It's been a labor of love for Louis Rosa and his brother Nick.
"This was the biggest undertaking that we've ever done," Louis Rosa said.
For more than a year, they've spent any extra time and effort left over from college on a remarkable "green" project.
The car looks pretty impressive by itself: sporty, exotic and fast, but one might be surprised with what lies beneath this fiberglass exterior.
"The main question i get is: 'Is it a Ferrari?' No, it's not, unfortunately. It would be nice," Louis said.
It goes 90 miles an hour, it has great acceleration and it's a sleek sports car. That's where the similarities end, however: this baby's not gas, it's electric.
"There's a lot of custom fabrication. We had to build a bunch of racks for holding all the batteries. That's about 1,200 pounds of batteries. It nearly doubles the weight of the car," the other half of the design team, Nick Rosa, said. "And then you gotta wire everything together, and there's no diagram you're looking at. We had to write the diagram."
Most would agree it's a massive undertaking, so why do it?
"The big motivational factor was the fact that gas prices were over $4 a gallon when we started," Louis said. "Because that was so expensive, we wanted some way to go around town that was very cost-effective. It was green; it didn't output any carbon emissions."
The Rosa brothers went with a kit car because it's lighter, and then went to work tearing out what they didn't need, like the original engine.
"We had to take a whole bunch of the old components out," Nick said. "Lord knows how they got in there, because we could barely get 'em out. We wound up having to chop up a good bit of the old interior as far as the engine and gas tank goes."
Marine batteries power the car, and a glass-enclosed box in the rear of the vehicle channels a huge amount of power.
The total cost for this venture comes in at approximately $18,000. Considering it's much cheaper than other electric cars on the market, could the Rosas be onto something here? With their experience building one electric car, could they produce and sell more of these?
"Yeah, we had joked about it, and every time somebody comes and sees the car, they ask about it," Louis said. "We have no plans right now. if i guess someone wanted to invest in it, we wouldn't say no."
Nick agrees.
"If there's a demand, if people want 'em, we can find a way to make it happen."
The car doesn't just turn heads; it saves money.
For example, the car can go approximately 60 miles on a full charge, and takes about 6 hours to recharge the batteries completely. The resulting cost on one's electric bill: little more than a dollar.
The most impressive fact about the Rosa brothers' experiment is this: neither of them has a background in anything this project would have required.
"We do not have a background in mechanics. We do not have a background in electronics. We learned the basics in high school," Louis said. "It really does show where there's a will there's a way. If you take an interest in it and learn how to do it, and design it beforehand and then build, it really shows that anything's possible."
For Louis and Nick Rosa, it's a project that continues to pay off long after the work is complete.
Disclaimer: for those curious about doing something like this, it can be very dangerous. For those willing to attempt it, however, make sure to have people who are qualified and knowledgeable enough to work with the electric components.
