Zoomi Life

At the Rocky Mountain Sustainable Living Fair in Fort Collins, Colorado this past weekend, I met with Justin Dunn and Luc Nadeau of Evolve Electrics.  These two guys co-own the company and are very active promoters of electric vehicle conversions.

Their concept revolves around the newly-patent-pending all-in-one module called the EVolve Kit (pictured above).  This is a pre-wired module to take the painful thinking and wiring out of the conversion process so that any do-it-yourselfer or conversion garage can save a lot of time and work when doing their conversions.

Basically, it removes the electrical engineering from the conversion process and makes it easy for someone without a lot of electronics experience to quickly drop the unit into a conversion, plug in the motor and electric feed and be done.

The box is about 24 inches square and eight inches tall, so it is definitely made for a car or pickup truck conversion (rather than motorcycles or scooters) and includes the DC-DC converter, controller, fuses, etc. all in one box.

The concept comes from Justin and Luc’s conversions of a Geo Metro and a Toyota pickup truck, which they used as test vehicles to prove the concept and work out the kinks.  Those vehicles (now for sale) were the base models they went off of for several of their other parts offerings like motors, battery packs, and more.

They are currently test marketing a kit to plug-in to any existing plug-in electric to extend its range.  These kits are made to fit in small spaces and come with all of the lithium-ion batteries to ad an additional 10 or 20 mile range (depending on the kit), which boosts the fuel efficiency of a PHEV by 40% or better. These cool little boxes fit into the trunk floor of a Prius, but can be used in any PHEV or existing electric to boost the range.

EVolve is also a one-stop shop for the DIY conversion enthusiast with motors, controllers, chargers, converters, li-ion phosphate batteries, and more.

The two guys were great to talk to and Luc spent a lot of time explaining their process, what they’re doing, and how they’re moving their startup business into the main stream.  They’re certainly in the right location, since Colorado is a hot-spot for electric conversions and currently offers the biggest tax breaks in the nation for converted vehicles. Right now, Colorado offers up to 85% of the cost to convert your vehicle to electric as a tax write-off.

That’s awesome, except I prefer the 100% income tax write-off I get for living in Wyoming (which has no income tax).  Luc said he’d probably take that too, but since Coloradoans are stuck with an income tax, they may as well get it back and save money by not buying any more gasoline.  I agree.

While I expect to see businesses like EVolve popping up around the nation, it’s great to see one here, close to home, and with such a cool concept.  Justin and Luc definitely saw the need that their EVolve Kit fills and did a good job filling it.