Newbie with a big project in mind
 

The title says it all…
Hi!
Soooo my name is Shannon, I'm a graphic designer, I live in CT and commute to MA to work, it is roughly 140 miles a day. When I started to have to do this trek I got rid of my paid off 2004 Jeep Wrangler for a 2010 (new at the time) Toyota Prius. With the added car payment plus gas, I immediately saw a savings of $200+/mo. (It was costing me $600/mo in gas alone in the Jeep back in 2009-2010).
But now fast forward to 2012 and my Prius has almost 100k miles on it in two years. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE this car, it's the best thing I have ever bought!
But there are times when I miss my Jeep (except when I drive past the gas station…) So my thoughts are to either build a fully electric or hybrid Jeep. Most likely I'd look into either a CJ or TJ model b/c they are the most stripped down with the least amount of electronics in them.
If anyone has taken on a venture like this and wants to throw me some advice I'd love to hear it.

Now I'm really good at following directions, learning new things, trying new things, wrenching on things, but no, I have NEVER taken on a challenge like this before...:)

You start a project like this by defining exactly what you want for performance and range. Then you calculate the sizes of all the components.

To put things in perspective, I did a rough calculation of what it would take to convert my truck to pure electric with a 100 mile range. The parts cost would exceed $50,000 and the empty weight would increase by 500 lbs after removing the engine and related systems.

I lost interest at that point, but it was a great thought experiment.

the jeep, or any suv for that matter has a high coefficient of drag so it will take a lot more power/energy to push it at highway speeds. you could convert the jeep to electric but (just a guess) you would need twice the power/batteries to move a jeep at highway speeds than your prius or similar.

Hmmm... .I wonder if there's another tack to this
Perhaps you could be the first person to build a Baja style prius! :D

I'm half joking here, but what features of driving the jeep were the most useful to you?
That might determine whether it's better to eco-mod an offroader or off-road mod an economical base.

Not a joke. A two wheel drive vehicle can do a surprising amount of offroading if it has 9 or 10 inches ground clearance and a driver that knows how to drive. And far less work than converting a vehicle to electric.