Why should it be any surprise that the nation's biggest club of guys like Al Swackhammer is in the Pacific Northwest?
Visiting his home in Edmonds, with a 220-volt plug hanging from the garage ceiling, he proudly shows off the metal baby that he put together himself.
It's a car that packs 60 lithium-ion batteries that weigh in at 410 pounds total. There are 48 stacked in the back seat and 12 more in the trunk.
It's a gas-to-electricity conversion project that has set him back $23,000.
Sure, these days you can buy yourself the showroom electric $35,270 Nissan Leaf (with a $7,500 tax credit), the $48,700 electric-gas hybrid Chevy Volt or the $100,000-plus Tesla. Not for guys like Swackhammer.
For decades, they personally have put together all kinds of electric moving vehicles — cars, bikes, pickups, tractors.
They've done it by stringing together old-fashioned and heavy lead acid batteries; or by using lighter, but more expensive, lithium-ion ones.
In 2005, they even put electric motors on half a dozen La-Z-Boy recliner chairs and raced them at Pacific Raceways in Kent.
Steve Lough, 67, has seen it all up close for 30 years as president of the Seattle Electric Vehicle Association. The club has 140 members, the largest chapter in the country of the group.
On the first Tuesday of every month, at 7 p.m., some 60 to 80 club members meet at the Seattle First Church of the Nazarene. The church parking lot is right behind the Dick's burger joint in Wallingford, an appropriate place for electric-car buffs as they begin gathering at 6:30 or so to show off their cars.
This area does like technology, Lough says, what with Microsoft and Boeing.
"We love things new and unique," he said.
And they're conservation-minded.
"We want to show our neighbors and the world in general how to get around cleanly on one-fifth the amount of energy or money to move around in a gas-powered vehicle," Lough said. "There are white papers out there that show that making those batteries in no way compares to what has happened to our environment with fossil fuels over the last 100 years."
Being at the forefront often means dozens, if not hundreds, of hours tinkering in the garage.
It means ordering and putting in several hundred pounds of stacks of batteries; and often not having a back seat in the vehicle, because, well, all those batteries are occupying that space.
"I've lived, breathed and loathed these things," Swackhammer said of his electric car. "It's a passion."
Hours that he spent on the project?
"I never attempted to count them," said Swackhammer, 60, a hospital maintenance mechanic. "Three full years of working every weekend. My vacation a couple of years."
He finally completed the conversion last year.
Besides the $23,000 that Swackhammer spent on the electrical conversion, he also spent another big chunk — $19,000 — to restore the body of the German-make 1960 Auto Union 1000S that has become his electric car.
He started out as a fan of Audi, the company that absorbed Auto Union, when he lived in Anchorage in the 1980s; he loved how well the cars handled in the elements. He had picked up the skills to restore the body of a car.
But Swackhammer didn't know anything about electric conversion.
"I had to go to the Internet and research it, and find manuals, and blogs from people who had done them," he said.
The finished conversion resulted in a car that, on a full charge of eight hours, could go for 60 miles, reaching speeds of 75 mph on the freeway.
Like just about every electric-car owner, Swackhammer talks about the silence of driving to and from work.
"And I pass by gas stations every night, and I don't have to stop," he said.
Asked again to explain all the time and money he spent, Swackhammer said, "One person at a time. My effort, although it cost me more than it needed to, is going to make a difference. It's a passion knowing that I have made a small contribution to not using fossil fuel. I sleep good at night. I want to leave this world knowing that I tried."
Oh, about the La-Z-Boy recliner chairs that were raced with electric motors.
"You have enough people with disposable income and they do crazy things," Steve Lough said.
He says the electric recliner chairs were doing 60 mph near the finish line. And he says the chairs were safe enough.
"One had roll bars, and they all had seat belts, steering and brakes," Lough said. "I don't think they had directional signals."
