Batteries For Electric Car Conversion

The heart of any electric car conversion is the batteries. Without the batteries your car or truck isn’t going to go anywhere.

It’s important to find the right kind of batteries though. You are going to need a type of battery called a deep cycle battery. What this means is that the battery is designed to be discharged almost completely and it will continue to hold charge when you recharge it. If you don’t get this type of battery then after the first couple of charges with your electric car the batteries are going to stop working. So make sure you get 12 volt deep cycle batteries.

There are several sources where you can find these batteries for free. One of them is your local golf course. I used to work at a golf course while I was a teenager and every year or two we would swap the batteries out of the golf carts and replace them with new ones. The old batteries were still good, they were just replaced for routine maintenance. When I was doing my electric car conversion I went around to the local golf courses and managed to pick up 20 or so 12 volt deep cycle batteries. They still have years of life left in them, and if one breaks I have a couple of replacements.

Another source of free batteries are fork lift batteries. These are usually swapped out every five years or so. If you ask around the warehousing district of your nearest city you should be able to find a couple of them. These batteries are great and they are designed to last at least 20 years.

The problem with forklift batteries is that they are quite a bit more bulkier than conventional 12 volt batteries so you will not be able to fit as many in… or you may not be able to fit them in at all. In order to use forklift batteries you’ll need to use quite a large car or you could clear out your trunk and mount them there.

There you have it, what type of batteries you will need to make your electric car conversion. I recommend that you measure the dimensions inside the hood and the trunk so that you know whether you’ll be able to use forklift batteries or whether you have to use regular golf cart batteries. Both types are quite good, but fork lift batteries can store more energy.

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