Man Whizzes By Gas Stations With Self-Made Electric Car

INDIANAPOLIS -- With gas prices up another 20 cents Tuesday, an Indianapolis man is happy to not have to worry about it.

Patrick Roth uses a fully electric car to take his daughter to school and run errands, 6News' Jennifer Carmack reported.

The car may look like any ordinary Ford Escort, but a closer look reveals that it's anything but. Roth didn't buy the car that way. He built it himself.

"I have taken out all of the components to the internal combustion engine and replaced it with a big electric motor and a bunch of batteries," Roth said. "Essentially, I've turned it into a 100 percent electric vehicle."

Roth said he got the idea while driving his Lexus hybrid. He thought that since the Lexus can go partially off the battery, he could get a car to run solely on electric power.

"I found myself constantly trying to trick the car to run on the electric motor as much as possible, which got me thinking," Roth said. "Why not just have a second car that's purely electric?"

There are electric cars on the market, but they aren't cheap. After a lot of research, Roth tackled the conversion himself.

"It works great, actually. I've tested it on the highway up to 70 mph," he said.

Roth said he checked with both his insurance company and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and found that his converted Escort is legal.

Instead of hitting a gas pump every week or two, he just pulls the car into the garage at night and plugs in.

"In the equivalent, it works out to what it would cost me if I were paying 75 cents a gallon at the pump," Roth said.

Roth spent about 10 weeks building the car, a project he contends just about anyone can do.

"If I can do it with no mechanical ability and no engineering degree, no electrician's degree, then certainly anyone else can do it with basic skills," he said.

Roth bought the car specifically to convert. The cost of the vehicle and the conversion was about $13,000.

Patrick Roth's Car Conversion