It’s cool that cars can burn clean solar or wind power instead of dirty fossil fuels. And they are super fun!

The street-legal electric car of the future is not coming from Japan or Detroit – but from your neighbor’s garage. If you have minimal mechanical skills, you can do your own gasoline-to-electric makeover for a mere $7,000, acquiring an automobile that has zero emissions, yet still boasts enough torque to burn rubber. For even less than that, we’ve converted a Fiat to street-legal electric at a total cost of $5,000 for car and conversion. It has 12 batteries and cruises at 65 mph for a range of 40 miles.

If you’re looking to hit the road with solar energy, check out this solar-powered road warrior DIY project. Or you can run a mini electric “punk bike” faster (and funnier) by powering it with a big, bad cordless drill.

For more tips by Make go to www.makezine.com.