DEVILS LAKE (AP) - Wayne Sharbono said that when he first considered building an electric car, about the only person who took him seriously was his wife, Michelle. Everybody else had a different reaction.

"They just thought it was really ridiculous that I'd be doing something like this. … Now that I've got it built and I'm running it, now everybody thinks it's the greatest thing ever since sliced toast," Sharbono said.

The high-pitched whine coming from Sharbono's 1991 Geo Metro has turned more than a few heads during his eight-mile commute between Devils Lake and his home.

Sharbono has been improving the car over the past couple of years. The total cost of the project was around $2,500, he said.

It costs about 3 cents per mile to run the car at current electrical rates, which gives him the equivalent of more than 100 miles per gallon, he said.

The electric motor driving the wheels, a starter-generator from a jet engine, is powered by 12 six-volt lead-acid batteries, providing a total of 72 volts of power. A 12-volt battery powers the original electrical equipment in the Metro, such as the turn signals and headlights.

The top speed of the car is about 65 mph, though Sharbono said he generally travels about 55 mph to avoid straining the batteries. He has driven up to 20 miles on a single charge, but said the car is capable of going about 40 miles before it must be recharged.

Sharbono works for the Devils Lake street department during the day, and at his small engine repair business at night. He's a veteran of do-it-yourself projects, including a boiler rigged to heat his shop and home by burning lignite coal.

Using plans he found on the Internet, Sharbono said it took him about two months of on-and-off work to complete the car. He bought the parts he needed online and fabricated what he could in his shop to keep the costs down.

"The hardest thing was doing the conversion on the electric motor, getting that to fit into the transmission," he said. "They do sell adapter kits out there, but I was too cheap to buy one, so I just made my own."

With a stick shift and a top rpm of 8,000, the Metro sounds like a giant remote controlled car as Sharbono flies through the gears and gets it up to highway speed.

"It has enough power to spin the wheels in first gear," he said.

Sharbono installed a heating system made from two hair dryers powered by the 72-volt main battery pack. The switch is not heavy enough, though, so he still has work to do on it.

He also would like to install a gasifier to run his pickup by converting such material as coal or wood to power that drives the wheels. Then, he said, he could pull up to a garbage dump and throw anything that burns into the gasifier.

The high price of gasoline was one of the reasons Sharbono originally built the electric car. He would like to someday put up windmills to help generate the electricity to charge it. He's also thinking of installing solar panels on the Metro to help charge it on a sunny day.

The biggest obstacle to making electric cars more mainstream is the desire for speed, Sharbono said.

"We all want our high-powered cars. We all want to go zero to 100 mph in less than 5 seconds, and that's the biggest problem," he said.