Yesterday I wrote about chasing a crazy idea of mine. Gotta start somewhere though, and I have neither the money nor expertise to jump right into building cars for a living. Tackling building an entire car as a product is probably not a terribly good idea either – I may need to start with some type of component. I don’t know what that would be yet, but right now I think it’s more important that I start somewhere to get myself into the arena.
A few weeks ago I had the thought that building an electric Caterham could be an interesting project. It’d be a great way to learn the various subsystems, I’d have to do some proper engineering in order to do the conversion, and lastly I’d be getting my hands dirty and having fun. I fully admit that my wrenching capabilities leave quite a bit to be desired, so this’d be a good learning experience, no matter the outcome.
I’ll get to the car choice in a later blog post, but the decision I’m facing first is: Do I do this in my garage or rent a shop? Seems like a simple decision, right? Well I had enough conflicting thoughts running through my head that I figured I ought to suss it out properly. In order to make a good decision, I want to start with my goal. Ostensibly it’s to build an electric car, duh! There’s a bit more too it though – I want this to lead to something greater, hopefully clarity on the best path forward – I want this to be the beginning of something great, not just a dilettante wrenching in his spare time. Here are the notes from my notebook:
Pros for garage at home
- no commute!
- less expensive
- comfort and convenience
- easy for me to say I’m not that serious about this
Cons for garage at home
- Easily distracted
- Isolated
- might not take it seriously enough
Pros for renting a shop
- I basically have to take it seriously
- a place to go and focus – getting out of the house
- meet my neighbors and network
- benefit from neighbors’ expertise
Cons for renting shop
- lack of comfort and convenience
- more expensive
- I have to take it seriously
- fear that others will just say I’m delusional
The first items I can eliminate are those where I’m concerned about what I think other people are thinking (not necessarily what they’re actually thinking, just the fabrications in my mind) – these aren’t real and therefore useless in making the decision. Commute? Eh, not that important – it’ll be easy for me to avoid commuting hours and hopefully I’ll find a place within a reasonable distance. Comfort and convenience – things like A/C, available food, a place to take a break etc – I feel like these shouldn’t really matter right now. Cost difference – I’m estimating the delta between the options to be about $1300/month – not a huge number and not one that should dictate this decision – the car itself will be a large multiple of this!
When I look through what’s left and pick out what’s important, I’m mostly left with pros for renting a shop, especially when looked through the lens of what I want to achieve – namely I’ll take the project more seriously, it gives me a destination and place where I can focus, and I can meet people and gain from their expertise.
So there we have it – I’m going to rent a shop. I like this because it makes me a bit afraid and it’s more difficult. The decision hasn’t been made yet though – a decision hasn’t been made until resources have been allocated. Time to get working on that.