Convert your petrol car to electric?

[JeffL]

Interesting Autocar article on converting existing petrol cars to electric. Lexus GS mentioned.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/electric-cars/how-put-electric-car-your-driveway-little-£900?utm_source=20201201&utm_medium=EMAIL&utm_campaign=&utm_content=ACAR ENews Bulletin - SUBS AD V5 (TUESDAY) (39)::article2_image

 

[The-Acre]

Very interesting.

[Mossypossy]

Have to get me one of those £500 450h's as a spares car.

[Linas.P]

@Mossypossy - I am very interested as well where they got £500 "immaculate" GS450h which apparently was being scrapped! 

The idea is interesting, but the article is false "to electric power for the princely sum of just under £900." This is what - cost of the labour of just removing the engine? 

The idea is very good and not new or original either, to be honest if I would not be working in financial sector, then this would be my ideal work (maybe I will do it when I retire). There is huge potential in these conversions and as car enthusiast I love to see cars preserved and resurrected for second life. However, costs are nothing like that and there are no such culture to make this feasible business (not only in UK, but around the developed world). Issue is not ICE, issue is consumerism - people want new thing even if their current things are perfectly good. A lot of cars meets premature demise for this reason and pollution from this is many times bigger than pollution from transportation itself.

So going back to why this article is nonsense - yes indeed you can transplant crashed Leaf or Tesla Battery into body of old or classic ICE car. Cost of ICE car is what? Well let's say £2000-5000 depending on condition. Cost of crashed Leaf is what - another £2000-5000. Then you have to deal with simple maintenance and making your "host" car body road legal and safe to use. It doesn't seem like much, but  if you taking 30 years old shell, there will be problems - so just as a ball park add another £1000 per corner, on suspension, rust etc. And then comes the labour cost - standard engine swap is easily £3000-5000 if there is no major custom fabrication needed, but with EV conversion fabrication is always needed! High voltage components are not cheap either. So to be on the safe side - £5000-£10000 just for work.

What we have in the end is that the swap will cost at least £13,000 and depending "donor"/"host" you choose the complexity may wary and it could easily cost more than £20,000. If you think this is "steep" then check some professionals who does such conversions and see what answer you will get. 

yep - Fiat 500 - £22,000 https://www.adrianflux.co.uk/blog/2020/02/the-cost-of-converting-your-classic-car-to-electric.html and you will find this price quoted times and times again. I assume it could be done little bit cheaper, maybe indeed you can have GS in good shape for £3000 (saving of £7,000 right there), but it would still be in ballpark of "tens of thousands" - besides GS will require much more batteries and much larger motor to run than Fiat 500 (so saving on one side, cost on another).

This article assumes that you miraculously have mechanically "perfect" old ICE car for free, you have electrically "perfect" EV as donor, you are advanced mechanic with space and time to work on them and you have all tools which costs thousands of £ to do it all. Not to mention such modification are legally complicated, you may struggle to insure the car afterwards, you may not get benefits of car being considered EV without lengthy and extensive process to legitimise the car as EV... and you may not even get the required components for it as basically you need to patiently wait for somebody to crash Tesla next door!

I am sorry but I would call this article "naive" if not little bit dumb... perhaps somewhat true if you have your own car repair+modification+trade business and you can get some magic deals and merge two cars together for "princely sums", but for 99% of inhabitants of this planet this does not apply.

As saying goes - "If it sounds too good to be true then. it probably is... "

[Britprius]

Perhaps the easiest Lexus cars to convert to electric are the GS450h, and RX 450h. These only require the engine removed, and larger capacity batteries fitted. The GS450h has 2 electric motors in the transmission the larger one rated at 180 HP. The smaller motor can be made to assist the drive "giving even more power" by simply locking the first motion shaft of the transmission.
The RX450h could be modified in a similar way, but also has the added advantage of having a 80 HP drive motor built into the rear differential enabling the 4 wheel drive function to be retained.

John.

[Linas.P]

You are likely right - they would be easier to convert. However, I am not sure if that would make them good EVs overall. GS is heavy car and that 180HP electric motor isn't exactly enough. Not to mention in GS (or any hybrid) electric motor is designed to support ICE, not to act as primary motor for propulsion (at least not for extended period of time). This would mean few things - one I would imagine the car would be slow to the level which could be unsafe (especially on motorway), secondly - I don't think this would help reliability of that electric motor, especially if it is used for prolonged periods of time as the only motor which drives the car. There are other things to consider - is GS motor even efficient? Not all electric motors are equal and as with ICE certain types of motors are good for certain things e.g. how much KW they use per mile - perhaps there is different 180HP motor which was meant to be used as dedicated motor and thus just better for that purpose.

For reasons mentioned above, currently the most popular cars for conversions are Beetles, Fiat 500's, old Porches (basically Beetle with different badge) and other vintage cars. First of all they are classy and the only people who may appreciate them are are big car enthusiast who are very dedicated and appreciates the "patina". Secondly, they are generally small and simple cars meaning that even drive-train for most basic EV (like Leaf) is enough to make them relatively swift and enjoyable to drive. And finally, RWD is better suited for EV - so these cars being RWD and rear engined makes packaging more convenient. On top of that you are taking EV system with all components which were designed to work as dedicated EV (and not a part time/hybrid) and thus the conversion should in theory be more reliable, components more suitable and effcient etc.

[dutchie01]

Sounds like a nice hobby project and there are some companies doing this already. Mainly classics cars where money is not that important. For mainstream use i think it is useless.

There are so much more topics apart from tearing out the old drivetrain and petroltank. Safety, balance and weight, crash performance and of course economy.

Nice challenge though. If somebody is up to it pics please! 

[Lwerewolf]

https://openinverter.org/forum/

Plenty of information here. Toyota hybrids are a hot topic.

These cars are prime material for conversion due to just about everything being made with EV operation in mind - you'd need an auxiliary heater, but that's about it. If you remove the PSD and lock MG1 to the output shaft's speed... things can get crazy.

The limiting factor (for power & range) is what batteries you can put in it.

[johnatg]

7 hours ago, Lwerewolf said:

The limiting factor (for power & range) is what batteries you can put in it.

Indeed - and that is one hell of a limit. Tesla showrooms usually? sometimes? have a bare chassis on display. (There are plenty of images on the web) You've got the motors taking minimal space by the wheels, then the whole area of the chassis area with a wheel at each corner is a tray available to take a lot of batteries. How are you going to get anything like that number in an ICE car chassis? Quite apart from the weight distribution problem. All the (very considerable) weight in a Tesla is situated low down and distributed evenly.

As Linas says, it's going to cost substantially more than the article implies and you're going to end up with a car which does 50mph with a range of 50 miles and handling like a pig.

I picked up a MX-5 gearbox and differential plus some minor bits and pieces during the summer - they were all in the boot and my car (GS300h) suffered from substantial oversteer, even in a straight line on the motorway. It was OK for the necessary 200 miles but I wouldn't like to drive it like that every day even if the weight distribution might be a bit better than a very heavy load just in the boot

EV s need to be designed from scratch - even if the car looks conventional (eg Seat Mii, Vauxhall Corsa EVs) they are very different under the skin. Actually - wonder how long it will be before we see the coachbuilders' art return - the Tesla chassis at least looks ideal as a starting point.

[TigerFish]

There is a TV show on Quest where they do electric conversions an all sorts of old cars, it’s quite interesting. It’s not butchering an existing car to do it though, it is genuine after market tech, designed for the purpose of retro fit. In fact, wheeler dealers did it years ago with a Maserati.

 

I keep mulling it over for my Corrado, as it does very low miles, and short distances, and would be quite cool I think. Prices will continue to plummet for the after market stuff as well, given the advancements in recent times.

 

 

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[johnatg]

Two or three years ago there were some (over) enthusiastic reviews of a Jaguar's electric conversion of an E-type - the E-type Zero. The prototype seemed to work OK, with a claimed range of 170 miles (test results more like 120) (the batteries replaced the engine, more or less). It cost £500,000 (which to be fair is about the cost of a fully restored old E-type, rebuilt to modern standards).

Jaguar announced plans to put it into production.

You may have seen that they abandoned the whole program last year.

[Linas.P]

Not sure about TV show on Quest, but all EV conversions I have seen were based on parts recovered from crashed EVs.

I assume this is not because there are no other ways to source them, or that Tesla Battery tech is the best, but because sourcing them in low volumes would be very expensive. Tesla could offer large capacity batteries which don't cost £500k, because they benefit from economies of scale and can drive down the costs on enormous orders they make. If enthusiast just going to try to order cells required to make the same capacity Battery as Tesla have, it may cost £100k for cells alone. As result getting crashed Tesla and butchering it to make 3 mediocre EV conversions works out cheaper.

Let's just take for example standard 60KW (Model S 60) Battery - it has 7104 cells and each of those cells would cost like £5 individually. So if you wanted to reproduce such capacity that is £35000 just for Chinese cells alone (better quality Japanese cells used by Tesla is double the price). As such it makes sense to buy something like this:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/143740093042?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=710-134428-41853-0&mkcid=2&itemid=143740093042&targetid=1000558127966&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9044952&poi=&campaignid=10199630368&mkgroupid=107296288492&rlsatarget=pla-1000558127966&abcId=1145987&merchantid=6995734&gclid=Cj0KCQiAk53-BRD0ARIsAJuNhpsS5cZmx2NOBZsbjpgA_MfUhHpJsYiDfkWBlLyN6T53w2LYyDw7CWgaAqGsEALw_wcB

it it works out at £3 per cell (£1400/444 as one module in Tesla has 6x74) + you already have them arranged into module, so it saves hours of work on ironing all the contacts etc. 

Sure - getting whole 60KW Battery would still cost a lot of money, but 2-3 such modules are enough for cars like Fiat 500 or Mazda MX5. But even then - the cheapest Battery pack will set you back £4000-5000. Which just makes it even funnier considering article claims £900 for full conversion? Where did that price came from? 😄

[TigerFish]

The TV program was not using second hand gear from donor vehicles. There is a mass of very funky after market kit available. I’m not saying it is cheap specifically, but in the 10’s of thousands, nothing even close to hundred’s of thousands.

 

Clearly the £900 claim is purely based on someone bagging a write off at a bargain price, and getting all the gear (and probably from a mate, of a mate, of a mate, of a garage owner)

 

Of course if that suddenly became a trend, there would be no bargain EV write-offs anymore.... lol. With places like eBay nowadays, even scrap yards are not as cheap as the used to be for anything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Lwerewolf]

Re: costs - true, it'll cost a lot more to create anything that approximates what the gs450h can do in stock form. There is still the fact that the car is otherwise pretty much fully equipped for a conversion - electric everything, bar heating. Batteries, BMS, ECU (the inverter control protocol has been reverse-engineered), that's pretty much it.

Re: handling - assuming that you can keep or lower the center of gravity, you can fix the rest by reading a bit about suspension geometry. I would be more worried about the amount of questionably lowered cars with wider wheels on the roads 🙂