$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
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.