Remember The $5,000 Rich Rebuilds Mini EV? It Was Cheaper Than That Dec 14, 2020 at 7:44am ET ++ It required some upgrades but selling its parts brought the price down. When we started following Rich Benoit’s newest electric project, we called it a budget EV conversion. Although that is technically correct, we feel that it deserves to be corrected. What Benoit did was recycling a Mini that would end up in a junkyard by giving it an electric soul. It had the goal of costing $5,000. Now that it is complete, we are happy to say it cost way less than that. Benoit had to make some changes, such as getting a more powerful controller. He also stripped off the rear seats to place the second Chevy Volt battery pack there. Not only because he wanted to be able to swap batteries to compete with this Mini at the 24 Hours Of LeMons but also for a matter of safety.