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It's quite difficult to convert a combustion engine vehicle to an EV. - EVs need significant volume for batteries. The only places available in a combustion ve

by ggreer 2y ago

It's quite difficult to convert a combustion engine vehicle to an EV. - EVs need significant volume for batteries. The only places available in a combustion vehicle are the engine bay and the gas tank. If you put batteries in the engine bay, you'll mess up the weight distribution. The volume occupied by the gas tank isn't nearly large enough to house a battery for decent range. - The extra weight of the batteries requires changes to the suspension and tires. - EV motors have lots of torque. If you use the original transmission, you'll need to limit torque based on which gear it's in. Any replacement transmission will need to be designed for that car chassis. It's not easily adapted to other models. - Combustion vehicles are designed with an accessory belt in mind. The air conditioning, power steering, and many other components are run off of these belts. An EV motor doesn't spin while idling. These components will need another power source, or they'll have to be replaced with EV-specific components. - Combustion vehicles use waste heat from the engine to heat the cabin. Unless you live in a mild climate, a retrofit will need electric heating coils (or a heat pump for maximum efficiency). And after making all of these modifications, you'll need to deal with regulations around making sure the vehicle is street legal. Those can differ greatly based on the state and the model year of the vehicle you're converting. Considering all that, it's unlikely that you'd save money by converting an existing vehicle. An EV kit car might make more sense, but the market for those is quite small.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago
There's already a small market for this in classic cars and they've worked most of these things out even to the point of installing heated seats, writing their own software, making and selling kits for common target cars etc. It's just mostly based on salvaged Tesla motors and batteries as far as I can tell. (I think Jaguar and Ford talked about selling EV crate engines for their older models but I've not heard about that for a while)
- Qwertious 2y ago
  Classic cars don't make sense, though - if you're driving e.g. a Ford Model T, then you just objectively don't care about performance or cost effectiveness.
  - driverdan 2y ago
    Check out Electric Classic Cars on YT: https://www.youtube.com/@ElectricClassicCars https://www.youtube.com/@ElectricClassicCars Most of their conversions are sports cars but many aren't.
  - piuantiderp 2y ago
    Electric are no bueno for those 2 metrics
    - Qwertious 2y ago
      Electric motors have amazing performance. Better than ICE. (Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2948/ https://xkcd.com/2948/ ) The downsides of electric is cost (due to the battery), limited range (due to the battery), and weight (due to the battery) which is bad for road wear and the safety of anyone you hit.
- lazide 2y ago
  Classic cars are the perfect example of a hobbiest niche - where practicality is often literally a negative. Frankly, if it’s common in Classic Cars, it’s probably not a good idea to do it in a production vehicle/practical situation.
Kirby64 2y ago
> EVs need significant volume for batteries. The only places available in a combustion vehicle are the engine bay and the gas tank. If you put batteries in the engine bay, you'll mess up the weight distribution. The volume occupied by the gas tank isn't nearly large enough to house a battery for decent range. You're forgetting: exhaust and transmission tunnel (for RWD/AWD cars). Just those two areas alone are a substantial amount of space. Add in space in the sub-trunk area (that might have a spare tire, or just free space)... and you can cobble together quite a bit of capacity. > EV motors have lots of torque. If you use the original transmission, you'll need to limit torque based on which gear it's in. Any replacement transmission will need to be designed for that car chassis. It's not easily adapted to other models. Why would you use the existing transmission? Just use the transmission built into the EV motor... they all have them.
phibr0 2y ago
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AtlasBarfed 2y ago
- battery significant volume: this depends on intended range, and if sulfur chemistries hit the market you can probably drop the required volume by 40-70%. - extra weight: see above, and removing engine and other components - yes the EV motor will need to be aware, that's a control issue not some physical issue - another power source.... like, a battery bank? - waste heat for AC: heat pumps Yeah, I know I am massively handwaving. It's a really hard problem, but some EV retrofit for "incumbent" cars (eventually to be "classic") would save a lot of carbon. But it's not going to happen, it's too labor and skill intensive. Capital hates everything that is labor/skill dependent. It might be able to be assembly lined to some degree: common car platforms of major manufactures would help. The engine lift isn't THAT bad for many platforms, the hood removal - bolt loosen - engine lift could be done in 3-4 "disassembly line" steps. EV motors are pretty compact from what I can tell, so the engine compartment can probably accommodate enough high-density (sulfur chemistry in 5-8 years) batteries to get a 150-200 mile range. The REALLY OPTIMAL conversion target should probably be a swapout with a hybrid drivetrain, if we could get a compact rotary recharge engine developed combined with a compact EV motor. The transmission interface is still a PITA, but the heat excess and other things might be conserved better, and there might be room left over for 50 miles of all-electric range. That would deliver 90% all-electric trips in-city, regen braking, but keep ICE power for all the legacy accessories. We should have been working collectively on hybrids within a couple years of the Prius being released in the late 1990s. We should have forced all auto manufacturers to have hybrids for all cars in 10 years (regen braking and city efficiency would have been 20% gas savings right there, maybe more). Then 10 years after that have forced plugin hybrids with increasing thresholds for all-electric range.

by ggreer 2y ago

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

There's already a small market for this in classic cars and they've worked most of these things out even to the point of installing heated seats, writing their own software, making and selling kits for common target cars etc. It's just mostly based on salvaged Tesla motors and batteries as far as I can tell. (I think Jaguar and Ford talked about selling EV crate engines for their older models but I've not heard about that for a while)

Qwertious 2y ago
Classic cars don't make sense, though - if you're driving e.g. a Ford Model T, then you just objectively don't care about performance or cost effectiveness.
- driverdan 2y ago
  Check out Electric Classic Cars on YT: https://www.youtube.com/@ElectricClassicCars https://www.youtube.com/@ElectricClassicCars Most of their conversions are sports cars but many aren't.
- piuantiderp 2y ago
  Electric are no bueno for those 2 metrics
  - Qwertious 2y ago
    Electric motors have amazing performance. Better than ICE. (Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2948/ https://xkcd.com/2948/ ) The downsides of electric is cost (due to the battery), limited range (due to the battery), and weight (due to the battery) which is bad for road wear and the safety of anyone you hit.
lazide 2y ago
Classic cars are the perfect example of a hobbiest niche - where practicality is often literally a negative. Frankly, if it’s common in Classic Cars, it’s probably not a good idea to do it in a production vehicle/practical situation.

Kirby64 2y ago

> EVs need significant volume for batteries. The only places available in a combustion vehicle are the engine bay and the gas tank. If you put batteries in the engine bay, you'll mess up the weight distribution. The volume occupied by the gas tank isn't nearly large enough to house a battery for decent range. You're forgetting: exhaust and transmission tunnel (for RWD/AWD cars). Just those two areas alone are a substantial amount of space. Add in space in the sub-trunk area (that might have a spare tire, or just free space)... and you can cobble together quite a bit of capacity. > EV motors have lots of torque. If you use the original transmission, you'll need to limit torque based on which gear it's in. Any replacement transmission will need to be designed for that car chassis. It's not easily adapted to other models. Why would you use the existing transmission? Just use the transmission built into the EV motor... they all have them.

phibr0 2y ago

AtlasBarfed 2y ago

- battery significant volume: this depends on intended range, and if sulfur chemistries hit the market you can probably drop the required volume by 40-70%. - extra weight: see above, and removing engine and other components - yes the EV motor will need to be aware, that's a control issue not some physical issue - another power source.... like, a battery bank? - waste heat for AC: heat pumps Yeah, I know I am massively handwaving. It's a really hard problem, but some EV retrofit for "incumbent" cars (eventually to be "classic") would save a lot of carbon. But it's not going to happen, it's too labor and skill intensive. Capital hates everything that is labor/skill dependent. It might be able to be assembly lined to some degree: common car platforms of major manufactures would help. The engine lift isn't THAT bad for many platforms, the hood removal - bolt loosen - engine lift could be done in 3-4 "disassembly line" steps. EV motors are pretty compact from what I can tell, so the engine compartment can probably accommodate enough high-density (sulfur chemistry in 5-8 years) batteries to get a 150-200 mile range. The REALLY OPTIMAL conversion target should probably be a swapout with a hybrid drivetrain, if we could get a compact rotary recharge engine developed combined with a compact EV motor. The transmission interface is still a PITA, but the heat excess and other things might be conserved better, and there might be room left over for 50 miles of all-electric range. That would deliver 90% all-electric trips in-city, regen braking, but keep ICE power for all the legacy accessories. We should have been working collectively on hybrids within a couple years of the Prius being released in the late 1990s. We should have forced all auto manufacturers to have hybrids for all cars in 10 years (regen braking and city efficiency would have been 20% gas savings right there, maybe more). Then 10 years after that have forced plugin hybrids with increasing thresholds for all-electric range.