Where do I find the motor size specs, how do you power a 300 AC motor from batteries, and how many batteries does that take. That motor is huge compared to my 3hp Citicar motor.

All the white lines might be easier to mark out, if you had available a CAD system and parge enough plotter. With a CAD system, you could draw the "layout" full scale, plot it out, and use the paper as a "template" for the centerpunch points.

Too Amazing! Your videos are very well executed. Highly informative. Please, keep them coming. I am learning alot.

Wow great instructable videos!, i cant wait for the next video, ive just finished studying Mechanical Electric engineering (hell i dont even have my degree yet) and i really want to start building a small EV coupe little by little, i hope you keep making these videos. This kind of stuff is just the way into the next gen of transportation wishing u a successfull 2009 and good luck man!

heres a question why isn't any one buildin a hydrostatic ev?

dchall8 "Rather than using one motor and transmission, did you consider eliminating the transmission and using two smaller motors?..."

as to weather or not they considered it here's why it won't work, (for a better explination goto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_(mechanical_device)) becouse there wouldn't be any way to change the speed of the wheels individually, as is need when you try and turn a car. and even if you could, maybe with a computer, speed one up and slow one down, thousands of times a minute, you would need to write one hell of a program to run it, of cource if you did write such a program, the $100,000 that ford offered, and as far as i no is still offering, would weight the car down so much that it wouldn't be reasionable to have an ev.

Awesome videos, cant wait for the next ones.

Great series of videos, looking forward to more.

First of all thanks for going to the trouble of doing the videos and editing them. They are pretty good (and I'm a harsh critic of video Instructables).

I'm going to make all my comments for the first several videos here.

Starting with this video 005, never Never NEVER work from a drawing when you have the hardware. Always measure the actual holes in predrilled hardware and work from those measurements. Do you hear the faint voice of experience? Try breaking the studs out of a 60x60x6 inch concrete form where the studs were placed according to the drawing. We ended up re drilling the holes to fit. In this case I would find the motor shaft location relative to the mounting holes to ensure the motor was welded square (or whatever angle) to the mount itself. I believe your white marks made with the square will prove to be pure fantasy.
Also that measurement with the T-square against the plate in the front gives me the heebie jeebies. Assuming your weld is square, how can you be sure the front face of the transmission casting is square to the centerline of the transmission shaft? Surely there's an easy way to mount a laser pointer to the transmission shaft and measure the shaft extension centerline from that. Your copper pipe would probably hold a pointer. Spin the shaft and tweak the pointer holder until the laser marks a single spot on the wall. Then you can use the L-square to measure the height of the beam along the beam and thus ensure your motor shaft is aligned front to back, side to side.
Shouldn't you reinforce the 90 degree angle before bolting the weight of the transmission onto the mount? It is hard to see how sturdy that rig is, but I'm just sayin'.

Video 002
Again I question the wisdom of assuming the transmission casting has anything to do with being perpendicular to the shaft. If you know that then it's fine, but I would build this without that assumption.
If you were looking to shave some time off your video, I think anyone who would attempt this project already knows what a center punch is. Another way to locate the blind hole would be dye transfer or a putty imprint.

Video 001
I have to assume the motor manufacturer knows what he's doing putting that little keyway on the shaft. It just looks about the size of the keyway for the clutch on my 3 horsepower minibike. I guess it's really hard to tell the size difference once you zoom in on it. The key on my minibike caused more problems than any other part in the power train. If the motor comes with a spline shaft, I would opt for that.
Rather than using one motor and transmission, did you consider eliminating the transmission and using two smaller motors? Then you would run the CV shafts from the motor to each wheel with smaller versions of your coupler. Since there's U-joints on the CV shafts you don't have to worry nearly as much about alignment.
And I must tell you that if you had chosen to use two motors, I would have asked this question the other way, so I'm just looking for the rationale for your choices. It sounds like what you are doing is common practice among hobbiests.

You might also emphasize the importance of squaring your square if you are going to rely on it's squareness. L-Squares easily get out of calibration for square.

Awesome!! Can't wait for the rest!