Students convert Ford Mustang into electric car

During the Democratic National Convention, thousands spent their time running between the Charlotte Convention Center and Time Warner Cable Arena.

But a few students from Phillip O. Berry Academy of Technology and Greensboro’s McMichael High School spent their time last week converting a 1992 Ford Mustang into a street-legal, full-sized electric vehicle.

The project was a part of the national Electric Vehicle (EV) Challenge program, a collaboration with Discovery Place. The students converted the vehicle over a four-day period in Mayor Anthony Foxx’s Legacy Village, kicking off the conversion during CarolinaFest, a free Labor Day event in uptown.

Once they completed the transformation on Sept. 7, students then drove the Mustang to Discovery Place and plugged it into the electric vehicle charging station located in the museum’s parking deck.

With President Barack Obama's goal of one million plug-in electric vehicles on the road in the United States by 2015, commercial and consumer plug-in electric vehicles will become increasingly more available in the next few years, according to Discovery Place.

Any vehicle using electricity as either its primary fuel, or in collaboration with a conventional engine to help improve its efficiency, can be referred to as an electric drive vehicle.