ASU2003

I trying to figure out a way to reduce the amount of gas I have to buy. The simplest way is to ride my bike around, which I do. But it takes twice as long on 1-3 mile trips, four times as long on 4-6 mile trips. And, while it is good exercise and I have noticed improvements in my body after 1 month, there are many times when it isn't practical to ride. If it is raining or cold (about 1/2 the year), it isn't fun to ride. And if I need to go other places at lunch or after work, it is harder. There is the problem with not being able to carry very much stuff. And it is better if you can avoid major roads, which I can on my way to work.

So, I am thinking about getting a new car. The car I currently drive is a 1995 Saturn, but still looks pretty good. It gets 24 mpg in the city/ 30 mpg highway. I could easily continue with this car for a few more years, and wouldn't have any problems with it being my long distance highway car. Right now at $3/gal for gas/petrol, I spend $50/month or about $600/year. So at best, I could reduce that to 1/6 of the cost currently. ($100/year at $3/gal prices) if I didn't need to use gas around town.

Now buying a hybrid, Chevy Volt, or any other new car doesn't make sense to me at all. There is no way I could justify spending $15-$30k on a car. 95% of my driving is within 3 miles of my home. 4% is within 15 miles, and 1% is further than that.

So, that leaves me doing the work to convert a car/truck over to electric. I am thinking of converting a Chevy S-10 since they seem to be a common truck for people to convert. Still, it would cost $3-$5k and batteries might be another $1-2k. It would also give me the ability to transport Lowe's & Home Depot (Bunnings and Stratco for the Aussies) purchases back to my house.

I'm not doing this just to conserve gas, or because of CO2, or even because of raising gas prices. Well, partly because of raising gas prices. I'm thinking about doing this because I hate the *expletive deleted* gas companies. I hate how they can control the prices and how certain 'investors' are playing the system because there aren't enough people like me that could drop gas. I also don't care for most of the countries we get our gas from. Although there are plenty of people who will continue to buy gas which will give them more money. Maybe I will buy oil in the market to increase the price to push more people to stop using it.

I may have to get a few solar panels to put on my house, as I wouldn't want to increase the amount of coal I use. But that would be another $5-8k, although it may be possible to share a charge controller between both the car and the panels.

Would anybody else ever go this far? Or does this sound crazy?