What would it take to change an Internal Combustion Engine Car to an EV?

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• BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Aging Wheels is doing a video series on this exact question. He converts a Ford Escape to all wheel drive using two 450HP Tesla motors.

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  • histy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    [deleted]

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    • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      And Electric SuperCar (who fixed Jerry Rig’s Gunner’s charging) is converting a Porsche.

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  • Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    450 HP ? Twice ?

    That’s more than a (small) plane how does a car need that big engines ?

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    • atmur@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It probably doesn’t need that much power, but speed is fun and the extra torque can be useful.

      The new Rimac Nevera (an EV hypercar) has over 1800 HP.

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    • SilentSilhouette@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      He is going to covert a bus to an electric rv. The escape is the test bed to test equipment first.

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    • Pavidus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Plenty of cars out there running more power than that. Why do we need it? We don’t. The same could be said for most power levels in any modern car. Why do we want it? Because it’s fucking awesome.

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  • master5o1@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Bear in mind he’s doing it with a very specific performance characteristic in mind, and not as a standard EV conversion.

    But in general, same stuff involved.

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• kersploosh@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Remove the IC engine. Install an electric motor and all the necessary electronics: batteries, control circuitry, charging circuitry, etc.

  You can find companies selling conversion kits for certain cars. For example, here’s one for a 1970’s VW Super Beetle.

  If you are into bigger custom modifications, Chevrolet sells an eCrate engine kit. It’s basically the drivetrain and battery pack from the Chevy Bolt. You have to figure out how to package it in your car of choice. As a demonstration, they used it to convert a 1977 Chevy Blazer.

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  • Hyperreality@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Note that removing the IC engine means you also lose heat, air conditioning, power brakes, and power steering. T

    I know people are used to it, but AC and power-steering are arguably luxuries you can do without. Especially if the car's light.

    The problem is people are also unwilling to uncompromise on range and want an arguably overpowered motor and acceleration, which neccesitates a large battery (and perhaps power steering).

    Chuck in a 30hp engine into a classic beetle, and limit the range to 100km, and it's a far easier conversion that'll likely still outperform an actual classic beetle.

    If you want to turn a classic beetle into a tesla killer, it's going to be heavy and expensive.

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  • etchinghillside@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    We’re expecting all the drivetrain components to hold up to instant torque?

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    • kersploosh@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That heavy torque is one reason to keep the car’s gearbox rather than go with direct drive. Chevy’s eCrate kit specifies that it’s intended for use with an automatic transmission, not direct drive.

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• qwamqwamqwam@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  DIY EV kits are a thing, but a quick google shows some wildly varying prices. Probably depends on exactly what kind of car you are trying to refit and the performance you’re looking for.

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• Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  There’s a company in my town that electrifies vintage European cars. I’m told that the bulk of the work is figuring out where to put the batteries and how to cool them.

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• uphillbothways@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Friend of mine's dad, back in the 90's, ran a small shop converting VW bugs to electrics w about a 40 mile range using just a bunch of car batteries. The shop went under after a little bit, not enough interest. But, it's very possible.

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  • Luke_Fartnocker@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    VW Bugs were so easy to modify. I had a friend in highschool that put a pinto engine in one. It had open headers and the gas tank was a 2 litre Sprite bottle strapped to the frame. We took it off-road with no seats. It was loud as hell and painfull when jumping hills.

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  • BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The problem with batteries then was the only affordable ones were lead-acid, which just don’t have the energy density for such an application. Doing exactly what he did then, but now with lithium batteries, would yield 2x-3x the range.

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• ratman150@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Absolutely min things to swap Gonna need a battery of some kind 3 phase induction motor (probably) Motor speed controller Some sort of battery charger Big inverter for big motor An ecu-like thing to control everything Specifics about how to make this all work in a vehicle will depend wildly on which vehicle. Some basically can have these things bolted on, others require special assemblies to get the power to the wheels somehow.

  An ev swap can be (relatively) cheap and simple or wildly expensive and difficult just depends on your goals.

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• Venat0r@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Some youtube videos on the topic:

  youtube.com/@ElectricClassicCars

  youtu.be/X4QgKJ85vd8

  youtu.be/VZws7kE3U5k

  youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoTU9_iCGa6i_C38pwQyg0…

  youtu.be/3LgZ0NClnE4

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• Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  There were ads for conversion kits in the back of Mother Earth News way back in the 80s. They didn't work terribly well, but a certain class of bearded person were all about it. (It's me. I'm the bearded person.)

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• sqw@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  When I’ve mulled over this question, placement of the batteries is usually the sticking point. Electric cars are designed to put the heavy batteries in a relatively advantageous spot for handling.

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  • XeroxCool@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    What’s a common package for battery units? A full Leaf dropout is an awkward shape and 4 buckets of 18650s are a headache. Is there something common in between? I’ve got nothing but empty space between my frame rails and figured that’d be a good place to add some batteries without having to go crazy in the ex-gas tank spot

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    • sqw@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Not sure there is a truly common package. Each manufacturer seems to be doing their own thing (unless they’re a small fry directly buying parts from some other manufacturer already doing their own thing). So I guess a common package might be “whatever’s in a Tesla”, but that’s not a very satisfying answer.

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  • guyrocket@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Dual cab pickup truck! Back seat delete to the rescue!

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• Dekthro@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Haven’t seen it but Downing’s Dream Cars tackles this.

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• GeneralVincent@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  There’s a helpful website/forum I found that has detailed instructions and guides

  openinverter.org/wiki/Main_Page

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• Tarastie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  A miracle, an engineering degree, and a lot of money?

  You’d be much better off looking into the hundreds (thousands?) of interesting tweaks? that have been done to vehicles as experiments to make them more efficient.

  Adding all the latest innovation to an engine. Adding a full rear axel with an electric motor and a simple “push while driving” setup. Swapping the motor for a much smaller motor and storing unused horsepower with compressed air and welding tanks. A small turbine motor powering electric drive like a train…

  There’s to many ways to make a vehicle massively efficient to even begin going over it here.

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  • blazera@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I cant imagine compressed air moving a car even a single mile

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    • Tarastie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You’d better learn to imagine better.

      There’s an entire documentary on an 18 horsepower compressed air car that does 0-60 in under 4 seconds.

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  • BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Adding a full rear axel with an electric motor and a simple “push while driving” setup.

    This is probably the easiest way to turn an ICE into a plug-in hybrid. In addition to using much less petrol, it adds quite a bit of power for merging onto motorways.

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  • Fondots@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    A miracle, an engineering degree, and a lot of money?

    I think that depends on what you’re hoping to achieve with the conversion

    Probably true if you’re looking for something that is totally equivalent to a modern car with all the bells and whistles, with hundreds of miles of range, that will keep up with traffic going 70mph down the interstate, etc.

    But if you’re just looking for an around town kind of vehicle to get groceries and such, and are maybe willing to forego some things like power steering and air conditioning, you can potentially do it fairly cheap. A junky car off of craigslist (doesn’t necessarily need to run, after all you’re not gonna need the engine anyway,) an old electric forklift motor, and a few hundred bucks in various electronics, batteries, hardware, etc. and with enough free time, the right tools, and some know-how, you can make it work. I’ve seen people online who have done it for under $2k, often including the donor car.

    An engineering degree would certainly be helpful, but it’s not exactly untrodden ground at this point, if you’re willing to hit the books a bit and figure things out as you go there are a lot of resources out there to help you.

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  • bioemerl@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    But I don't want efficient, I want that sweet sweet torque

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