying the second base car that I finally got started on this project. However, the second base car was entirely rust free, and has indeed risen in value, so there was some foresight there.
The plan is similar to the first car: replace the combustion engine with electric power, then replace the steel body panels with a retro-styled (and somewhat customised) fibreglass bodykit, in order to create something like the renders I’ve had AI do for me.
What I’ve Learned
The EV technology market moves incredibly quickly, as does the market for second hand parts.
For example, when I built my first car I spent £800 on a battery pack rated at roughly eight kilowatt hours (kWh) - enough for a range of around 24 miles. That’s £100 per kWh. I upgraded this with a second pack - almost the same size - just two years later. This offered 12 kWh and also cost me £800. Now the price had dropped to £75 per kWh.
Two years later I am looking at battery packs again, and now I am being offered 32 kWh for under £700, a price per kWh closer to £20.
