He's jazzed about the potential of electric

Kimm Anderson, St. Cloud Times via AP

Electrical engineer Lee Hart of Sartell, Minn., is working with a mechanic friend to develop and market an electric car based on a 1990s Solectria model. They hope to make a kit car that almost anyone could buy and put together.

An engineer from Sartell, Minn., is trying to develop an electric car that people could build themselves.

By KIRSTI MAROHN, St. Cloud Times

Last update: July 30, 2008 - 11:36 PM

SARTELL, MINN. --When Republican presidential candidate John McCain said last month that the government should pay a $300 million reward to the inventor of a battery strong enough to run an automobile, Lee Hart wasn't impressed.

Batteries are not the problem, Hart said, and he should know. The Sartell engineer has been helping design electric cars for decades.

Hart has been working on a design for an electric car he hopes can be copied and built by average people. It's a sort of grass-roots countermovement for others tired of waiting for General Motors and Ford to mass-produce alternatives to gasoline-powered automobiles.

"I think you have to build it up piece by piece," he said.

Designing a battery that's powerful enough, light enough and lasts long enough to run a car isn't easy. There have been technological breakthroughs with nickel-metal hydride and lithium-ion batteries, but they have drawbacks -- too heavy, too expensive or potentially flammable.

Hart was intrigued by a solar-powered car called the Sunrise, produced in the mid-1990s by a company called Solectria. The four-passenger sedan looked like a normal car, could go 65 miles per hour and traveled 375 miles on a single charge.

"It demonstrated that an electric car can work," Hart said. "Its range was every bit as good as a gasoline car."

When Solectria went out of business, Hart and others decided to buy the rights to Sunrise's design and the remaining parts. They found other parts from salvage yards that had received the cars.

Now Hart and mechanic Tim Medeck of Rice hope to make a kit car that almost anyone could buy and put together. Hart and Medeck are putting parts stripped from an old Ford Thunderbird onto the Sunrise body. The batteries will be installed in a drawer-like compartment under the car, where they can be easily removed or replaced. Each car probably will cost $10,000 or more.

Hart acknowledged that many drivers might be scared off by the serious assembly required, including welding. But he said there's no high-level skill required. It's more of a craft, like knitting, Hart said.

Hart does believe that if gas prices continue to rise, the nation will demand a move toward energy independence.

"There's some point at which people are going to pound on the table and say, 'Enough. I'm not doing this anymore,'" he said.

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