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In the midst of rampant unemployment, and a bleak economic forecast the outlook for the summer of 2008 is grim at best. Housing prices continue to drop, while commodity prices continue to rise, and gas prices, ugh well lets just say gas is becoming out of reach for many if not all Americans. The economist inside of me is tempted to say this is a good thing, after all rising gas prices will lead consumers to switch to now relatively cheaper greener substitutes such as hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius. At least theoretically in the school of standard economic thought that’s how things should work. But as I grow older I’m slowly but surely discovering things almost never go according to plan.

Traditional economic thought would insist that the rising price of gas should lure entrepreneurial spirits to invest in the research and development of new transportation technologies to cash in on their piece of the pie. And in someways this theoretical model is met with empirical (real world) data. Companies like Tesla Motors have successfully developed viable vehicles that run entirely on electric power. So why aren’t we seeing more of these vehicles on the road? Well for one Tesla has produced a very limited number of automobiles, and their vehicles come at a high price, somewhere to the tune of $100k. Placing them far out of the reach of almost all Americans.

Companies like Tesla have proved the technology to build, and develop a viable electric car is there. Heck GM proved the technology was there back in the mid 90’s when they first rolled out the EV1. If your not already familiar with the GM EV1 it was a production vehicle which ran solely on electrical power. The vehicle was developed in response to California’s zero emissions mandate or ZEV. The mandate specified that by the year 2003 10% of all new vehicles sold within the state of California must be ZEV compliant vehicles. So much for that mandate eh? Well long story GM developed the EV1, and eventually after some under the table negotiations with big oil agreed to pull the EV1 from production. The thing is not only did GM pull the EV1 from productions, they literally bought back every vehicles from consumers for copious amounts of cold hard cash. Sound suspicious? Ya I would say so, if your not already familiar with all of this I suggest you check out the movie “Who Killed The Electric Car” which traces the birth and subsequent death of the electric automobile.

The thing is there are already a lot of electric cars out there. These two Canadians built one for a measly $672 dollars using an old electric motor from a fork lift. A simple search on Google for “how to build an electric car” yields plenty of results that intricately detail all the steps needed to convert your vehicle to plug and play. After reading this how stuff works tutorial I’m feeling motivated enough to try this out myself.

To simplify the process you really just take the old internal combustion engine out of your donor vehicle, and replace it with an electrical motor powered by batteries. Simple enough right? OK so maybe its not quite that easy but the point here is viable electrical alternatives do exist all around us. The only reasons these green alternatives are not commonplace on our streets is purely economic. Big oil has literally billions and billions of gallons of crude oil left to drill. Thus the potential loss for big oil should consumers chose to buy electric over gas powered vehicles is huge. Say Big oil stands to lose 60.5 billion dollars per year on an international level should the electric car take off, an economically rational big oil firm would then invest 60.4999 billion dollars per year to ensure the electric car never takes off. If you have checked out GM or Ford stock lately you know that would be way more then enough to convince the domestic automakers to hamper productions on all electric vehicles.

So lets face it, Detroit isn’t going to be the next epic-center of the green vehicle revolution. Well then who will be? You will be. And so will I. Everyday people converting their cars to electric vehicles is where this revolution will start. Soon enough shops will pop up that do it for you. Experienced internal combustion mechanics will soon enough devote their time to this conversion process. You can ignite the flame by converting your own vehicles today. Its easier then you think. We have the tools to do it, the only thing thats missing is action. So lets make it happen.