Converting a car to electric drive in the UK

I just spent a week in England and drove from London to County Durham, then Somerset and then on to Brighton.  It seemed that everyone is in agreement that burning fossil fuel, to get around the few miles that most of us drive, has got to change.  They are all excited that Nissan Leaf is making 100% electric drive cars, but hardly anyone could afford them.  Nobody that I spoke to had even thought that they could convert their existing car into an EV.

So I decided to do a little digging for my fellow countrymen and see what was involved in the legal side.  I called the DVLA and played out a scenario once I managed to get a live person on the end of the telephone ( that took about 10 minuets).  I told him that I had taken the engine out of my car and replaced it with an all electric drive system.  I asked him what I needed to do to make it street legal.
He said that you have to fill out form V10.  Submit it to your local DVLA office with your proof of insurance and your MOT (vehicle inspection).  He said there is no road tax on electric vehicles, and that someone may want to inspect the vehicle just to see that it had been converted.  No cheating please.  There are no fees for this service.

I also asked him if there were many people who have been doing this and he said that he had never heard of anyone doing it.  I was quite taken aback.

So come on you boys and girls in Great Britain start to clear out the space in your garage.  There are plenty of resources for you to get the right components and batteries, and build yourselves some EV's so we can all kick the dinosaurs out of our lives and regain control of our precious economies etc.

Most people are stretched in this economic climate and I think that a solution for many, may be to start sharing an EV.  A bit like the idea they are having in Paris, which was recently aired, on Fully Charged  episode 31, by Robert Llewellyn.

The trickle of parts has started to arrive

Just received my battery connector strips from EV Works in Australia.  Seems like a hell of a long way to go to get something like that.  I can't believe that I can't get something like that made up down the road.  Anyway I have them and they are the best way to connect the batteries together in the shaky environment of the automobile.

My engine hoist arrived from Harbor Freight.  It was missing all the assembly hardware, so I called them and they are sending all of that to me.  Luckily I ordered this in advance of when I was going to need it, as I am stuck with an unforeseen delay of 10 days.

I still can't get over the fact that my batteries arrived 4 days after I ordered them.  I thought I was going to be waiting 3 months.  No wonder the Chinese are running away with the economy.