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Like many people, Michael DeVuyst dreamed of having an electric car, but was put off by the high price.

Unlike most people, DeVuyst decided to take matters into his own hands by converting a gas-powered vehicle into a fully electric car — starting when he was 18 years old.

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Seven years and many hundreds of hours of tinkering later, DeVuyst became the proud owner this summer of a street-legal, fully electric, 1990 Mazda Miata MX-5 convertible with the official green licence plate(with green numbers) granted to owners of electric or hybrid plug-in vehicles in Quebec.

“When the hood is open, people walking by (who see a rack of batteries where an engine should be) say: ‘That doesn’t look like it should,’ ” said DeVuyst, 25, who recently found a job at Lockheed Martin in Montreal disassembling and repairing multi-million-dollar commercial jet engines after completing a three-year degree in aeronautical maintenance.