Note that this is just the motor, you'll still need a battery, traction inverter and a control system, none of which are cheap. By the time you are done this system for a regular vehicle with a properly engineered battery enclosure will likely cost way upwards of $15K.
Which, hilariously, is very much in the realm of a "normal" engine conversion project. There probably aren't many Vanagon owners on HN but the hacker mentality very much applies. The two most popular gas conversions quote out in the 12k-18k range. It's not apples-to-apples with what it would take to integrate this crate motor, but it's not orders of magnitude off.
$15k is way too low of an estimate. Even if you have a machine shop and the skills can do all the machining and welding yourself. To do the conversion, you'd need (just for components in addition to the motor): controller/inverter (a hefty one), DC-DC converter, charger + BMS, battery, cooling system, accessory adapters for AC/heat, brake pump, etc. + a pile of contactors and wire and other high voltage components.
Then you gotta build motor mounts, adapt to existing manual transmission or figure out some other gear reduction + attach to axles, cases for batteries and other components, wiring, etc.
It'd be a big project and probably around $40k all in by the time you were done.
I can see some of the EV conversion specialty shops using this Ford motor as part of their services though because it is higher wattage than most of the products the DIY market is used to.
Note that this is a higher voltage motor than most DIY electric car conversions are done with, too. So harder to work with safely and harder to configure battery pack.
That's completely reasonable, and I don't disagree with anything you've said. Still not an order of magnitude though! Anyone doing an engine conversion on a project car is burning money anyway, and while it won't be for everyone... 40k is not in the realm of impossible for a lot of the car DIY crowd. In fact, of all the circles I've ever touched on, car mod crowds are probably the most willing to spend ludicrous bucks on an unnecessary project.
Make fun of the rich guy buying $7000 status watches, god knows I will, but there are thousands of relatively "poor" people in every American city spending 10's of thousands on their shitboxes... and I love it.
> Make fun of the rich guy buying $7000 status watches, god knows I will
I'm going off-topic, but just a heads up, there's a fairly large watch community out there (https://www.watchuseek.com/forums/) that have a passion for watches and treat it as a hobby like any other. They're probably one of the friendliest online communities I've come across. I haven't bought any thousand dollar watches, but I've spent a decent amount of time reading about watches and releases, and I know there's a lot of people out there that save up their money for years, decades, or life, to buy a $7,000 grail watch they've dreamed of owning. They might look like rich guys wearing a dumb Rolex status watch to an outsider, but sometimes that couldn't be further from the truth.
Ah, I see. I've been thinking far too long about buying a Sinn 556i as my daily watch. Well, we can be certain no one will poke fun at Sinn watches, because no one outside the watch community will ever recognize them on the wrist.
$15k is way too low just like it's way too low for an engine swap.
In that, you can do it for $15k as your starting budget but you'll have to cheap out everywhere, get lucky many different ways, sell the things you swap out and still have it creep upwards.
Likewise, unless you're starting with a junkyard motor $15k is probably not enough.
A proper turnkey conversion for a V8 Miata for example ends up right around... $40k.
Exactly. Anybody that looks at the $3900 price tag for the motor and that has never done anything like this before might be tempted to think that they can afford it. If you're going to build it from junk yard stuff then you will be able to stay under $20K, otherwise it will likely be much more.
It's not in the specs, but there's breakdowns of the whole Mustang Mach E drivetrain by Munro Live on YouTube, and they get into the battery pack, inverter, everything else. This is the rear motor out of the Mach E, minus the inverter.
The Mach E battery pack is 450 volts. So after going through the inverter, it'll be a bit less than that, but still very high.
Almost all commercial non-DIY EVs have quite high voltages, 300 and over at least. DIY EVs tend to use lower voltages but at higher amps.
EDIT: though it would not surprise me to find that you could run this motor fine at lower voltages but with higher current
Vanagon Syncro owner here! I can’t imagine ever parting with mine.
My stated plan is to convert it to electric in 2025.
There’s good progress being made forging a path - see the DreamEV guys on YouTube for a currently ongoing 2wd Tesla vanagon conversion. They documented all the steps, are pretty entertaining, and just finished like 2 weeks ago.
If I was to do it now, I’d go Tesla engines front and rear to keep the AWD and ditch the engine and both diffs, which are the most troublesome part of the syncro anyway.
In 5 years, who knows. Maybe I’ll transplant the parts from a scrapped 2023 Cyber Truck!
Just as the other comment said, "that's only the conversion kit". I didn't want to wax poetic about the various input costs to a project like that but let's just say I and several of my friends know how much they can cost on both the upper and lower ends.
If you DIY hack it together with junkyard motor and spend nothing on anything you can get away with a self-made conversion for ~5k. If you're buying your parts from a kit like these links and using new crate motors then you will never get under 12k. Not to mention the cost differences of you doing the work vs a mechanic. The cheapest turn-key mechanic-done conversion with a new motor won't be under 15k and will likely push in the 20k+ range.
Drivetrain labor is a huge cost. If your transmission goes out you are likely to get a refurbed transmission rather than fixing the one you have. It’s much cheaper to rebuild them ahead of time and ship them around than to do it on demand.
It’s very likely you will see a disproportionate number of conversions being done for vehicles that are experiencing transmission or engine failure, because then you are comparing the cost of conversion against a $4-5k repair bill.
Yeah, I feel like crate motor is a misnomer here. When I think of crate motor, I think of something that has everything necessary to put it into a chassis and crank it over.
Not including a traction inverter or control system is like buying a LS crate engine without an ECU.
From Ford. There is a huge drivetrain elements market from Ford, Mopar, GM (whose terrific LS series of engines are in hundreds of thousands of street rods, race cars etc). This is a natural progression and an encouraging continuation (for now, bureaucrats willing) of the long tradition of US car building choices.
The challenge for EV conversion is not the motor, which is simple, it's the battery skateboard and the technology to process the stored energy into viable mileage.
EV's are a huge fire risk, my concern would be fast EV's and inadequate battery protection in a converted vehicle + impact damage to charged batteries = inferno.
There is plastics tech on the horizon to stop damaged ganged up batteries in a runaway thermal event from trapped energy contagion but right now little effort has been made to isolate batteries to prevent this.
Do you think it would be easier or safer to convert a truck with a full length bed? Like could just put it as a layer in the back bed without messing with the chassis?
I just started driving again. Got an old Tacoma. New trucks are way too big and most don't even have full beds. Would love to just keep a 'classic beater truck' design but EV! Cheaper than just buying a new one anyways.
Yes. I was hanging around with a homebrew EV club 10 years ago (I like all types of vehicles) and most of the conversions were small trucks with the batteries in the bed and ev conversion under hood.
The sweet spot is still late 70's/early 80's trucks which are relatively simple, still made out of steel and are relatively easy to adapt.
In the event of fire it is relatively easy to install a big lever and spring loaded connectors to ungang the battery connections.
I'm guessing the ICE equivalent is swapping out a petrol engine for a biogas or LPG compatible engine. That is, not just the engine but all related plumbing as well.
>Weighing in at a svelte 205 pounds, this electric dynamo delivers 281 horsepower, 317lb.-ft. of torque, and generates a maximum speed of 13,800rpm. The Eluminator crate engine package includes a high-voltage motor-to-traction invertor harness, low-voltage harness connector, and vent tube assembly.
so, it sounds like the the motor traction inverter is included. Controller and the batter obviously still costs $$.
That's a bit strange since the text itself elsewhere says no traction inverter included.
The text there says includes "inverter harness"... What does this really mean? You sure they're simply not referring to the inverter mount point / wiring connector at the top of the motor?
"Does NOT include:
Traction inverter
Control system"
If it included the inverter it'd be an incredible deal -- like half the price of equivalently spec'd motors from other manufacturers -- which is why there's no way it does.,
I think you're right. they are just saying it is pre-wired. well, it would be handy if they had the rest of the stuff available and already pre-integrated.
It's weird they're selling the motor without a controller/inverter. I can see they probably don't want to give away any of their own IP but they could at least offer a Curtis or whatever controller that's compatible with it.
Not so weird, when you consider that a crate motor can be paired with a turbo, tuned exhaust, different gearbox and so on. It's just the motor. The other parts are going to depend on your application. You could easily run this motor in a lower voltage application but you'd have to supply a matching controller (and you'll have to live with lower output power and torque).
Have a look at:
https://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=40
to see what goes into a typical EV conversion.
Batteries are here:
https://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=4