Sweet! San Antonio resident Lucas Laborde, 17, spent 150 hours this summer converting his gas-powered Bradley GT II to battery power. It cost about $5000 for the car and $5700 for the upgrades.

The car’s deep-cycle, 12-volt, lead-acid batteries are hooked up in series. They provide a total of 96 volts of current to an electric motor mounted in the reconstituted Beetle’s trunk, where its gasoline engine used to reside. Gauges mounted on the car’s instrument panel now include one for amperage to show how much current the electric motor is drawing and another one for voltage to let Laborde know when his batteries are running low.

The car uses the Bradley’s original transmission, a manual four-speed, but the clutch is no longer needed to change gears. The car has a top speed of about 45 mph — plenty fast for in-town commuting and lots of low-end torque.

Excellent work, Lucas!

Here’s the rankings of the safest cities (pop > 1 million) in Texas according to this study from Allstate insurance.

Rank/City
153. Houston
161. San Antonio
167. Dallas

Collision Likelihood Compared to National Averages
Houston: 23.5% more likely
San Antonio: 25.7% more likely
Dallas: 27.6% more likely

Average Years Between Collisions
Houston: 8.1 years
San Antonio: 8.0 years
Dallas: 7.8 years

The rankings appeared to be correlated with population size, so smaller Texas cities, like El Paso and Fort Worth were ranked much higher.