Here you’ll find more information on how Leen de Bodt became the allround expert on Zero Emisson Vehicle Parts that he is.

Leen's background involves:
- having his own garage in Gouda, the Netherlands, working with regular vehicle technique, incl. making special adaptions (this for example);
- knowledge of vehicle safety, including Dutch regulations;
- working with power electronics, design of power supplies and redesign of UPS systems (up to 128 cells);  
- having a reliable webshop and matching technical specs to the needs of the client.

Early years
From his technical vocational education on, Leen de Bodt has been interested in petrol engines (his first love was the Zundap KS50) and in power electronics. In 1990, when Leen was 16, the first calculations for an electric car with Lead-Acid batteries were made.

Working experience with power electronics
Leen started working for Thales Special Products (formerly known as Holland Signaal, after a management buy-out the company was called Brookx) in Zoetermeer, the Netherlands. At TSP Leen had extra (internally and externally) training, like the complete course on Analog Technique at the Haagse Hoogeschool and a part of a masters training at the TU Eindhoven concerning Power Electronics (mini-vermogenselectronica). Because of his work at TSP with military UPS systems he’s an expert in power electronics and installing battery cells in series.

Moving from electronics to cars and starting a business
As a hobby Leen was occupied with building and adapting 2CV’s. Due to cheap hardware from abroad he stopped at TSP and retrained to become a vehicle testing regulations expert ( in different languages also known as: APK, MOT, TÜV, CT, etc). In 2005 he started his own garage: Leen APK. Around this time he owned his first electric car: a Berlingo Electrique.

Becoming 123ignition dealer and making first electric vehicles
Leen’s electronic background convinced him about the superiority of 123ignitions and he started to be a dealer with his own webshop in this. Together with Albert, the head-designer of 123ignition, Leen started to experiment with building electric cars. This resulted in the first road-legal Dutch 2CV with an electric engine, the 2Cvolt in 2009 . At this moment (2011), two Zero Emission Vehicles have been built and made road-legal, and the work on three other ZEV’s has been started.

ZEVparts as natural cumulation of diverse expertise
During the designing and building phase of these projects it was noted reliable, and even more important, realistic advice about ZEV parts is not easily found. Furthermore buying and getting the right parts delivered also turned out not to be that easy, which ment time-limits were often not met.

Believing in the new technique (which brings together almost all of Leen’s former work experience) he saw the possibilities of improvement and decided to start his own webshop in Zero Emission Vehicle parts, www.zevparts.com.