One thing to bear in mind when that converting ice vehicles to electric is that they are constructed with a vertical firewall between engine and driver with lots of protection around location of fuel tanks and fuel lines.
EV's are typically designed with a horizontal fire wall to protect the occupants from the batteries beneath them, which become unstable in a violent impact and often burn repeatedly. The centre of gravity in an ICE vehicle is very different to an EV. It is therefore arguably better to build some sort of EV kit car with a crate motor than to attempt to convert an ICE monocoque imo
We're (mostly) talking about classic car conversions for something like this. Safety is way down the list of concerns. If you prioritize safety at all, you won't even consider riding in a classic vehicle.
I don't see how the nuances of a battery fire vs. much more likely ICE fire would enter into any reasonable consideration.
Exactly. This is for converting that 1971 VW “Thing” that is a deathtrap just standing still. You would drive in a relaxed manner it from your garage to the nearest coffee & cars meetup on Sunday morning, then back again.
Nobody is buying these with the intention of building an electric hyper-car to use at the track.
Why wouldn't something like this crate engine be great for a Prius? The Prius has a 90hp ICE. Replace that with a 110hp crate electric and now you have more power in a 100% electric vehicle.
Yes they’re rare but they still do happen. Next time you’re making a long drive on the freeway, watch the edges of the road for blackened pavement indicating a car caught fire and burned to the ground in that spot. It might be more often than you think.
Most of the time a crate engine enters the equation there is some sort of hideously unsafe car waiting for it. Its safe to assume that if you are the kind of person installing a crate engine you have some sort of idea of what you are doing, and are capable of taking informed risks.
Your reasoning assumes people don't skip steps in the process of learning things. There are cliches to support my case. "Only knows enough to be dangerous" "More dollars than sense"
That itself is dangerous. You're basically discouraging someone from offering advice to the general public because you think the knowledge is generally known, but that's just not the case.
I have a general idea of what I'm doing but reading that comment changed my perspective of what is and isn't dangerous in a car and those dangers shift from ICE to electric.
IIRC the earlier work on roll-overs made the point that all cars have a resonate roll-over frequency that plays a part when drivers over correct a swerve. I wonder if anyone is taking a new look at that isdue. Also, whdn a bunch of combustion engines get displaced, what is therd to do with them beyond recycling the metal? Looks like the cost of these freed-up motors is about to drop. Motor futures; shorting anyone?
>That itself is dangerous. You're basically discouraging someone from offering advice to the general public because you think the knowledge is generally known, but that's just not the case.
And if you don't discourage it all discourse gets drowned out into a bunch of "hurr durr don't forget your jack stands" type virtue signaling (in the technical sense, not the politically loaded sense) about safety and you get Reddit. You can't please everyone.
It is a disgrace that Hart is suing the car builder.He had someone build a high performance show car and then allowed a friend to crash it. He is now wrecking everyone's right to modify and build cars because of his own stupidity.
Not to be rude, but you would have to be real thick to not understand how unsafe that car would be. I know it's a harsh thing to say, especially because Kevin Hart was seriously injured. Still, when you take risks, sometimes it doesn't work out.
One of my college professors said there are things that are intrinsically unsafe. Where layered defenses don't buy you much. A fuckup means a high risk of being injured.
>The driver, Jared Black, lost control of Hart's 1970 Plymouth 'Cuda while driving with Hart and Black's fiancé, Rebecca Broxterman, in the back seat. The car plowed through a wooden fence and careened down an embankment, where it came to rest in a heap.
Reminder: dont let your cool friends drive your race car. This is how Paul Walker died.
Paul’s friend was driving his own car, I forget where I heard an in depth about it but supposedly the tires on those cars went bad fast, and it was one of the first items they were driving it. Irresponsible, but in those conditions that car had essentially no grip, combined with a car that was legendarily known for being very difficult to drive on atleast 8+ year tires was a recipe for disaster
I had a car in storage one time and the tires looked great. I took it in for inspection and the guy was like "sorry man these tires are over 5 years old, I can't pass this". At first I was really mad, and then calmed down and realized that there was probably a reason why, so I went ahead and got new tires.
I am a mature and experienced driver and I drove FWD and AWD cars all of my life. On several occasions i stopped myself from buying a powerful RWD sports car .... just because of all the cases where (even experienced) drivers spin out and crash while taking "high speed" turns in poor traction conditions. I know that ill most likely push my car and not being able to control it - freaks me out! I cant even imagine giving someone else to drive a 700HP monster (with me not being in full control)!!!
The next car this (and other) shops build (if they survive the law suit) will come with a stack of "release of liability" documents for the buyer to sign. I 1000% guarantee that.
Its stupid on their part that they sold the car to him without release from any potential liability if he crashes the car or injures himself and others, like in this case.
> Its stupid on their part that they sold the car to him without release from any potential liability if he crashes the car or injures himself and others, like in this case.
It boggles me that anyone would have any expectation that the seller of a high performance car would be liable for the driver crashing it. It’s not like they didn’t know it was a beast of a car. What happened to personal responsibility?
It's a right hand turn and "locking the handlebars all the way to the left" wasn't trying to correct the "dumping" of the bike.
Locking the handlebars all the way left would hopefully have ensured the bike went down, stayed down and not sat back up again thus causing the "tank slapper". When you ride a bike, especially a motorbike you counter intuitively "steer left" to turn right, and vice versa.
Former sports bike rider here...until I bit the big green banana.
I was driving through the desert in my truck. I took a tight turn, probably a little too fast for my truck but it worked out. The driver in the performance car behind me wound up flying off the road. Because it was flat terrain he was fine and back on the road shortly. But I always wondered why my truck took the turn alright, and he had what could have turned in to a nasty crash. I guess the lesson here is, make sure to keep your tire tread in check.
Sports cars usually have stiff sway bars, which are generally better for high grip situations. Your truck, and rally cars will generally have less or no sway bars because in a hard off road corner, weight will transfer to the outside wheels which helps them bite into the ground and keep you on track. A car with stiff sway bars and suspension will slide out horizontally because the whole car stays much flatter in the corner.
More likely they tried to get into the throttle during the turn at the wrong place, or tried to brake during the turn when caught off-guard, both of which would upset the balance of the car and send you off the road.
Traction control (or intentional chassis/suspension design) might have saved them from oversteering (spinning out towards the road), but not been able to prevent them from going off the road
Speculation, but could have been: Going into the corner too hot, coming out of the corner too hot (throttle induced oversteer), or just not knowing how to drive...
I was once at an "open track day", and this group of kids brought a Nissan GTR and a Skyline. They couldn't drive these cars, there was a Miata out there that they couldn't keep up with. I never actually saw them out on the track, so all I have is second hand reports via stories that were making the rounds of the pits, but I do know they didn't stay very long.
Probably panicked and locked up the brakes. Most cars (even sports cars) are set up to understeer unless really provoked, on the basis that a frontal crash is safer than hitting something sideways.
I assure you there there are good machinists out there who will gladly take an 18 year old's money, so he isn't really helping anyone except getting some virtue signaling out of it.
No. Though he knew I could pay for it because the parts I brought in were expensive ones, and of course he wouldn't give me the result if I didn't pay.
Lol really? Guess what Kevin, building a fast car and not learning how to drive a fast car has consequences. I have a a 650 HP mustang, one of the first things I did was take classes on how to handle high horsepower vehicles. What an idiot.
The CG isn't likely to be considered in the sort of vehicles this crate engine is going into, it isn't usually even from the factory. This is a 100HP motor, most cars with a 100HP motor are far from a 50/50 weight distribution. :-)
I'm more concerned with integration with safety features like airbags. I'd love to do an EV conversion of some fairly pedestrian car with my daughter for her first car, but I'm likely to take a fairly pedestrian donor car, and even a couple grand is going to get a car with airbags that need to integrate with the various sensors (including, as I understand it, ECU and engine sensors) to say when to fire.
Which Honda Prelude? The H22A engine puts out more like 200HP. Not at all in this class. Grassroots Motorsports corner weighed a Honda Civic Si, still performance oriented, still way over the 100HP, and found 62% front loading. The Honda site lists the 2011 Civic Coupe as 60/40 and 140HP.
I imagine a whole ecosystem around the conversion process, with modular components designed to replace the functions not directly provided by the engine.
However airbags and similar systems may be too risky litigation-wise.
How is that any different than adding a fuel cell to an ice which has similar constraints? Couldn't an aftermarket battery pack be made that has all the requisite fire protection built into the case (again, similar to fuel cells)?
For electric conversions, Lithium iron phosphate batteries are popular in part because they're less likely to catch on fire if you puncture them, short them, overcharge them, or otherwise abuse them.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. In the future when battery energy densities are a multiple of current gen we'll definitely have gas tank form factor batteries for restomods.
Today the range would be pretty bad though, but probably fine for a classic car grocery getter or trailer/show queen.
That's actually something I'm working on right now. I'm trying to convert a Mazda RX-8, which has a weird gas tank that goes up and over the drive shaft. I think I can get about half my battery back where the gas tank was (which is right under the back seats).
I'm not sure where all the rest are going to go, but probably most will be in the engine compartment somewhere.
I could also use the space where the muffler was, but I'd have to make sure there's enough weight in the front of the car to offset it.
I suspect the aversion to a more blocky shape (higher volume/surface-area ratio), has to do with heat dissipation, which if I recall correctly, improves with surface-area.
EDIT: hence the flatter/thinner batteries we see in EVs.
That actually mostly doesn't matter for most batteries. Most EV batteries are actively cooled/heated with fluid moving inside. So the heat dissipation occurs in the radiator for the battery, not at the surface of the battery. We see flat batteries because sticking the battery at the bottom of the car helps with weight distribution and handling.
If it were possible to convert an old econo-box compact car to electric for a reasonable price with roughly the same sort of effort and knowledge as it takes to do an engine swap (which I can and have done several times) I'd do it.
I don't care about range beyond what it takes for me to get from home to work and back again, with the occasional stop at a super market and I don't care about performance beyond what it takes to properly merge into traffic like competent driver.
On the occasion that find myself in need of some other sort of car for some special purpose I can rent something appropriate for that.
The difference between this and a typical engine swap is that the car was never intended to be run this way. Are you planning on putting the batteries where the gas tank was? Will they fit? Will this have an adverse impact on vehicle dynamics? How are you going to manage charging these things? What happens if the battery pack ruptures? Is safety even a concern? Do you want regenerative braking? What sort of range is required? Does the fuel gauge show battery life or is it now useless? What about oil level gauge? Any other internal electronics? How are you going to drive an A/C compressor or is this no longer a concern either? Hydraulic/vacuum assist steering/brakes?
There are new problems to solve with this approach. It's certainly not going to be a straightforward process compared to a factory engine swap. There will probably be some body work involved. You will probably have to fabricate completely custom parts to get certain things to work together.
I don't see this as a reasonable solution for existing gasoline powered cars. It seems it's a much safer/cheaper/simpler/reliable option to purchase a vehicle designed from the ground up for an electric drivetrain and all of the nuances that go along with that.
> Are you planning on putting the batteries where the gas tank was? Will they fit?
No, batteries are larger. People tend to use the trunks for batteries, or convert pickups and put them in the beds.
> Will this have an adverse impact on vehicle dynamics?
It can, which most people deal with by placing the batteries carefully to maintain the same balance as before.
> How are you going to manage charging these things?
Most people put the charging plug where the gas cap was.
> What happens if the battery pack ruptures? Is safety even a concern?
Same as if your engine explodes. Safety is a concern in any car. Problems can happen in any car. Most DIY EVs put a cutoff switch, or even a main line you can literally cut right next to the driver as a final safety net in case of extreme emergencies. Better to kill the car than a person.
Does the fuel gauge show battery life or is it now useless?
Most people replace the gauges with new ones more applicable to the new information they'll need.
I know you had other questions, but it has been 10 years since I dabbling this space, and I don't remember every detail. But yes, there absolutely are new problems to solve. And people have been solving them for 20+ years now. There are books written on it, so if you truly want to know the answers, go read some of the books. Most of your questions either have easy answers, or are just a matter of making a choice between a few options.
The hard part is not putting together a working EV system. Most people's hardest task was mounting the motor to their transmission, because it often meant a custom designed, and custom machined mounting plate.
So again, you are correct that it is more than an engine swap, but not to the scale you are describing.
Funny how many folks wondering where to put the batteries, trunk seems so obvious after you hear it :)
Most people's hardest task was mounting the motor to their transmission
Seems like this product is trying to solve that problem. Sounds like a big upgrade from what is currently available to people interested in these type of projects.
except of course most trunks have load limits which batteries can quickly exceed.
I find it disappointing how quick they are to dismiss issues with ruptured batteries by falling back on "well gas explodes" not acknowledging the issue of environmental and personal danger batteries create that require special handling
sure you can cram batteries here and there but the reason for the skate board layout companies have adopted that is to have management of weight, ease of manufacturing, sufficient space for range needs, and more.
I was only dismissing the questions because the person asking the question was dismissing the entire concept of electric conversions, apparently unaware that they have been done successfully for many years. Besides, ruptured batteries aren't the biggest safety concern. Getting in an accident and having a giant battery fly into the back of your head is a much bigger concern. And most of the concerns are still going to come down to the same solution -- secure them well, maintain them well, and be aware of all the repercussions of their placement.
Gasoline has a whole host of issues, but as far as I know there have been zero recorded cases of a modern gasoline tank spontaneously exploding while the car is sitting undisturbed in a parking lot. The advantages gasoline has here is that it ultimately requires tons of oxygen with a consistent fuel-air mixture in order to combust reliably. Burning gasoline in the open is not nearly as energetic as the process which occurs in a gasoline engine under ideal operating conditions (which are controlled meticulously by a computer for most cars), so even in an accident which results in a fuel leak+fire, you usually have a bit of time to get away from the car before it turns into a complete inferno. Obviously, there are exceptions to this, but it seems to be in a majority of cases the driver/passengers can get out in time.
Battery packs do not have the same 'problem'. They have all aspects of their chemical energy available nearly immediately, and can go from zero to 'you are dead' in just a matter of seconds.
Yes, it sounds like a great upgrade. I may big deeper into this once it really is on the market, and do some more conversions if it comes through as described.
Depending on the car, that might not be a good idea as far as weight balance goes. I'm working on an RX-8 conversion, and the advice I got from a mechanic that works on Mazdas is not to put too much weight in the back, because it would make it much harder to recover from a skid.
> Most people's hardest task was mounting the motor to their transmission, because it often meant a custom designed, and custom machined mounting plate.
Canadian Electric Vehicles makes transmission adapters for a surprisingly large number of vehicles [1]. They come with adapters to attach a typical electric motor (1 1/8" keyed shaft) to the stock flywheel. So, that part at least is easy for quite a few cars (though could probably be done cheaper by someone with the right tools).
You're still pretty much on your own when it comes to mounting the motor/transmission to the car frame, but that's generally an easier problem that doesn't require as much precision.
Somehow I can't imagine driving an A/C compressor is high on the list of needs for classic mini owners. Or indeed, as also mentioned in the article, the owner of a Caterham. The Caterham has a kind of A/C that does not require a compressor, and since they are designed to be built from kits, I can't imagine the other things you mention will trouble them either.
I would just like to observe that all these sorts of belt or vacuum powered accessories (A/C & Heat, power steering, power brakes) now have all electric alternatives that can be mounted anywhere they will fit so packaging becomes a much more flexible proposition as compared to belt driven accessories.
Nice, I have one of those on order right now. (The high-voltage double-ended version.)
The reason I'm going with the double-ended shaft might be interesting to some people here who might be thinking of doing the same thing. The car I'm converting (Mazda RX-8) has a gear-like thing with a magnetic sensor mounted on one end of the crankshaft, and the ECU uses that to figure out the crankshaft speed and orientation. When people swap engines, they usually transfer that device to the new engine, so that the ECU is (sort of) tricked into thinking the engine is still there and it generates all the right can-bus messages to the rest of the car. I haven't tried this yet myself, but I gather that it's the easiest way to get the anti-lock brake system, the power steering, and the tachometer to work properly, and the extra shaft end gives me a convenient place to mount it.
The kind of engine swaps I'm familiar with use a wildly different motor, often requiring some fabrication to get everything to fit. And usually these projects have a lot of other DIY changes and junkyard parts. These are not pragmatic projects and things like safety, AC and working gauges are not necessarily a priority.
It depends. Many conversions are pretty well established these days (Like an LS into a Miata, or hell, an LS into just about ANYTHING) and there are off-the-shelf replacement wiring harnesses, ecus...
These problems only need to be solved once per type of car. A manufacturer could make the end design, new parts, a plan for mechanics, certification, etc...
>only need to be solved once per type of car. A manufacturer could make the end design, new parts, a plan for mechanics, certification, etc...
This is extremely costly to do. Why would a manufacturer ever do this? They want you going to the dealer for servicing. No way would they support DIY gas to electric conversion kits.
There also isn't enough money in converting econoboxes for performance parts manufacturers to do it, or if they did it'd be so costly that it wouldn't be worth it for most people.
Options are coming for niche low volume high margin conversions. These kits will probably cost as much as a new economy car. There is no way that gas to electric conversion will be available at commodity-like prices needed to make it an economical choice.
> It seems it's a much safer/cheaper/simpler/reliable option to purchase a vehicle designed from the ground up for an electric drivetrain and all of the nuances that go along with that.
Cheaper? Have you seen what electric cars retail for? How are you comparing this to the price of conversion?
I suspect they mean buying a used EV such as the last generation Nissan Leaf, which can be had for reasonable prices; I've seen pre 2013 ones for less than 6k.
I was under the impression the battery packs are where a LOT of the depreciation comes from, so that's not really a valid comparison unless it's used with a fresh battery pack.
Public transit has a great economic argument today for both reducing city emissions, monthly and repair costs, and having a great profile for harvesting brake energy. In many cases you can electrify via wire and save on battery costs. Consumer cars though? Still 100% a luxury. I imagine a lot of other parameters would factor into why you would electrify vs buying off the (still tiny) market other than price.
I bet you see these first used in bulk by people re-electrifying hobby cars + upgrading fleets of vans and taxis.
I think you are right. Looking at a new EV is probably going to set a Canadian back about 30,000$. That is a lot of money. But I do have a 2005 AWD Hyundai Tucson in my back yard with a blown engine but otherwise in really good shape. It would be a lot of fun to dump the engine and replace it with this. Something I could do in my spare time as it is just sitting in my back yard anyways. I don't think this will be huge that everyone will be doing it but I do think there will be a large enough market of backyard mechanics and the likes who find ways to use these.
Might as well just get a used Nissan Leaf, probably cheaper than you will spend on an econobox conversion. I bought a 2 year old one, at 19k mikes, for $8,500.
It'll probably start to level off once the ~250-mile range barrier has been broken. Based off conversations with EV owners I've had, anything above 200 miles seems to be the comfort zone where they genuinely don't feel range anxiety throughout their day. Manufacturers are getting close, but as it is, why would anyone want an 83-mile Leaf, when a 120- or 200+ mile one is available?
The answer is they don't, which is why you see the early-gen ones going for peanuts.
Which, honestly, is not a bad way to get in to EVs as a secondary car. They're nice on the inside, and if the range works for you, dirt cheap to operate. One of my friends recently picked up a few-years-old Chevy Spark for around $5k, and absolutely loves the thing. It's a great city car, and the low range is a non-issue for his needs.
The economic (and environmental!) option is going to be not to do anything. You'd have to do hundreds of thousands of miles to make up the energy and materials in the new drive train.
I looked at conversion long ago. It's an interesting thing to do, and if you underpower it and use a small battery, it can work.
But for less price, you can buy a used electric car that will be far better. More efficient, more range, more safety, etc, etc. So I just bought a used Volt (and now a used Leaf for our second car). I'm way happier than I would have been.
I'm hoping to upgrade to a used Tesla so I can take road trips pure electrically.
This reminds me of a Latin American startup, Exponential Motors [0], which developed a hybrid conversion kit. Not fully EV, but it can help to reduce fuel costs and CO2 emissions, and is not much more expensive than fitting a compressed natural gas tank to a car (a common practice at least in Argentina).
In Bolivia you have to get out of the car while fueling, because there's a nonzero chance the car will explode. We're a little too stringent about that sort of thing in the US.
How did you get to that number? The electrical load varies wildly depending on what you turn on and what you even have available on the particular car. The same car with the exact same electrical devices might have wildly different engines, down to the fuel used. How would that percentage apply to the whole range of combinations?
Just the seat heating would have a huge difference on the electrical load for 2 otherwise identical cars. The 10% can't be a constant.
> Additionally, the impact of auxiliary load on the overall on-road vehicle fuel consumption was determined to be on average between 7.5% and 18%. This shows the auxiliary load consumes a significant amount of energy during real world on-road driving as well as reinforces the importance of the potential energy saving improvements that could be made by improving alternator efficiency or reducing auxiliary loads.
VWs were the first popular cars for EV conversions. You've been able to buy conversion kits for them for well over a decade. The fact that this one may be coming directly from VW is interesting, but this isn't really a game changer in this niche.
While sticking a 110hp electric motor into a car might have some appeal, I am FAR more interested in putting it in a small plane. A Rotax 912 is roughly the same horsepower and a few pounds heavier. Using this electric motor as a replacement for that for short joyrides around the patch has real potential in the experimental / homebuilt crowd.
With the standard caveats of batteries and weight issues.
The energy density of batteries isn't close to good enough. Small personal aircraft have a _very_ narrow weight allowance - and do remember the FAA mandates a minimum of 30 minutes of reserve fuel.
I am surprised more mechanics aren’t developing conversion kits for their customers. It would be a good way to deal with the impending decline of ICE maintenance requirements.
Plus you’d think it would really scratch the gear head itches a lot of mechanics have.
It would create demand for car bodies that were well built and easily serviceable. I guess I just wish things were very modular.
It's probably because any good conversion kit would be highly specific to that car model, it'd still require a ton of work to cram in the batteries and do the entire conversion work and still cost a lot. What's the benefit over a fully electric car at that point?
I think there's a pretty good explanation why a lot of electric car conversions are hobby projects, where you don't pay for labour converting the car and the car is generally interesting for the person in order for them to eat the costs.
Mechanics are naturally curious, they figure stuff out through experimentation. One of the characters in the Electric Koolaid Acid Test, was Hassler. He kept the magic bus going. Or the NZ guy who set a land speed record on a homebuilt motorcycle. Or just about every NASCAR team in the ‘60’s. Motoring is full of characters like these, not formally schooled, but schooled in practice. You don’t need an EE, ME or any schooling at all, you need a willingness to bust knuckles, take things apart put them back again, take them apart, modify them and put them again over and over.
My father was a mechanic and a very good one. I spent plenty of time in the shop growing up. I saw him and his mechanic friends come up with some really ingenious ideas for how to solve problems. I am sure it is what inspired me to get my degree in computer engineering. What I never saw them do was create their own conversion kits and parts. Sure, there are few "mechanics"[0] out there who make stuff like that, but most don't.
[0] These people tend to have a mechanical design/engineering background to begin with.
You're mainly talking about the "old school" mechanics, not the more prevalent ones today who are mostly in it for the money and barely know anything beyond what their certification courses taught them.
Crate engines are a neat concept I only learned about recently. Suppose you bought some awesome old car from 70s and its engine was on the way out. What if you don't want to risk a junkyard buy? You get a crate engine, that's what.
Straight from the factory, ready to drop in a 50 year-old vehicle, and infinitely better made than they were back in the day. GM alone has dozens of engines available. They're not cheap--$8,000-$10,0000 isn't unusual--but what a cool option for a real enthusiast.
As long as you're custom building a car, Chevy sells the Corvette's engine[1] in a crate for $20k. Might also need to upgrade the transmission on a 50-year old car to handle it, but it's totally an option!
They also have the "Connect and Cruise" option that includes a transmission and a warranty. The E-Rod versions have a longer warranty and are CARB approved.
It depends, they are used to give very meaningful life extensions to cars that otherwise are already very expensive to keep in a working stater. If it drives another 10-20 years with minimal need for maintenance, it's very reasonable.
A few of the companies specializing in this type of conversions go out of their way that the conversion is fully reversible as well. In their view, putting the old motor back in should always be possible. Likewise, they anticipate similar upgrades will happen to the car again when new tech becomes available in a few decades.
A few car manufacturers (VW, Aston Martin) have started supporting these conversions as well for some of their classics. There's also an emerging market for converting non classic cars simply for cost reasons. It's usually the ICE bits in a car that break down. The rest could still go for another few hundred thousand miles with a new drivetrain.
My daily driver is a 2009 Citroën C1 ev’ie. Converted by a company in Denmark with a conversion kit from a company in England. Sold to a car rental company and then I purchased it when they sold it at an auction. It’s pretty interesting, fun to drive. Would recommend a conversion for people able to get their hands on it. I like it so much more than an ICE.
This highlights the commoditization of parts that will be part of EV market changes as well as the plug and play nature of EV assemblies. Massive changes to the current ways we build and maintain vehicles.
>It weighs only around 154 pounds and makes around 110 horsepower—a pretty decent number considering how compact this thing is, and that includes everything: motor, single-speed transmission, cooling system, and power inverter.
Yeah, includes everything. Except, you know, for the battery.
It's pretty amusing how little attention the article gives for the actual batteries. The fact that you can easily swap out the engine will do so much when you still need to figure out where to cram an array of batteries smartly and safely.
It's amusing how people are surprised by the fact that batteries are not included: you can't make one-size-fits-all-batteries because every car has differently sized areas and cavities where you might even safely fit them.
On the other hand, every single car has space for a motor like this, because they already have a motor like this.
If you're the kind of person who's comfortable swapping out entire engine blocks, then you're probably also the kind of person that appreciates not being forced into a battery configuration that doesn't fit your classic car/old timer.
If you’re performing a classic car conversion to an EV, you’re more likely to scavenge the powertrain of a totaled Tesla and install it into your classic car. These videos are numerous on YouTube if you want to check it out.
Tesla battery pack modules can be conveniently arranged to fit your space constraints once broken down from the pack.
> Dealing with salvaged EV drivetrains is difficult, with complex control and cooling systems.
Scavenging something from a dead EV is something a serious hobbyist might do for themself. Swindon's product looks like something a mechanic could use to do commercial conversions they could issue a warranty on.
Right. But the battery pack is the most important component, not the motor. Motors are relatively easy in comparison. It’s unlikely your mechanic is building battery packs, battery management systems, and then providing a long-term warranty for the entire system.
A superior value proposition would be a company selling battery packs that are easily configurable for any vehicle’s internal physical layout, along with support and a warranty.
Not in the slightest. Hobbyists will continue to perform conversions, everyone else is going to trade in their ICE vehicle for a purpose built EV from Tesla or other automakers. Consumers want an appliance, not a project car.
I agree. A Tesla makes a great starting point for experimenting.
However, I see the point that the grand parent comment is making.
It would be nice to see this crate fit into more cars.
However,
There is no need to reinvent the wheel.
I'd say for most cars, the batteries belong underneath the seats.
But as far as I remember, Tesla had to put a thick sheet of steel or something (titanium?) under the battery for safety in case you drove over something?
When we take the battery into consideration, I agree this rapidly becomes out of DIY territory.
Now we need custom batteries and custom metal sheets to protect them
but the idea of a common electric crate motor is still appealing
because the motor becomes a commodity
and it should help lower prices
I'm thinking someone should do this for a popular make and model that sold in large numbers like an old toyota camry.
> But as far as I remember, Tesla had to put a thick sheet of steel or something (titanium?) under the battery for safety in case you drove over something?
A sheet of titanium under the battery pack to prevent object intrusion. S and X also have a tubular barrier near the front of the vehicle to break debris down before encountering the pack shield.
> I haven’t found details about what sorts of battery packs it’s designed to work with, but ideally, it’ll be able to be adapted to work with battery packs from Leafs or Bolts or Teslas or whatever you can find in your local junkyards.
since you remove the fuel tank, the gearbox and the engine there are nice chunks of space. Someone should start working on modular battery packs that could be assembled to fit current space.
I don't think the fuel tank and gearbox in my car take up that much space when compared to the batteries in a Leaf or a Tesla. And you still need to put this where the engine used to go, so it's really a limited amount of space there as well.
A 15.5 gallon tank is 58.5 liters. A Tesla S/X module[1] is 15.84 liters for ~5.3 kWh. If you could cram every inch of space with batteries it would come to just under 20 kWh. Not that much, and it will degrade quicker because you'll deeply discharge it more often.
That said, you can generally just line your trunk with batteries. You can jam 5 in the trunk of most cars while only losing ~3.5" of vertical space. Its a good idea to leave several inches for the crumple zone, but it's relatively safe if they are properly secured.
The best thing to do would really be to raise the floor and get low-profile sliders for your seats, but that's a real hassle.
I'm still a bit iffy on the safety when it comes to the trunk. As far as I've understood, Teslas and the like have pretty good protection between the battery and you in case something bad happens. But there's not really that much of a separation between the interior and the trunk, like there is with the engine compartment with its firewall.
Hybrids have customarily placed their batteries at the forward-most part of the trunk for as long as they have existed. The packs are typically inside of metal housings and vented to the outside of the car.
For those extra concerned about fire or poorly designed packs, it's not difficult to add a rear firewall on most vehicles -- this is standard practice required by most motorsport organizations when adding a fuel cell to the rear of vehicles. "firewall" is just a fancy word for a compartment blocked off with a piece of sheet metal.
The Leaf is more of a golf cart with a compact car shell around it. Range is only 60-miles or so. You should be able to get that with a gas-tank sized battery pack in any compact car.
I've heard that cold weather combined with high speeds and a very degraded battery and running the heater can leave some of them with an effective range around 60 to 80 miles.
You don't even need to have high speeds or heater usage. 1st gen Leaf's have 60mi range pretty consistently just because of how small the battery was, and how degraded they are.
In general the Leaf seems to be a bad buy, IMO, just because they do not have any liquid cooling. I don't know why they think they can get away with it... but literally every other EV manufacturer decided liquid cooling/heating is necessary for operating... but not Nissan.
The thought of running wire between these chunks of battery to the motor, enough wire to carry that power, ... nope. Running 12ga and 10ga for stereos was hard work, running multiple spans of #00 for battery packs where the transmission and gas tank and whatever else used to be is not feasible. The insane fringe of hobbyists will do a few but most of them, even, will be using single, swappable commercial packs they cram in $somewhere.
Rather than thicker-gauge wire, how about going all-in on the crazy hacks and running thin little high-voltage transmission lines through your car, heavily insulated—like, undersea cable ratio of insulation to core—with transformers on either end?
I’d love someone to do an experiment where they set this up, then crash the car in a way that tears the cables up, and see how much everything arcs :P
For some reason, commercial EVs tend to have batteries that run in the 300-400ish volts range, whereas conversions tend to be more in the range of about 100 to 200 volts. Lower voltage means more amps which means thicker wires [1], which are kind of heavy and expensive but it's not generally a huge problem as far as I know.
If you don't give a shit about the fire hazard you could just strip the individual cells from a planar pack and shove them anywhere they will fit. Properly protected packs are gonna be chunky though, which will necessitate more space than would be available in the old European compacts this motor seems to be designed for
Though now since I think about it an unholy fire hazard would be in character for a vehicle invented before seat belts were a thing
Gas tank, trunk, engine bay, under rear seats, etc.
Important to consider:
* They don't all need to go in one spot. You can spread them around
* You don't need to use that many. These are classic cars that are likely trailered to go any distance anyhow. 80 miles of range to cruise around town is often more than enough.
Also worth considering: many of these classic cars are underpowered (especially after a few decades of wear & tear), have terrible handling, and not that much range to begin with. The EV conversion can address all of this. Apparently the art is in not overdoing it on this front and preserving the original character of the car. The best conversions are fully reversible if the owner chooses so.
Batteries unfortunately are expensive and heavy and hard to find space for in a car designed for an ICE.
So what I have been idly dreaming of is taking a classic car and making a very simple hybrid - use an electric motor like this, the smallest battery and gas engine possible, and only connect the motor and gas engine to the battery, not to each other, but only have enough battery to buffer acceleration needs.
Mileage wouldn't be fantastic, but you'd have electric torque and smoothness, and the gas engine could run at one constant speed as a generator.
Why you would need a constant speed engine, though? Railway engines do fine with variable speed industrial specification prime movers. Constant speed ratings are 30% lower than automotive grade ratings, too.
this is known as a "serial" hybrid, vs. the more common parallel hybrid like the prius.
i think these are really cool. one of the benefits is, as battery technology improves, you can eventually dump the ICE generator but keep the same exact everything else.
About eight years ago there was a flash in the pan company that was claiming to be in late development stages on a drop in replacement for the alternator. Combine with a small supercap bank, it was intended to turn any car into a mild hybrid.
What I can’t remember now is whether it simply stopped drawing power when you were accelerating, or if it actually ran as a dynamo when the throttle was open.
They kept posting updates for a while but I think they must’ve figured out that reliability was a much bigger issue than they initially thought.
>So compact is the 70kg HPD EV powertrain - 600mm wide by 440mm deep by as little as 280mm tall, that the motor, inverter, single-speed transmission and cooling system assembly fits under the bonnet of a classic Mini, in a quad bike or under the loading platform of a light commercial vehicle
I can see an utility of a (relatively) low cost version of something like this for a large part of services (think of repairmen/electricians/plumbers/small couriers) that could maybe make their vans "hybrid" without replacing them, and even if they wouldn't have that much of autonomy, it could be enough to allow for entering city centres on electric (at the cost of some reduced carrying load, lost to the batteries) and do the delivery/whatever without polluting there.
At least here (Italy/Europe) a lot of cities have pollution issues that they try to resolve by limiting traffic to vehicles older than a given Euro level or even entirely prohibiting ICE vehicles circulation.
That is a problem for a large number of small activities that cannot afford to buy (besides their current ICE one) another electric van for the city.
This sounds great for a small 4 cylinder vehicle - until you start thinking about most cars today only have power steering so a manual steering box isn't available. Then you need a 12V battery to operate most of the lights, speedometer, radio, etc. What do you charge this with? If you do a step down transformer there's more of your range eaten up. Then there's other power stuff: seats, wonders, wipers and roofs. More range bye-bye. Sounds like you would still need some other power source to make all of the modern creature comforts in a standard ICE powered vehicle operate.
Neat. But still going to require a bunch of custom machining to adapt to the existing drivetrain and engine mount, and will need a custom box for battery, designed around the car chassis; plus DC-DC converter, charger, and computer systems.
I love it, I was wondering when someone would come along with something like this. It looks like it's pretty well thought out. I am imagining a 356 speedster kit with one of these in it would be a ton of fun!
It seems like the cost of a kit including batteries would cost more than most of the frames youd build on..
If it were affordable, I could see standard kits for popular car models - like the Civic or the F150. Imagine an f150 with 6 inches of battery across the original flatbed and a new bed built on top.
But it isn't.
In hindsight, this is probably most useful for antique show-only restorations, where the restored car doesn't need a battery range of more than like 20km since it is just going to drive from the trailer to the show and back and maybe around the area a few times.
That's small and light enough to conceivably do 1 motor per wheel on off larger off-road vehicles. That controllable torque might give some advantages for crawling.
Would a motor be unsprung weight if not connected to the suspension? By reading that wiki, it looks like unsprung weight is basically wheels, tires, suspension directly supporting those things. The parent comment seems to be referring to putting two engines in the front, and two in the trunk, not necessarily above the tires (if that's even possible?).
The way I discovered one of my cars needed new shock absorbers was driving down a very steep hill toward the stop light crossing a busy intersection. The road was super bumpy and one of my tires kept losing contact with the road. I managed to stop but it was a much closer thing then I was comfortable with. Scheduled an appointment at the auto shop very shortly after that.
Going down an incline or around a curve without all four tires on the ground is terrifying.
It’d be just about right in a TR6 or a GT6 though. If your MG body is solid you might be able to get away with it but if it’s rusty, that torque could be bad.
There’s plenty of room under the hood of a spitfire for a bigger engine but I’d heard you have to upgrade the half shafts if you do as they’re the weak point. That and maybe weld some plates into the hourglass section of the frame. But they were around 100hp already.
The monobody on the MG might be okay if it’s not full of holes...
So it's almost doubling your horsepower, not to mention the full torque of an electric motor, which is to say you get all of your torque available from 0. A Midget with this 110HP electric motor would absolutely destroy your 65HP petrol engine Midget!
It weighs only around 154 pounds and makes around 110 horsepower—a pretty decent number considering how compact this thing is, and that includes everything: motor, single-speed transmission, cooling system, and power inverter.
They're hugely popular amongst auto enthusiasts. Not only do "race shops" sell crate engines, but most OEM's sell them too. For example, here are Chevy's offerings. https://www.chevrolet.com/performance/crate-engines
This would be interesting to swap out on a small farm tractor. Dont need much horsepower and the tractor frame is a beast. In fact you normally add counterweights in areas when doing heavy work
At first this didn’t land for me but i have a 35 hp compact tractor that i can work hard for hours on five gallons of diesel. Plus the pack weight would help with traction.
Same. I drive a truck just because I'm too tall for most cars, and even those that do fit hurt my knees to get in and out of(ride height). I don't even need such horsepower, just give me some old dog like the straight 6 f100 and I'll be set. I just hope they don't cost 75k or more like most of the 'more luxury' full sizes today...
A VW up! is spacious enough that 1.9+ m tall people don't have any problems, unless they are Americans, in which case everything smaller than a HD pick-up truck causes back pain.
I have one tall friend who drives here in the UK, and he has a Honda Jazz, because it's the only sensible right-hand drive car he can fit in comfortably.
I would be interested to know what models are popular in the Netherlands, where people are famously tall (and where, despite the propaganda you may have heard, people certainly do drive cars, especially in the more rural areas).
> And forget American trucks, even a VW Transporter or a Ford Galaxy feels way more comfortable imo.
I've had all three and the most comfortable car (IMO) I've ever owned was a Scion xB toaster -- tiny car with lots of head/leg room since it was designed with tons of vertical space in the passenger compartment.
I've always wondered why they didn't make a hybrid version with the Prius drivetrain, it just seems to make perfect sense?
I don't think they're saying they have to drive a truck as in it's impossible to drive a compact, just that it's more comfortable. I'm in this same position.
I have an SUV in the US because it's more comfortable, but my car in London is a compact because the streets are smaller and the taxes significantly higher.
In my experience most compact cars in the US are japanese/korean/etc. They traditionally have way different standards for acceptable leg room for drivers, but its getting better with newer models. Every German car I’ve owned lets me back the seat to where i can’t touch the pedals (im 5’11”).
Probably a difference in markets, and road sizes? I'd hate to drive a truck in many cities in the US let alone Europe. My last vehicle was an equinox, which has tons of room inside. I could have bought another one, but getting in and out of it is much harder on my knees than a truck. And the truck I purchased was cheaper than an equinox, and got equivalent gas mileage. Kinda a no brainer.
I heard an interview the other day with the president/CEO of a major northeastern ski hill. He said they have had to re-adjust their charlifts over time because of the increasing weight of North Americans. Average weight going up meant having to remove chairs etc. in order to balance them and keep them to safety spec.
Truly a gluttinous civilization. Growing up I never heard anybody complain about the size of their sedans (which were always bigger than the European median anyways.) But trucks and SUVs have taken over the market here. I'm sure most of it is marketing (you _deserve_ all this power and space, and why would you want to be _below_ all the other deserving people on the road?) but I guess some of it is comfort for larger framed bodies these days.
Personally I've never enjoyed driving a truck, and don't own one despite growing up rural and now living on a hobby farm.
Sizes of cars and apartments in Europe grow just the same over time as Europe is getting wealthier. In the most crowded cities there is some pressure for smaller cars as those are easier to park and get through tight spots, but SUVs now are the largest car category in new registrations in Europe, with over a third of the market, and is rapidly growing at around 20% YoY. This will take a while until it becomes very apparent due to large existing fleet, but make no mistake: Europeans like large cars just the same. Similarly, average numbers of square meters per person in Europe also keeps growing and growing over time.
The real reason here is that after subtracting taxes, social security and health insurance premiums in both US and in wealthy European countries, average American simply has much more disposable cash left, even in the poorest US states, than an average Frenchman, Brit or German. People like large houses and large house, and when they can afford those, they tend to buy them.
If it's 'most cars' then why not just buy one of the ones where you do fit?
I've never heard anybody here say that they bought a truck because they're too tall for normal cars and tied with the Swedes this is the country (NL) with the largest proportion of tall people worldwide.
Car options are pretty limited. Hands down Toyota makes the best cars on the planet in terms of value, reliability, and longevity. Unfortunately they have no options that are comfortable for me. Quality drops off a cliff for American created cars.
The US pickup truck market is incredibly competitive however. You can buy a truck that will last as long as a Toyota car and its large enough for people of big stature. I sold my last GMC with 275k miles on it, and literally everything was in working order except the lumbar adjustment on the driver seat.
They don't sell Hilux in the US. Comparable to a Tacoma I guess? Which is the "small" truck market, which is what I bought into if it wasn't clear. Not one of those 6 wheel HD5000 monstrosities...
Wow, really? That surprises me - I thought they were the universal pickup - used from war zones to farms, by charities to terrorists, all across the world. I thought there wasn't a place on Earth you wouldn't come across a Hilux.
Toyota stopped calling it a Hilux in the US in 1976. And at some point, stopped selling it, instead selling bigger trucks with smaller beds.
Bigger trucks come with more profit, so that's what they make. In some recent model years, the US has zero regular cab trucks available and very few 6 foot or longer beds.
It's easier to buy a truck than sit in all the cars to find the one you fit in.
And in 5-10 years when you need to shop again, a truck will still work; but if you wanted a car, you'd need to go and sit in all of them again.
If trucks weren't readily available, or overly expensive, or were too big to drive around cities or park, then sure, you can find something else to drive. It's just more effort.
European here, over 6 feet tall - I've never had an issue with any car, ever, because of my height. I've driven a tiny Kia Picanto, small Renault Clio, a VW Touran, various estates ("station wagens") a massive BMW X5 and many more; yes, bigger cars feel more spacious, because they are - but my height has honestly never been an issue, getting in, getting out, or whilst driving.
Unless you're literally 7 feet or so, I just can't see how this is a problem.
The problem with high-power is that you have to go high voltage, which is high risk for a hobbyist. I couldn't find any info on the motor in the article, but most existing EV conversion kits operate around 120 - 140 V.
110 HP is 82 kW, which means you're drawing around 600 A. Anything significantly higher than that gets really unpractical: you need huge wires (at least 00, maybe even 0000), huge fuse, huge contactor, and you're losing a lot of energy to heat.
No price listed yet, and only 110 HP. It's hard to find a car with only 110 HP today (at least in the USA). I know that electric motors have instant torque, but once you pass 30 mph, that low HP will really start to be a drag.
This was the scam at the start of the digital camera boom: a consumer back you could dock onto your camera (I know there are some medium format replacement digital backs, but the consumer replacement was a joke).
The issue with lower horsepower motors is that regenerative braking is not as effective. For the most part, regenerative braking can only absorb as much torque as it can put out, and anything above this has to fall back to the traditional brake system (or some other system).
I've been pricing out how to perform EV conversions as cheaply as possible. Battery capacity is by far the most costly section, and having a smaller horsepower motor isn't going to change how much power it draws (assuming driving habits stay the same). I've been basing my calculations off a 40HP motor and here are some preliminary numbers you might find interesting
On a typical car, a 200 mile radius will require around 44.4kWh of capacity (at around 45MPH, no stops). This is the capacity of 3483 3.4Ah 18650 cells, costing around $13.6k (you can bring that price down if you have some connections and more supply, but that's the cheapest rate I could find for a non-business). 100 mile range is also pretty reasonable. The motor and all other components cost less than $1.5k, man hours required for conversion is another main question, but hopefully that becomes more streamlined over time.
That's not the point. The point is to have a second option for "engines you can drop into classic cars with nothing more than a credit card" (the first option being an LS).
On the other hand... If I am writing an article, and I intersperse my arguments with a lot of irrelevant pictures (which I often do on my blog), and go off on irrelevant digressions (which I sometimes do on my blog), it seems fair game to comment on the fact that my writing style is obscuring or detracting from my subject.
Coming back to ads on a blog, if those ads are interfering with with article's ability to communicate its points, isn't that the same as if the author's own prose interfered with the article's ability to communicate its points?
So we have two things. One thing is using the article as a kind of excuse to have a general discussion about the subject. We go off on tangents and discuss things not in the article (like whether it is useful to attach motors directly to the wheels, something this particular crate motor was not designed for), and with respect to that discussion, the ads are irrelevant.
The other thing is discussing the article itself, including whether it makes reasonable points and how well it makes its points.
This needs to come with an crate battery that you can also drop into your car, as well as a wiring harness to hook up the pedals, ignition, telemetry, and so on and so forth. Without all that you can't really "drop it into your car".
