Homebuilt EVs are damn-near mainstream these days, with backyard tinkerers throwing electric motors into small, light and – dare we say it – cute cars like the Porsche 914 and VW Rabbit with almost monotonous regularity. Tom Leitschuh went for something a lot cooler.

An El Camino.

The electronic controls engineer from Franksville, Wisconsin, electrified an '81 Chevrolet El Camino, a poster child for the darkest days of American automotive design and a car with enough steel to shrug off a collision with a Sherman tank. We called Leitschuh to ask, "Why?"

We thought we caught him at a quiet time in the office until he said, "Can you hear it? I'm driving it as we speak!"

Of all the cars he could have picked to convert, why did Leitschuh choose the mongrel offspring of a Chevrolet Caprice and a pickup truck? Simple. He needs to haul stuff. Besides, why not convert an El Camino?

"The Civic would have a bit more range," he said. "But which would you rather drive?"

That question answered, Leitschuh, an electronics controls engineer and owner of TDL Electronics, got to work. The project went pretty quickly, taking about 200 hours of his time over the course of six weeks. He got some help with donations from QuickCable and some hired hands to help with welding and fabrication. The tab came to roughly $30,000, which included the cost of the car and a transmission rebuild. The lion's share of the bill went to the 46 lithium-ferrite phosphate batteries that cost him $18,000. They're located over the front and rear axles. Because Leitschuh yanked the engine, radiator and other archaic equipment, the weight penalty for the batteries is just 750 pounds. Total output is 33 kilowatt-hours.

A 9-inch series-wound Advanced DC Motors unit pushing 100 horsepower is bolted directly to the three-speed manual gearbox. The clutch, with its 30 pounds of rotational mass and energy bleeding slip, is long gone. It's just power-sapping dead weight rendered unnecessary with a little practice to hone his clutchless shifting in a car that only needs two gears.

So what'll she do? Leitschuh shrugged.

“I don’t know how fast it’s gone, but I know it will get to 85,” he told us. Chalk that up to one of those speedometers with a pin that stops the needle from passing 85, snatching all pleasure from romping on the pedal mercilessly. Leitschuh was almost apologetic when he told us, "I wasn't trying to build a race car, but wanted to know what it could do.”

With conservative driving, Leitschuh says he thinks the car could see as many as 200 miles on a charge, but one EV expert we talked to said that's highly unlikely and a max of 130 or so is more probable. Although a full charge takes 10-hours, Leitschuh says the battery array has no memory issues so he simply plugs it in when he gets home regardless of how much juice he used.

Leitschuh figures the Electro-Camino costs just over a penny a mile, but he keeps that penny in his pocket. Electro-Camino is truly green. That’s right, all you EV naysayers, there's no long tailpipe on this car and it's truly zero-emissions. Leitschuh gets all his power from his wind turbine and 12-kW solar-barn, which he claims is the largest privately owned solar array in Wisconsin.

So not only is Leitschuh's car cooler than a Toyota Prius, it's greener, too.

Photos: Tom Leitschuh

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Tom Leitschuh spent $30,000 converting his 1981 El Camino to electric power, with most of that money going toward the 46 batteries that provide the juice to keep it going.

A cool software program and display keeps tabs on the batteries.