Americans are fed up with high gas prices. The Federal Government can't seem to agree on anything related to energy. Truck manufacturer's are ditching their trucks and focusing their energy on small to mid-size cars, hybrids and other alternative fuel vehicles. All of this is a good thing in my opinion. I'm not too happy about losing trucks because I find them extremely useful at times. There are some things you just can't do with a car. But some people are taking things into their own hands and converting their vehicles to electric to avoid the soaring fuel prices.

Several people are doing this. A gentleman in Atlanta converted his 1995 Chevy S-10. It cost him roughly $12,000 to do it and it took several months. Hist truck now runs on 20 batteries and can get up to 60mph. Not too bad if I say so myself. This would be perfect for me considering I only drive four miles a day and none of it is highway. He gets about 40 miles on a charge which is just enough for him to get back and forth to work and run small errands. I would love to do this.

There are a few reasons besides no more gas. You also no longer need to worry about changing your oil, flushing your radiator or passing emission test because all that crap is removed from the vehicle. No engine, no radiator and no exhaust. Awesome. For me the savings wouldn't add up to much since I am not a big driver and it would be hard to justify spending 12k on something like this.

For those of you who have an early 90's Honda Civic, there is a guy developing an Open Source Civic EV kit. For others out there I have stumbled across a few sites that might be of interest.

• EV Help
• e-volks

I really would love to do this. Not only is it a good thing but it would be fun to do. I like to tinker with stuff and this would be the perfect project. This would also keep me from having to do engine maintenance and pissing off my wife because I got oil and crap all over the garage.

An alternative to this is to get in line for the Chevy Volt which is due to be released in 2010 at a price tag of around $40,000. So far over 33,000 people have said they are going to buy one. The reality of actually getting one is slim because I doubt Chevy is going to have that many ready to roll.

Has any one out there actually done something like this? Considering doing it? I would love to hear from you.