Chickamauga Teen Builds Own Electric Car

The 1983 Honda Civic sitting in the Glenfield driveway might not look like much.

The hood is off, it has wires all around it, And the tank's on empty.

But for 17-year-old Matt Glenfield, it's his baby.

"I converted it to all-electric power and i've put in a 48-volt golf cart motor," he says.

Matt has made a hobby out of sprucing up old golf carts and selling them on eBay. Putting one in a car, he says, was a challenge, but one that's paid off.

"Obviously it doesn't have a gas engine, so it's not air polluting or anything. And it just drives just real smooth an easy," adds Matt.

We wanted to see for ourselves how well this electric car handled the road, so Matt took us for a ride. It's certainly quiet, but it also, as he noted, quite smooth.

It's powered by six 8-volt batteries and a 12-volt auxiliary battery for the lights -- and it's street legal and insured.

His mom says his love affair with cars has been going on a long time.

"Ever since he was 3 years old, he's been interested in old cars, techniques. He wanted collector cars and he'd take them apart. He would complain that they weren't made right...the little mirrors would break off on them," says Gail Glenfield.

Matt's car only goes up to about 35 to 40 miles an hour, but he says he's going to be souping the car up even more to make it faster out on the road.

"I definitely plan on upgrading it some more," he says.

And he sees a bright future...once he gets out of high school and gets his degree. "I might work for VW, I'd like to do that. I might just stick around here," he says.

But between now and then, his mom says he's got more immediate concerns.

"Right now, he wants to build a 40x60 building with a lift, so he can get it done, get his production going. he has big goals," she says.

Big goals, at a young age, but with calls across the nation for new ideas, this able innovator has nothing but a bright future on the road ahead.

Matt is not offering his services for sale, and his customized golf carts can be found on eBay under the user Xtreme Cartz