just thinking about changing my 76 spitfire to a electric car

Electric will cost a lot more than $2000.

The best thing about a Spitfire for conversion is that it is so small, so it doesn't need much power (for performance) or energy (for range). The worst thing about a Spitfire for conversion is that it is so small, so there isn't much room for battery. Of course it also has long-obsolete chassis components, which work but are not ideal.

There have been several Spitfire conversions reported in this forum, most with battery and motor technology which is now obsolete (because people have been converting Spitfires for a long time). Most of them give an idea of cost, but the cost isn't going to different from other conversions using the same approach and having similar battery capacity.

At the top of the page there is a "Search Community" box. If you use that to search for "Spitfire" and use the Sort button in the results to show the most recent matches, you'll find some of the more recent discussions... that should be informative. When you find a recent post in an old thread, go back to the beginning of the thread so you can understand what was being done.

If you scrounge around this should be doable, barely, with your budget.

Damien built a 1000eu car conversion (including the cost of the car) a couple years ago, and stuff has gotten cheaper and easier since then.

If this is a fun project to tinker on and convert for you, and you don't mind spending time looking for deals as they happen, I think your budget is possible. Lots will hinge on your ability to find a good deal on batteries, but if you're actually okay with a 25 mile range on the lowest end, I'd say that's achievable. Better than that (i.e. 50 mile range) will depend on how good of a bargain finder you are.

If you're a "I want to sit down and order a kit, have it all arrive at the start, and get the conversion over with" type, then I think you'll get a lot more enjoyment out of doing a gas replacement.

my76spit said:

hi Matt

I'm sure i'm miss understanding you. Are you saying that the parts to make my spit a electric car will only cost me $2000 or so.

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No, I think Matt is saying that if you have done a bunch of EV conversions so that you have needed materials and components lying around your shop so you don't have to count their cost, and if various people owe you favours so they'll give you things, and you have all of the skills and equipment to make everything yourself (and don't count the cost of any of the equipment), and you get really lucky finding some deals, you can assemble something which might be considered an electric Spitfire for $2000 in additional cash outlay. But yes, it sure looked like he said you could actually do the conversion for $2000.

Nobody has built a roadable and useful EV conversion of a car for $2000. If you want to spend many hours watching videos you can determine exactly how Damien got his claimed €1000 cost, how far it is from reality, and how different your situation is from Damien's; I've never thought it was worth spending that kind of time.

If you want to avoid guaranteed failure, please budget much more than $2000 for parts, supplies, and services required.

brian_ said:

No, I think Matt is saying that if you have done a bunch of EV conversions so that you have needed materials and components lying around your shop so you don't have to count their cost, and if various people owe you favours so they'll give you things, and you have all of the skills and equipment to make everything yourself (and don't count the cost of any of the equipment), and you get really lucky finding some deals, you can assemble something which might be considered an electric Spitfire for $2000 in additional cash outlay. But yes, it sure looked like he said you could actually do the conversion for $2000.

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I don't think that's a fair assessment of what he did. Have you watched the series on the 1000eu build? He was mostly reasonable in saying what a typical person would have access to most places in the world and what it would cost. No special deals for him. He didn't call in any favors to get the prices he got or get stuff for free. He did use parts he had laying around, but all the major things he accounted for them at a market rate. Electronic equipment, yes, fair, this particular build he said the weak point was the electronic equipment and motor driver theory needed, (no different than a welder or wrenches not being included in my opinion), which is why he's moved to repurposing hybrid inverters and idiotproof drop-in replacement boards in the years since.

But I'm fuzzy on it since it's been a couple years. I enjoy budget builds so I'll review.

Do note, don't follow this advice anymore, it's outdated and there's better/cheap/simpler strategy to follow now.

Here's the playlist:

1000eu is roughly $1250 USD. He wanted 70mph max speed. 40 miles of practical range (not all 70mph, mixed driving).

Context is important.

- Car: 200eu ($250 USD). 1996 Diesel BMW E36. He bought the cheapest one in the country. 240,000 miles. The Diesel engine was quite aged (it drove). Pretty thrashed and stank of sheep manure. It needed a half-dozen little repairs to pass inspection (just automotive things the car already needed). He had to rip out all the diesel stuff obviously. I've always found this a bit silly to include the cost of the vehicle, because it comes down to how good you are at buying cars. Ditto for selling the parts you removed from the car to help recover some/all of the cost. Otherwise, I think it's cheating, the car needed a bunch of little stuff that would've added up (shifter knob, wiring bits, bulbs, shop supplies to fix some rust, etc). I'm not sure what he's actually counting for the net car cost. I never consider this part of the build, even though he considered it part of the challenge and did include it.

- Battery: 600 euro ($750 USD) for a Chevy Volt pack, normal price from a junkyard at the time. Nothing special about his connections, this was also true in the US as well, there were LOTS under $1000 for the pack all over the country. I was regularly linking people the junkyard database here, there were dozens available at any given time. Since then though the price of Volt packs has doubled as word has gotten out how undervalued they were. He also mentions, if you can't, then okay, use half a pack and sell the rest, you'll get half the range. (He buys two Volt packs for the price mentioned, but ends up saving them for a different build and wiring something else temporary(?) instead, but no reason that doesn't count).

- Motor: 100eu ($125 USD). Damien got 10x DC forklift motors for literally free, just by cold calling and asking every junkyard in Ireland. A few replied and said "Yeah there's a pile, come help yourself." But he said in context it has to be reasonable for anyone in any jurisdiction to find something similar, specifically that it not be something he has access to because of his connections or inventory. I've heard of maybe 1 or 2 people who struggled to find a forklift yard that would give or sell them a DC motor, and, like, dozens to low hundreds who said they found one no problem, for scrap value. It's the largest thread on the forums here. So to be fair, he budgeted 100eu ($125 USD) for an average cost to find a 9" DC motor. However, he's mentioned recently that things have evolved and he would go with a Prius drivetrain now.

- Controller: Under 100eu ($125 USD). DIY P&S Controller. Or that was the plan, then he went with Tony Bogs (there's a thread here) controller for even cheaper. But this requires shopping around for deals on IGBTs and other component bundles for the power stage. But no special contacts, just ebay. However, he's mentioned he'd use a Prius controller if he was doing this over again.

- Power steering: 12v Opel Zaphira B, best and cheapest. 50eu ($63 USD) including shipping, eBay, he gets them all the time at that price. It's 26eu for the pump plus fittings and misc, so he rounded to 50.

- Adapter plate & coupler: 10eu ($13 USD). Hand-made from 20mm aluminum plate and woodworking tools. Bought an off-cut from a CNC machining shop. Just called and asked for something roughly that size that had been scrapped because it had mistakes somewhere in it that he can work around. Normal for shops to have oops pieces to buy. Said otherwise it would be 100eu for a plate that size brand new. Adapter is just welded gears from either side.

- Motor mounts: Scrap steel. I don't think he counted anything for it. It's a couple bucks of scrap if you have literally none around.

- Tacometer sensor:

- Charging cable, battery cable, 12v power cable: 10eu ($13 USD). Junkyard offcuts, mains cables pieces, multi-core (5?) rather than monolithic larger cable.

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Around this point in the series, the documentation of the build starts to fall aside a bit as he gets into a rush, needs the vehicle done and gone so he can work on his 2 gas cars that needed repairs, he's already moved onto the better solution for a low-cost EV, started teaching EV conversion courses, I think he gets married, etc. I don't think it's disingenuous, he just had a million things on his plate. The cost tracing isn't as methodical, and parts start getting set aside for other builds, etc. Meanwhile the forums here fell apart and were down for weeks, the transition to new forum software was botched, him and Johannes put together the openinverter forums to replace them, etc. The series also has no overarching concluding video that reviews what was done and for how much. He's a busy guy and got particularly busy towards the end of the build.
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- Controller Components: Are these included in the 100eu cost of the controller mentioned earlier? I can't tell. I think he got distracted sinking into the tutorial of building a motor controller and didn't list the cost. Heatsink, IGBT half-bridge modules run at half voltage half amperage, simple driver board (he makes and sells), bus bars, current sensor, giant capacitor. You also need an oscilloscope, power supplies, waveform generators, etc... which he's said has been the least realistic part of the build, and is why he says the meta for cheap DIY EV has changed in the years since he's done this, and come up with new tutorials and different components (reusing hybrid inverters) that skip past all this. He's also not counting welders and wrenches and other shop tools in the cost, so it's fair to not count the electronic tools either, but it does make the build significantly more intimidating the way everyone use to have to do this with a DIY controller.

- Control box: Re-used some scrap sheet metal box, contactors, fuse, fuseboxes, 12v relays, 10" fan, precharge resistor. Did these come with the volt packs he salvaged? No cost listed.

- Temperature/Voltage gauges: No cost listed. This was just to demonstrate that fan cooling was sufficient, and no liquid cooling was necessary?

- Cabin Heat: 15eu ($20 USD). Auxilliary PTC heater from a BMW E87. 12v DC, 1200 watts heat. Heater control - 6eu ($8 USD) for one he had to repair, but doesn't, you just connect ground to 1 pin. Not sure what it would cost for a normal one.

- 12v charger: Temporary?

- Charging plug: 8eu ($10 USD) standard housing connector, standard extension cord, onboard charger.

- Charger: Never tells us. It gets temporary?? "Coming soon" video about the replacement,

- Pre-charge controller: No cost given. Little 4 component DIY circuit. Few bucks maybe. Shipping would cost more than parts.

Things he's not accounted for that I saw:

- Electronics, I think he's low on the cost. There's tons of bits and pieces that he doesn't say whether that's included in the cost or not. Maybe as much as a couple hundred dollars worth.

- BMS, did he re-use the original on the Volt? I know he's said he does not subscribe to the religion of skipping a BMS, so I presume it's in there somewhere.

- DC/DC converter, doesn't say what he used, or if he just ran an inverter to power a 240v normal charger.

- Speed pedal: Maybe the original one was already electronic and worked fine?

- Power brakes: Did the vehicle not need them? I missed where he added a vacuum pump if they did.

...

The only conclusion video he has is the final video in the series after a year gap, where he talks about how the budget DIY EV paradigm shifted underneath him during the build itself. He does say that yes, he did build it for around 1000eu (looks me to like ~1100eu + misc but he cheated a little bit (I suspect most on the car repairs for it to be safetied), but that the point was that cheap budget builds are certainly possible.

Part of why the build devolved into barely-filmed chaos and why the "I'll document this later" followups never happened, was because there was no point in documenting/tutorialing it because he'd already invented better ways of doing it. He reverse engineered hybrid controllers that were vastly superior, cheaper, and easier than building your own, and build the drop-in replacement boards for the OEM ones. I think part of why the charger was never revisited was because that too was something that the hybrid controllers could be repurposed to provide.

He says that all the things he did to beat the cost down, manual gearbox, DC forklift motor, DIY controller, etc... are all obsolete at once.

Nobody has built a roadable and useful EV conversion of a car for $2000.

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Certainly, yes, I'd say Damien did, including the cost of the car. Under the $1250 USD that he initially spec'd, no, I think if you add up the misc bits it's going to push a bit past that. But certainly under $2000, inspection passed.

If you want to spend many hours watching videos you can determine exactly how Damien got his claimed €1000 cost, how far it is from reality, and how different your situation is from Damien's; I've never thought it was worth spending that kind of time.

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So, I just did. Watched the whole series just now at 400% playback speed.

The biggest way it devolved from a layperson's reality was in the DIY controller struggle. Not even so much a cost element, (though there's probably a couple hundred dollars difference there) as a, you'd be lost if you weren't an engineer. Which is the thing that is now obsolete with the switch to hybrid controllers.

That and, I don't know that there are any OEM batteries are cheap as they used to be 2 years ago. Everything's averaged out a bit more.

The rest seemed simple enough for a beginner to succeed at, parts available for the prices he paid, etc.

Keep in mind just how little battery pack is needed for the OP's specs. It's a Spitfire going 50mph for 25 miles. Call it 200 watt-hours/mile, that's only 5kwh. 10kwh if you want the upper end of his hoped range. I think that's doable in the ballpark of $2000, half of that being battery that you don't have to shop especially hard for.

Anyway my two cents.

I think the thing with a budget build is that the project becomes the budget, not the car. If what you want to do is scrounge and hunt for cheap parts, you could probably do it for very little money; but you might wind up with very little car. I am sort of curious how many miles that often-mentioned 1000euro car ended up driving? Did he go on to use it every day since then, or did he move on to something else?

If you are more interested in the car side of things, its going to cost a lot more. Performance, range, and ease of integration of components will all drive up the price. If you want to buy off-the-shelf and as nearly plug-and-play parts as available, you might be looking at more like 10,000 to get your modest range requirements. If you were willing to scrounge a little bit, you could probably shave several grand off, but 2000 would be extreme.

OR-Carl said:

I think the thing with a budget build is that the project becomes the budget, not the car.

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That's quite astute. You will spend a lot of time searching for deals, making phone calls, etc, versus just buying a kit or from a list of products. The challenge is as much budget as car.

I am sort of curious how many miles that often-mentioned 1000euro car ended up driving? Did he go on to use it every day since then, or did he move on to something else?

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He has something like 4-7 EVs in progress on a continual basis. I think it's fair to say he's built dozens of EVs over the last decade, many very close to this one, to the point that he wasn't doing anything new on this, he was referring to "I bought this one, same kind I always buy" routine. Often they're given away or sold or they were someone else's car that he wanted as a demo conversion because he was excited about doing something a particular way or whatnot.

The car he commuted to work in for tens of thousands of miles was the same thing, forklift motor and OEM batteries. This particular build wasn't bleeding edge type stuff for him, it was just a little bit of extra stress on cutting budgetary corners.

Lately all his builds have been unique things for proof of concept. To shut up the naysayers, show it can be done, and then pass it off to someone else to monetize.

That said, he still has it, and I think he's intending to revamp the project with the new meta of recycled hybrid components.

Is there a part of the build you're skeptical of?

If you were willing to scrounge a little bit, you could probably shave several grand off, but 2000 would be extreme.

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I think $4000 would be trivial for someone who's already going to be removing an engine and doing the rest of the work. It's just not that complicated.

$2000 is a challenge itself, you would find fairly cheap components that would work, and then not buy them considering "I can probably find something half the price and make it work."

Batteries especially, can go out and buy a battery pack right now, selecting randomly, for $1000 that meets his requirements. Motor, probably. Controller, sure, someone just sold a Zilla for $700. Boom, done, DC controller, no fiddling. Don't want to use any tools? Drop off the motor and transmission and pay a machine shop $500 for an adapter plate, save yourself an afternoon.

I don't think anything above $4000 is even reasonably possible without paying someone to actually do it for you.

Thanks Matt, for an excellent review, and confirmation that Damien didn't really build an EV for €1000 and that there is zero chance that anyone's first conversion today can be reasonably done for $2000, honestly accounted. I sincerely appreciate being spared hours of watching the "€1000 build".

There are classes of racing with cost limits, including famously the Grassroots Motorsports (magazine) sponsored $2000 challenges. None of the entered cars are plausibly within the budget, and build stories are full of "this guy was just giving away these tires" and "the BMW only cost $500 and the parts we didn't need sold for $500". It's all nonsense, and the cars are junk. It's a fun game if you're into that, but it's not the answer when someone new to racing asks "what does it cost to build a race car".

Most people do not account for the cost of their hobbies accurately, if at all. That's understandable, both because the hobby is not a business activity (it isn't justified by net financial position), and because seeing the real cost would likely make the hobbyist unhappy. That's too bad for new people, because it means that there is no history of project descriptions and costs to use as the basis for a reasonable estimate.

I worked with a guy who made furniture for a hobby. He had built and entire dining room set (table and chairs) of nice wood, and someone remarked that he must be happy with how much money he had saved. He replied that the actual cost of the project, without labour but counting the expensive wood stock and other hardware and supplies and the fact that every project involved buying one more tool for the shop, was certainly higher than buying a comparable ready-made set... and that's okay, because it was a rewarding hobby, not a way to save money.

brian_ said:

and confirmation that Damien didn't really build an EV for €1000

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I'm not confident that he didn't, I suspect he was within the amount that he counted for the vehicle cost, which I think is silly.

and that there is zero chance that anyone's first conversion today can be reasonably done for $2000, honestly accounted

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I'm not sure I'd agree with that either. You say "first conversion", as if someone's second or 10th conversion would be any cheaper, which means it seems you're thinking that there's a significant amount of using parts "just laying around". While Damien did that a bit (for example, his motor), he did include it in the cost. And lots of things he would have had laying around, he didn't (cabling, etc he went out and re-sourced and paid for).

And more so, the things I think he didn't account for (misc electronics) are things that you wouldn't be paying for in a more modern build.

It's... close. You can't go buy it all off the shelf, you're buying second hand and ebay parts, but I don't think that invalidates a conversion build.

I sincerely appreciate being spared hours of watching the "€1000 build".

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The first half of the series is solid content. The second half becomes almost just a vlog of what he's done since, or going to do next, without any of the work being done, and then there's probably that much material again that's just... not there at all for the conclusion.

I watched it as it came out a few years ago, it was interesting watching it again with the context of what I know now and what has changed since.

None of the entered cars are plausibly within the budget, and build stories are full of "this guy was just giving away these tires" and "the BMW only cost $500 and the parts we didn't need sold for $500". It's all nonsense, and the cars are junk. It's a fun game if you're into that, but it's not the answer when someone new to racing asks "what does it cost to build a race car".

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I'm familiar with that, and I don't think that's a fair comparison or a similar situation. He specifically wasn't doing the "Oh well I just had this motor laying around, we'll count that as $0..." game.

The series diverged from meticulous documentation into it being an afterthought, so the details are missing, but I don't think they were obscured to meet a goal. It was obscured because he was too busy and didn't even have time to film the last half of the project.

A friend of mine used to do $500 races every week... which is a true entry-level beater race. The rule there to keep everyone honest was "I hope you only spent $500 max on your car, because anyone in the audience can buy your car for $500 after the race." You slip in a bunch of "gifts" or other shady accounting... you'll be the one giving them away to someone else.

He said him and his friends had their cars bought out from under them every week because they usually did quite well... but their strategy was "Buy a car that needs work, not parts, put the work in to fix it", and thus, even without truly spending more than $500, they'd definitely end up with a better-than-$500 car. I think towards the end they started cosmetically wrecking the car before the race, big scratches and spraypaint and such, just so people wouldn't buy it as a cheap running commuter vehicle.

Then they started having competing teams buying and racing their older cars, putting in no work where, him and his friends were scrambling to build a car every week. All in fun, you don't join $500 challenge races if you don't enjoy the chewing gum and duct tape aspect of working on budget cars.

And, same with EV conversions... if you're saying "If I can't do it for under $2000, I would choose not to do a conversion, that's just too much for a hobby, is it possible?", then I'd say yes, it's possible, but you know you're going to be working hard to meet that budget. If you're saying "I would be okay spending $4000, I'd rather spend $2000 to get a little less, can I get away with $2000?", then I'd say you need to sit down and think about whether the build is fun or just the result is fun.

You have 3 types of DIY EVers I figure:

1 - Environmental braggarts, rub in everyone's faces that they're not driving "gross, smelly, polluting, poisonous engines" and that their cars were powered by solar unicorn farts. A vanity with a green energy pun was mandatory.
2 - Poor penny pinchers or offgridders who wanted to be free of paying for gas forever and have almost no budget.
3 - Racers, who were performance-minded and wanted to try out new technology that could do different things in different ways.

In earlier EV days, there were lots of poor penny pinchers and a few environmental braggarts. Only a rare few racers. And they almost all bought the same parts and went with the same solutions.

In modern times, the DIY scene has shrank because the OEM options are plentiful. There's far fewer penny pinchers and they're not as poor, they're just long term thinkers. The braggarts aren't really bragging anymore, they've merged with those that want to save money in the long term, but they're out buying new or second hand OEM EVs. Racers and those performance-minded are still a minority but have grown significantly as OEM parts are available and it's more trendy. These all have wildly different solutions nowadays, so it's more important to figure out what your goals are and why you're interested in EVs.

every project involved buying one more tool for the shop

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Yeah, that's a tricky one too. Because, obviously anyone starting from scratch is going to need to buy tools. You need a wrench and ratchet set. Should that be part of the cost of "I want to do a conversion, what could I do one for?"?

Jackstands and a jack?

Gas money to drive around town shopping for parts?

Admission to the junkyards?

Long distance charges on your phone bill talking to suppliers?

What if on a $2000 conversion you buy a $5000 lift for your garage, because you want to do a lot more car projects in the future? It wasn't necessary for the project at all, but it was spent on it. What if he didn't buy jackstands and a jack and ramps, because he bought the lift? Now he's saved money he would have had to spend. Does he have to account for the imaginary jacstands/jack/ramp that he didn't buy, that he would have had to, had he not spent $5000 on the lift?

In my mind, basic tools shouldn't be counted as you'll own them for life, but, something like an oscilloscope and power supply, that, realistically no one doing an EV conversion is going to suddenly pick up an electrical engineering hobby, should be counted. That was the most unrealistic part of the build. Okay, pick up a heatsink at a junkyard for $2, pick up an IGBT brick for $20, pick up relays for $1 apiece, sure. You're on your way to a very low cost speed controller. Now go use $2000 of eletrical engineer diagnostics tools to tune waveforms out of your scrap parts. Which, again, is why in the years since, it's moved away from this to "I have a soldering iron and a multimeter", even doing board assemblies from scratch you can do it with $3 tools, or, buying pre-made swap-in boards for cheap that only require allen wrenches.

brian_ said:

After a dozen conversions, a builder should know

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Hmm, good points, I hadn't considered the lost cost of stuff you shouldn't have bought.

Even Damien apparently still can't complete a single build without changing course at least once.

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He's a special case... he's the one engineering the new solutions.

All the hybrid reverse engineering that's come around in the last couple years is the result of him working on this project and saying "Hmm, what we really need is..." and then getting sidetracked improving the DIY options and technology.

I'm going to start paying more attention to just how many things people buy that they change their minds on. I'd considered the reverse almost, that people really get locked in, and 5 years later into their on/off build, they're still shopping for antiquated componentry. People who spec'd battery types that no one's used in 5 years, buying someone else's abandoned project parts, and paying astronomical prices for them because that's what they measured their battery boxes for originally. Stuff like that.

brian_ said:

I think that in any kind of project there's a lot to be said for putting in substantial planning effort, then committing and executing without delay.

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It's the unknown unknowns that'll get you. Gotta blunder through.

I would suggest really to anyone to buy their batteries last. Almost no one (except he snowmobile guy) gets a project done quickly. There's almost always "life happens" stuff that turns a quick project into a 5-year project. Heck, I'm 2 years elapsed into my "summer project" and it's my 3rd EV. It's been shelved for 6 months twice now. I haven't even started the EV stuff because I'm discovering all the unknown unknowns about class car restoration. Turns out driveline that I get to skip, is only a small part of that.

I suppose the only thing worse than someone spending $10,000 on antiquated batteries, is spending $20,000 on them 5 years ago when they were new and them sitting in their own garage rather than someone else's. Let alone the discount, at least you get free storage .

Your controller will still be relevant and not that much cheaper in a few years. Your engine-removal is just as good any time. Your wiring and brakes and such is not going to change or change in price. But batteries, just plan on doing "something" and then go buy and place them when you're actually ready for batteries.