Caitlin Byrd

cbyrd@citizen-times.com

WAYNESVILLE – Nothing revs up Kent Barnes quite like a quiet electric motor.

For five years, the 71-year-old has been in the business of transforming traditional, gas-powered vehicles into electric ones through Electric Vehicles of North Carolina, a conversion shop he runs with his son, David Barnes, in Waynesville.

“I’m an electric vehicle evangelist,” said Kent Barnes, who has been teaching two classes about hybrid and electric vehicles this semester as an adjunct instructor at Haywood Community College. “I teach it, I live it and I promote it.”

A few years ago, Kent Barnes bought an electric car of his own, a Nissan LEAF. Today, the Black Mountain resident drives a Chevrolet Volt.

“Driving one of these is a whole different driving experience,” he said, as his hybrid car zipped up a steep, winding driveway in Waynesville. “It’s so quiet you can actually hear the gravel crunch.”

But Kent Barnes says he thinks a person should not have to buy a new car or sell a beloved vehicle to fill up less at the pump.

“Building electric cars is very satisfying. You can take a vehicle you really like that’s wearing out,” Kent Barnes said. “Maybe the engine’s going bad, but you can convert it to electric and drive it for another 10 years.”

In their private garage a few miles down from Exit 24 in Waynesville, the father and son walked toward two vehicles being converted to electric. Though one car is a 2003 Subaru Baja and the other is an 2000 Audi TT convertible, both are now battery-powered machines.

“A lot of people don’t realize we can do it,” Kent Barnes said. “Overall, the amount of battery technology is increasing. If you think about your home, is there anything at home that isn’t battery powered? How about the office? Everything in the office is powered by electricity. The only thing that’s not is the car sitting in the garage.”

On average, the pair can convert one vehicle in as little as one or two weeks if all of the parts arrive on time. A conversion can cost $17,000- $22,000 using lithium batteries, and a vehicle can drive between 60 and 100 miles.

Business has been sporadic for the conversion shop.

Electric Vehicles of North Carolina has been working on about one car every three months. Both of the Barnes men said they would like to see that number grow to at least one a month, if not more.

When David Barnes isn’t working on a conversion, he works at his repair shop, Subaru’s and Such. He said that’s the only way he can make it work for now.

But working on the electric cars with his father gives him a sense of accomplishment like no other.

“Dad’s been in electronics all my life, and I grew up around the electrical part of it. I extremely enjoy working on these vehicles. I love taking something that’s broken and being able make it usable again,” the 41-year-old technician said. “I learned most everything from him when it came to the visionary part of being able to look at that Subaru and know I can do that to it.”

Popping open the hood of the first all-wheel drive electric vehicle they have built, David Barnes shows off what’s under the hood and, more importantly, what isn’t.

“There’s only a couple of real components you need to make it work. You take out the gas engine, and you put in the electric motor. Then, there has to be a brain, so there’s a computer that talks to the throttle and tells the motor how much power to give it,” his father said. “There’s a controller that looks like a briefcase — like a little silver box — and then there’s the main motor, but the rest is cooling fans.”

The eco-friendly car business began in 2009 with a red Mazda pickup truck in the basement of Kent Barnes’ Black Mountain home, but he said the idea started long before that.

Kent Barnes always had an interest in electronics and grew up watching his father tinker with cars. But when the 1973 Arab oil embargo crippled the nation’s economy and resulted in long lines of cars waiting at gas stations during the shortage, Kent Barnes started thinking about electric cars as a way to wean the country off foreign oil.

“But the technology just wasn’t there yet,” he said.

Today, Kent Barnes said the technology is evolving quickly and he has been seeing a growing interest in these vehicles.

In September, the Clean Vehicles Coalition, a project of the Land of Sky Regional Council, participated in the National Drive Electric Week to showcase its electric charging stations on Charlotte Street and introduce locals to electric vehicles.

“We had more than 100 people who were able to actually go for a ride in electric cars, and they could talk to electric car owners, too,” Kent Barnes said of the event. “Mountainfolk tend to be more accepting of the green technology and what we can do, and more people around here seem to be interested in it.”

According to the Electric Drive Transportation Association, the interest in electric vehicles is on the rise outside of the mountains as well. A recent report from the trade association shows automakers sold 40,894 electric vehicles in November.

“If you look at sales of regular hybrids, there’s about three or four areas of the state that have very high concentrations: Wake County, Mecklenburg County and Buncombe,” said Dave Erb, a lecturer at UNC Asheville’s mechatronics department, who has been an automotive engineer for 33 years and worked with hybrid cars since 1986.

“There’s a lot of interest here in electric cars. They’re quiet; they’re peppy around town. You’re not going to win any races on the Autobahn in Germany going more than 150 mph, but going zero to 35 they’re actually quicker than most conventional gasoline cars.”

Yet despite the growing interest, people still have questions about the vehicles.

David Barnes said most people are concerned about how far these cars can travel and how much it costs to convert a gas-powered vehicle into an electric one.

“People will get mad that they can’t drive down to Florida,” he said. “But I tell them, at that point, it’s cheaper to fly. You can get a plane ticket for $60 for Fort Laurderdale, and that’s cheaper than driving it.”

In the future, Kent Barnes said he sees their electric conversion shop as the eco-friendly spinoff of hot rod cars.

“People will have a car that they really don’t want to give up, and instead they’ll want to keep their car and make it a unique vehicle,” Barnes said of his business. “I think we’ve reached a point where there isn’t much more we can get out of a gallon of gasoline, and I think we can expect to see more and more hybrids and electric vehicles on the road.”