'Ecomodding' is all the rage

Posted By Blake Hounshell Thursday, June 26, 2008 - 8:47 AM Share

I'll believe this is a real trend when Vin Diesel makes a movie called The Fast and the Fuel-Efficient:

Today, ecomodding is rapidly becoming a movement. Forums devoted to ecomodding specific vehicles — such as priuschat.com and metrompg.com — are launched frequently and gain popularity rapidly.

One site, ecomodder.com, went online in December 2007 and 45,000 readers were checking in daily within three months. "It just sorta went viral," says Darin Cosgrove, 38, of Brockville, Canada, who cofounded the site with Benjamin Jones, 19, of Hanover, New Hampshire. [...]

With advice gleaned from the forums, Cosgrove yanked the gas engine and installed an electric drivetrain using donated lead-acid batteries and about $700 in parts scrounged from an old forklift and a golf cart. Today, he drives the electric car around town, getting what he figures is the equivalent of 80 mpg. For highway trips, he still uses gasoline, but in an ecomodded '98 Geo Metro that now gets 76 mpg, up from its original EPA highway rating of 46 mpg.

EXPLORE:NET EFFECT, NORTH AMERICA, ENVIRONMENT

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