No Fill Ups Required: Newtown Doctor Converts Car to Electric

With gas prices likely approaching $5 a gallon by the summer, everybody is getting concerned about the cost of commuting and travel in general.

Everybody but Barry Oppenheim, that is.

Oppenheim doesn’t have to worry about filling up because two years ago, he converted a 2002 Saturn Vue from gasoline to electric. He now drives it each day from his home in New Hope to Bucks County Eye Group in Newtown, where he is a pediatric ophthalmologist.

Oppenheim had never converted a car before he took a very successful stab at it in August 2008. He just did a lot of reading and research the year leading up to the conversion.

“I always need a project,” Oppenheim said, admitting he didn’t do it purely for environmental reasons. “That was just one of the nice things about it.”

And a project he most certainly got.

Unlike many first-time conversions, Oppenheim did not use a kit. “I designed everything from the ground up. I had to create the plan. I have pages and pages of electrical plans that I laid out,” he said.

Six months and 200-plus working hours later, Oppenheim had successfully converted his gas engine vehicle to a lead acid battery-powered car. Now, he simply plugs the vehicle in to a regular power outlet in his garage each night, and the next morning, he treks – gas free – the short commute from New Hope to Newtown.

During the warmer months, that overnight charge is enough to get him to and from work. But in the winter, “when the batteries don’t have quite as much juice in them, I usually plug it in at work.”

So next time you’re at the Anchor Crossing Shopping Center on Durham Road (where Oppenheim’s office is) and you see a white Saturn Vue plugged in, you’ll know why.

Oppenheim said it costs him about a dollar a day to get around if he averages 20 miles. “I’m getting 100 miles per gallon equivalent, roughly,” he said.

But Oppenheim warns people from completing a conversion with the hopes of saving cash instantly.

“If you’re doing it for money savings, it’s probably not a good idea. I think I’m at the break-even point in terms of the cost of my battery pack versus gas,” he said.

All told, the conversion cost Oppenheim about $12,000, not including the price of the car, which he purchased specifically for the project. He chose the Vue for a few reasons – mainly that it could carry 1,400 pounds of batteries and it was affordable.

He said he preferred new parts, but a cheaper conversion can be done with used parts.

“Basically everything in the engine compartment is gone -- the gas tank is gone, the exhaust is gone,” he said, adding he had to get a new dash board because so much of the controls related to the gas-powered engine.

A complete engine makeover seems like a daunting task, especially for a first-timer. But Oppenheim said it was surprisingly straightforward. “If you break down the tasks, no task in itself was that hard. Ninety-nine percent of your trouble is one percent of your work,” he said.

“If you can change oil in a car, run an electrical circuit in your house, and know how to use a saw and power tools, you can do it,” he said.

(Disclaimer: Oppenheim is an eye surgeon, so he does have a leg up when it comes to precision and detail.)

The finished product doesn’t look a whole lot different from the outside. “Other than the fact that it has an electric emblem, you wouldn’t know it was electric. It looks just like the little four-cylinder sport utility vehicle it was before,” Oppenheim said.

The inside does look slightly different. In addition to the new dashboard, “the whole back end is filled with batteries,” he said.

Even still, most of Oppenheim's passengers don’t even realize the car is electric until the ride is over. “Most people don’t know, which is what I wanted. I didn’t want to drive around in a golf cart.”

But Oppenheim can tell the difference. Aside from the savings on gas money, electric cars shift easier.  Plus, they’re much quieter than their gas-powered counterparts. The downside, however, is there is a limit to how long the engine will go without needing a charge. And if you’re on a road trip, that presents an obvious problem.

But electric cars have a long shelf life. “You can run an electric motor for about 100,000 miles before you have to do any sort of major service on it -- and major service is basically cleaning it,” Oppenheim said.

They also require much less maintenance. “It’s just rubber and breaks,” he noted. No oil changes, belt replacements or engine flushes are required.

And if it does need some sort of repair, a regular mechanic won’t service Oppenheim’s Vue.

“There are certain things they can do, like breaks and tires, but the electric stuff he can’t do because it’s a one-of-kind vehicle.”  That means Oppenheim is on the hook to carry out any major repairs to the car’s engine.

So does Oppenheim plan to do another conversion as his next big project?

“I don’t know. I’ll probably upgrade this one at some point,” he said, noting that if he changed to a lithium battery pack, it would be 40 percent smaller and lighter than the batteries he has now.

To learn more about Oppenheim’s conversion, check out his blog at www.JustAnotherEVConversion.blogspot.com.