I am building an electric sports car based on a C5 Corvette. I know I could use some help with finishing the body and a lot of help with the electronics. I contacted the president of the National Electric Drag Race Association (NEDRA http://www.nedra.com ) and priced out the DC drivetrain components. One big challenge will be packaging, mounting and wiring the multiple battery packs required. My prototype will be very similar to the Zombie 222 project http://zombie222.com. Here are the basics of the build: http://www.nedra.com/build.html. Unfortunately the donor car has an automatic transmission and the transmission and rear end are combined on the C5. This requires that some means needs to be devised to control the transmission. Aftermarket transmission controllers are less than $1500 so that is one option. Iām sure there must be some DIY setups that cost significantly less. The second donor car is planned to be a convertible with a manual transmission but I have to work with what I have. The cost to convert a C5 from an automatic to a manual transmission is prohibitively expensive, The eventual plan is to build a business selling cars with a custom tube frame chassis that can accept multiple custom body designs made from carbon fiber.
Anyone interested in this project? At this point I have spent over 18 month so far on the body conversion and the prototype fiberglass body is about 75% complete. The car currently still has the stock Corvette LS1 engine and drivetrain. Most of the EV components can be bought off the shelf and will need to be custom mounted, installed and wired up.