Electric Vehicle Forums - DIY EV Dissappointment

Hi. It's been a long time since I visited GH, so I thought I'd post something while I'm here.

Last year my wife and I thought it would be good to get off the gas altogether and research building an EV for my commute so I got on a couple EV forums. Some people are very inventive and ingenious. One even bought a junk electric forklift, stripped the guts out and put it into an old VW rabbit. Total cost was under $1,000.

I'm not that ambitious but found kits are available for conversion of popular older cars like VW Rabbits, Civics etc. One paticular kit I was looking at cost $16,000, less the car. I could do all the light mechanical stuff myself and contract a local garage for the heavy hoisting/lifting.

I'm also an experienced hypermiler and know how to squeeze the most out of a gallon of gas- my record in my HCH is 74MPG and over 1,000 miles on a single tank. I was thinking the same skill could be used to extend battery range.

My entire project came to a screeching halt after I began asking questions to the knowledgeable people.

I live 50 miles from work where there is no place to plug in. I figured 150mile range minimum per day to play it safe. It's almost all freeway so I'd need an average sustained speed to be around 60MPH.

Despite the optimistic people in the EV forums I was discouraged from the project. This is why:

$50-300 for a suitable car to convert
$300-1500 in reserve for cosmetics, tires, brakes etc (Repaint etc)
$16,000 for the conversion kit
$35-40,000 for battery packs
*Battery replacement every 4-5 years

In the end I'd be driving a rediculously expensive older model vehicle- and with no AC, heater, power steering etc.

Needless to say it ended the plans rather quickly.

Then last fall me and my wife were interested in severing our ties to the power grid. We have an all electric home and no gas lines available. I again did some research and Georgia is almost useless for wind generation but is moderate for solar panel use.

I found out our power consumption (I forgot the calculations) was too great to sever from the grid altogether. The people I was talking to said I could reduce my bill by about 15-20%.
Hmmph.
That was dissappointing, but I enquired to my State power commission about any available State or Federal grants, loans, rebates etc. I thought for sure there might be some good Federal conservation projects available (Seeing they just spent over $3,000000000000.00 on "Stimulous" packages this year alone)

He explained the system must be a government approved, state and local inspections along the way, installed by a government approved company and -if- the system meets the strict requirements (All paperwork etc) I will be granted a 7% State tax credit on the equipment.

Again dissappointed the answer was again no, no and no.

Hmmph. There has to be some kind of incentive for anyone to convert to solar and get off the grid. Where are all those green jobs which were supposed to "spring up like daisies?"