Cost Summary for Project

Notes about this cost summary:

In November 2010 MightyBoyEV was upgraded to a Li-Ion battery pack please follow this upgrade on this site at Using MightyBoyEV - Note the costs reflected below do not include this upgrade.

Costs given below exclude labour costs, with the exception of some panel restoration and spray painting of the vehicle. I have tried to quote worst case situations within these costings. This project is unusual in the sense that it combines a total vehicle restoration and a vehicle drive conversion. The vast majority of EV conversions do not include a total vehicle restoration. Hence I have divided the cost summary into two sections. The Table 1 provides a cost break down of the EV conversion and Table 2 summarizes the vehicle and vehicle restoration costs.  It is worth noting that the Suzuki Mightyboy was a very low cost commercial vehicle and the restoration performed in this project brings the vehicle up to a standard beyond that of the original factory product. Quality undercoating and paint work will provide many more years of life to the Mightyboy.  The improvements to the suspension system help make the small vehicle more drivable. The rebuilding of the seats, new interior trim and the sound system upgrade all add to the project. The final result of spending around $8,000 on the restoration will virtually be a new vehicle. In many ways this is over capitalizing but the very things that made the car low cost are the features that make it an attractive EV donor vehicle. The very thin panel work and basic simplicity results in an extremely light car. Given the costs outlined below, it is clear that EV conversions for the most part are only viable if the labour component is kept to a minimum.  The gains in using Li-Ion battery technology are clear but costs remain high and designing for the lower end of your requirements in my view is desirable at this stage. However, all design work should be scalable to allow for lower cost cells or alternative technology in the future. This means designing for the best performance motor for your conversion and ensuring all mechanical work is of a high standard. Electrical wiring and associated junction boxes should be designed with upgrading capacity where possible. In the case of this project, stage 1 now uses a 72 volt AGM SLA configuration (please see Battery Dilemma for updates on this) but all cable work, ducting and junction boxes are designed to accommodate a 120 volt system planned for stage 2. Please note some of these components below were purchased when the Australian dollar was very strong against the US dollar - So costs of these items would be significantly high today (February 2009).

Note: As this vehicle will be used as a daily car, a number of duplicate spare service parts have also been purchased, this will ensure the vehicle can easily be kept on the road in case of a component failure. These spares include, main contactor, main circuit breaker, battery charger (this can be used in parallel with the current Delta-Q charger allowing fast re charge times.... very handy) , controller and a spare solid state relay.