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1966 Ford Mustang Converted into a Tesla with Working 'Full Self-Driving'
- dzonga 6mo agohow some people gobble up Tesla FSD - when it's clearly inferior to options out there from Waymo, GM Supercruise or hell even Ford.
- chokolad 6mo agoCan you provide some links that show this clear inferiority ?
- x187463 6mo agoGM/Ford/etc. driver assistance systems are nowhere close to the latest FSD. It would be nice if there were other options, but there isn't. You can't buy a Waymo. FSD can go from parked in the driveway to parked in a parking spot at your destination without any human intervention.
- sublinear 6mo ago> It demonstrates that Tesla’s hardware and software stack is more portable than the company’s licensing struggles would suggest. Unless I missed something, this is a completely unsupported claim by the article. Passion projects and retrofits are nothing at all like manufacturing.
- flutas 6mo agoIt's specifically talking about the "FSD" model under the hood being able to run on this retrofit even though the cameras don't align 100% like they originally would.
- beedeebeedee 6mo agoThe article claims that the whole project only cost $40,000, and then compares that to electric conversion offerings that cost $75,000 (and mentions that the global conversion market in 2024 was $5.9 billion). I think the implication is that there could be a large market for FSD conversions that goes beyond passion projects because it is not only possible but affordable. I would be surprised however if this project only cost $40,000, when you factor in the cost of labor and maintaining a facility to do this work.
- dmix 6mo agoPeople have been doing these conversions forever with teslas.
- wishinghand 6mo agoI’d love to do something similar to an El Camino. I don’t even need triple digit range; I’d use it as a local runabout, mostly to my art studio.
- entropicdrifter 6mo agoA lot of people use Leaf batteries/powertrains for this type of conversion. Probably would be cheaper than using Tesla parts if you don't need as much range.
- wishinghand 6mo agoIf I ever find myself with the money to do this, that was exactly what I was thinking.
- beedeebeedee 6mo agoNeat. I would have preferred the original interior over Tesla's, but I guess it would then just be an electric conversion and not a "Tesla" conversion with "FSD".
- AndrewKemendo 6mo agoThere was a shop in Dallas back about 20 years ago that did an electric conversion of a H1 Humvee. Since then there’s been lots more conversions like that and to me that is a valid recycling business.
- annoyingnoob 6mo agoInteresting, love the concept. Don't love the modern interior.
- jazzyjackson 6mo agoWhatever happened to the electric delorean reboot? EDIT: at one point whoever owned the name also owned a warehouse of spare parts and was going to produce an electric retrofit kit for the old vehicle, and hinting at manufacturing new ones a la retromod. Whoever owns the name now just has concept rendering on their site and a Solana token, so, little more than a meme coin now :(
- anotherhue 6mo agoCarson did it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eCvUGx6OkE&list=PLYIgpKT34LEFpKEkk3j5tWzg4_drqMOsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eCvUGx6OkE&list=PLYIgpKT34L...
- technothrasher 6mo agoI believe Stephen Wynne, the man you're referring to, still owns the new DMC company, and he did even produced a concept car of his Alpha5 model. But since 2022, there hasn't been much activity. His classic DMC parts sales side of the business is still active though.
- LurkandComment 6mo agoI've been waiting for someone to do something like this as long as I've known electric cars to be a thing. I hope they just start making them like this.
- loeg 6mo agoPeople have been doing Tesla powertrain swapped vehicles for a long time. Here's a Jaguar from 5 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxxaHYlCuN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxxaHYlCuN8
- drdebug 6mo agoNice work, but is it just me or does this take away from the car’s original spirit?
- rootusrootus 6mo agoYou are entitled to your opinion, obviously, as is anyone else. Restomods have been around since forever, and this is hardly the first EV conversion (almost certainly not the first classic Mustang EV restomod either). Personally I think it's pretty damn cool. But I have always been a Mustang fan, and I know that this era of Mustang is not especially collectable. They made quite a large number of them and plenty are still running.
- zthrowaway 6mo agoTo be fair though, this is beyond typical restomod territory. This isn’t an LS swap with modern wheels and suspension. This most certainly changes the spirit of the car. There's no question the first generation of Mustangs are the most collectible.
- general1465 6mo agoIt is like putting a Samsung shell on iPhone. It is still an iPhone.
- cucumber3732842 6mo agoThis is more of a body kit for a Tesla than a drivetrain swap in a Mustang.
- t1234s 6mo agoI wonder if tesla will see this and try to invalidate the VIN from using FSD
- rootusrootus 6mo agoThat would be a pretty shortsighted move from a PR standpoint. Nobody is going to blame a restomod FSD wreck on Tesla. But turning off FSD remotely just reminds everyone that Tesla can and will take control of your car.
- DonHopkins 6mo ago[flagged]
- t1234s 6mo agoDon't they already block using their supercharger network for rebuilt titles?
- zthrowaway 6mo agoAs a classic car owner/hobbyist, this disgusts me. But thankfully there are at least 200k other restored/restorable 60s Mustangs out there.
- hnav 6mo agoGood news is that you can get a brand new 66 shell stamped in Taiwan for about 20k.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6mo agoI wonder if they're as "good" as the Chinese AE86 shells.
- ryan42 6mo agoHere's one of a fully custom Toyota 4x4 truck getting a Tesla Model 3 motor that I enjoyed. I would love to have a small electric pickup like this, but I don't want to invest $100k to get it done https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siEhd4Z-6Ts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siEhd4Z-6Ts
- sarmasamosarma 6mo ago[dead]
- matthewfcarlson 6mo agoI check multiple times a year for a small electric truck. Plenty announced but none you can actually buy year after year
- tracker1 6mo agoHoping the Slate makes it... for that matter, would be nice if the Scout does as well.
- 1234letshaveatw 6mo agoFord is going to eat their lunch if they come in at 30K with their "skunkworks" EV
- tracker1 6mo agoUntil the dealers tack on another $30k in BS fees.
- 1234letshaveatw 6mo agoThat sounds realistic
- tracker1 6mo ago
- actionfromafar 6mo agoOh, a good looking Tesla.
- AngryData 6mo agoFrom the article it sounds like the inverse, they took a Tesla and stuck a classic car exterior shell on it, not transplant the electric car parts into a mustang frame. It is still kind of neat but is not the same thing to me. You don't normally upgrade a classic car by chopping out the entire frame and sticking the body panels onto a modern car.
- tracker1 6mo agoI'd love to see more of this as an option... Getting a modern electic car with a late 60's Camero styled shell would be a nice option IMO. Would need to take a few liberties with some dimensions in the designs as the originals won't 1:1 match up, but there's probably enough leeway to make such things work out.
- brrrrrm 6mo agoI agree fully. Hyundai has a mockup that starts to get there (different era, but same concept) called the N vision 74[1], but I doubt we'll see it in market anytime soon. The unfortunate reality IIUC is that modern cars (electric vehicles) have certain aero restrictions (for mileage) that heavily limit design options. [1] https://www.hyundai-n.com/en/models/rolling-lab/n-vision-74 https://www.hyundai-n.com/en/models/rolling-lab/n-vision-74
- IneffablePigeon 6mo agoAero is driving a lot of EV design choices yes but it’s not as much of a limitation as you are implying - see the Ioniq 5, Cybertruck, F150 lightning or any of Rivian’s vehicles for examples where they’ve traded a bit of range for a boxier, less aero shape (admittedly often with _some_ rounded corners still). It’s a trade off most manufacturers are not making because the US market is _so_ range conscious but I think it is fairly small margins we’re talking.
- pjc50 6mo agoThe dimensional differences of modern cars are striking. You'd need to make a 6:5 larger scale model of the original car in many cases. Or worse, if you've ever seen a classic Mini next to a modern Mini. (yes, I will admit that a lot of that is for crash safety, but not all of it)
- condiment 6mo agoThis sort of conversion gets coverage every once in a while and it's been neat to see old frames getting chopped onto new electric drivetrains. I spoke with one of the people interviewed in this article[1] a couple years back about converting an old truck I have sitting around into an EV. The Model 3 approach takes their unified rear axle (motor,axle,wheels) and mounts it into an existing frame. Then you just need to find a place to stuff the batteries, retrofit some high-voltage electronics, and you're off to the races. One of the drawbacks of that approach is that it changes the stance of the vehicle, but for this Mustang that doesn't seem to matter much - it still looks classic. Other converters either go for the high end with a model S and fit the motor into a traditional drivetrain for a sleeper build, or they go for the low end and take an old forklift motor and batteries and build what is effectively a street-legal golf cart. Prices range from $5-100k depending on your level of DIY and how dangerous of a classic car you want on the other side of the process. [1] https://coloradosun.com/2023/06/25/classic-cars-electric-vehicles-colorado/ https://coloradosun.com/2023/06/25/classic-cars-electric-veh...
- loeg 6mo ago> It’s likely the first non-Tesla vehicle to run FSD, and it achieves 258 Wh/mi — roughly matching the efficiency of an actual Model 3. This claim is implausible, right? The Mustang is unambiguously less aerodynamic than the Model 3; there's no way it is achieving similar efficiency, especially at highway speeds.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- volkl48 6mo agoThe Mustang is from before modern safety laws (and feature expectations) and therefore weighed a lot less than your average modern car. A stock '66 Mustang hardtop had a curb weight below 3000lb, in the lightest configuration close to 2500lb. Less mass to move will do a lot for efficiency just like aerodynamics will. Of course, you will also die or be horrifically maimed in an accident in a 1966 Mustang that you might walk away without any serious injuries from in a modern vehicle.
- loeg 6mo agoBut this conversion is basically just a Tesla model 3 with the shell taken off and a mustang shell installed over. It's mostly a model 3, including the heavy battery and drivetrain. And airbags.
- volkl48 6mo agoUnless I've missed something here, there are clearly no airbags in the passenger seat or anywhere else in the upper shell (side curtain, etc) from skimming around the video/interior shots. I guess there's probably still one in the stock Tesla steering wheel/unit. You also have none of the heavy structure that makes it so you don't die in a rollover or side-impact in a modern car. Look at how skinny that A-pillar is. Hell, half of this interior is just the raw exposed sheet metal with no insulation/noise-dampening/softer materials either.
- KaiserPro 6mo ago
- hnav 6mo agoRetro-electric stuff makes so little sense since it's the worst of all worlds. Part of why Teslas get decent range is the slippery body. I wince every time I see people clamoring for the VW Scout reboot. Rivian too with their 140kwh batteries just to give people that nostalgic body-on-frame SUV look with usable range.
- olyjohn 6mo agoOkay so its not perfect as far as efficiency, but isn't it still significantly more efficient than whatever gas engine was in it before?
- saratogacx 6mo agoYou don't take on projects like this because you're on a mission to make the most efficient vehicle. Lots of people are paid good money to do that and produce the slip-slugs we have today. A project like this is to have a fun experience in a vehicle that was never designed to drive with electric qualities. I don't need the most efficient vehicle for my use so I could afford to trade some of that for fun. I'd probably try a Subaru Impreza STi because it would just be a blast to have a car of that size and stature with an electric powerplant under the hood (or trunk, or wherever it fits)
- hnav 6mo ago90% of the STi's charm is the drivetrain. How would a hacked up STi differ from a model 3?
- saratogacx 6mo agoMainly size and driving position. The charm of the AWD and live adjustments would need to be kept around but even without the ol turbo you'll still have a small, nimble, darty car to toss around. Something would be lost in the conversion but balancing turbo lag isn't the entire car. The Model 3 is long, wide, with a big wheelbase compared to, especially the older, STi's.
- 6mo ago
- sottol 6mo agoI really like the look of the car, but from the title it sounds like a Mustang has been converted into an FSD Tesla ("teslafied" Mustang) - but Tesla suspension, Tesla interior... this smells like a Mustang body fitted onto a Tesla chassis ("mustangified" Tesla). I suspect that this might be more of a "Mustang body kit" on a Tesla chassis and not retrofitting the Tesla tech into a Mustang chassis + body. Still cool, but maybe misleading.
- fragmede 6mo ago> The team grafted three sections of the 2024 Tesla Model 3’s floor and seats into the Mustang’s body, shortening the battery case to fit without altering the car’s original dimensions. The result is a classic Mustang shell sitting on top of a Model 3 dual-motor setup
- RankingMember 6mo agoYep, that's exactly what it is. Still a cool project. For a split-second after reading the headline my brain thought they had gotten the Tesla software (with a lot of hackery) to control an ICE vehicle drive-train.
- dylan604 6mo agoFor a split-second after reading the headline, I thought they were claiming FSD works.
- Leonard_of_Q 6mo agoIt does work in driving the car where it is able to. Where it fails is in the 'full' part. After 10 billion miles driven on 'auto-pilot' [1] it is hard to claim it 'does not work'. Tesla would have been better off removing the 'F' from 'FSD' but that's water under the bridge. [1] https://electrek.co/2026/05/03/tesla-fsd-10-billion-miles-no-magical-milestone-autonomy/ https://electrek.co/2026/05/03/tesla-fsd-10-billion-miles-no...
- 6mo ago
- rootusrootus 6mo agoThat's really cool, though I confess I would have preferred the interior to have been more Mustang and less Model 3. Just a quibble, though, the effort is fantastic.
- yabooey 6mo agoThis is such a waste of time and money and wow it’s absolutely gorgeous and I want it
- gedy 6mo agoI know this is not the way the industry or regulations work, but I wish electric car platforms let you pick body styles without waiting for a whole model to come out. I'd love an electric Suzuki Jimny body, and could care less about the driving platform.
- jefurii 6mo agoWhen will I be able to get an affordable restomod for my early-2000s Jetta?
- public_void 6mo agoI used to work at a company that did self driving. The sensor setup was more complicated than Tesla (cameras, lidar, etc), but the fact that FSD can still work on this car despite the cameras being in a different place is really impressive to me. Our sensors were pretty sensitive to accurate calibration, and iirc any time we tried to move our sensor array to a new car it took a ton of work to reconfigure it to make the sensor fusion output work.
- Induane 6mo agoThis is one of the real advantages to the (often insulted and/or chastised) vision only approach to FSD. People can easily adapt to different vehicles in a similar manner.
- amluto 6mo agoI’m not sure this has much to do with vision as opposed to fancy self-calibration software. At least a few years ago, Tesla cars would be in self-calibration mode for a while after delivery while they calibrated their cameras. I think the idea is that it’s cheaper to figure out in software where everything is than to calibrate the camera mounts and lenses at the factory. I see no reason that LiDAR couldn’t participate in a similar algorithm. A bigger issue would be knowing the shape of the car to avoid clipping an obstacle.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6mo agoIt probably could, but I imagine a LIDAR system would need a similar (large) amount of training data to enable effective self-calibration across a wide variety of situations. At some point, with enough sensor suites, we might be able to generalize better and have effective lower(?)-shot training for self-calibration of sensor suites.
- amluto 6mo agoIsn’t the model needed rather similar to what’s needed for sensor fusion in general? If you can extract features from each sensor that you expect to match to features from a different sensor, then you can collect a bunch of samples of this sort of data and then use it to fit the transformation between one sensor’s world space and another sensor’s world space.
- dainiusse 6mo agoWhy destroy this beauty
- codezero 6mo agoTo keep it alive
- SoftTalker 6mo agoIt would be cool if we saw the separation of drivetrain from body in the automobile market. This happens with heavy trucks, you can buy a "glider" which is a completely new, finished rolling chassis and you provide your own engine. Originally done (I think) to skirt emissions laws but it would be cool to be able to buy the body and the EV drivetrain (and maybe battery packs?) from different vendors, and for EV drivetrains to be more easily fittable to older chassis.
- yieldcrv 6mo agothat's what Waymo is doing, in their implementation of this idea the "waymo driver" is software intended to be licensed out to vehicles or vehicle chassis with applicable hardware so if you thought the waymo car rollout was fast and sudden, wait until companies no longer need their own training data, it'll be like a switch got flipped
- jerlam 6mo agoTesla has also offered their FSD to other companies, with no takers: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-fsd-licensing-adas-autonomy-legacy-automakers-2026-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-fsd-licensin... However, Tesla hasn't achieved anywhere near the autonomy of Waymo, so that may be the main sticking point.
- yieldcrv 6mo agonobody trusts non-lidar except tesla buyers
- SoftTalker 6mo agoNot sure even they do. If I bought a Tesla it would be as an EV with usable range, not anything I would ever hope would be self-driving. That bridge was burned a while ago.
- mortos 6mo agoI believe Ford had plans or interest in Tesla FSD but backed out and is going with Waymo.
- sedatk 6mo agoIt should've been a black Pontiac Trans-Am.
- deepspace 6mo agoA Mercedes Benz 770K would have been even more appropriate.
- ardit33 6mo agoIt is basically a Mustang body on a tesla chasis... which misses the point of having a classic car. While there is nothing wrong with converting your classic car to electric, if the powertrain is shot (they are harder to maintain as they age), but IMO, it looses the charm of the point of having a classical car. Few years ago, there was a trend to do these conversions, but that stopped as people realised the car loses its charm and the feel of having old classic car, and most of them are not being used as dailies anyways.
- WalterBright 6mo agoI took my 1972 Dodge small block engine out and converted it to 400 hp. Had to upgrade the transmission, driveline, brakes, radiator, and suspension to match. I self-drive it.
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- oomuinio 6mo ago[dead]
- AtlasBarfed 6mo agoI have a dream that electric motors + battery get so compact that you can make kits that fit engine blocks and large numbers of cars can be custom swapped relatively cheaply.
- xbar 6mo agoThat is the safest 1966 Mustang on the road.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6mo agoYeah, kinda boring in that respect.
- Forgeties79 6mo agoStill bothers me that “full self driving” is not fully self driving. They shouldn’t be allowed to call it that.
- hiroto_lemon 6mo agoI hope they implement this in other car models as well, and make autonomous driving possible in Japan too.
- anshumankmr 6mo agogood luck getting it repaired though honestly this is really cool
- theklub 6mo agoSo where is the startup to convert any car to electric?
- 1234letshaveatw 6mo agothey're out there, about as affordable as you would imagine them to be
- aliljet 6mo agoThis is so cool. I would love to revitalize a generation of great, but perhaps boring older cars with FSD. Just so much work...
- sandworm101 6mo agoA 66 mustang ... without the sound? A lion without a roar. And at these prices, you would reduce far more carbon by investing that money in solar panels. 50k buys at least a 20kw system that would more than make up for your summer weekend drives in a classic mustang.
- deckar01 6mo agoThat Vagabond Builds video... They edited it, but left in a claim it had a frunk. The commentary felt like engagement optimized stream of consciousness blather. They cut out shots of the car being moved and never showed it being driven.
- kleiba2 6mo agoOMG, that steering wheel is just hideous!
- beAbU 6mo agoSuperfastmatt did something similar with a very very old Jag... (Sans the FSD) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoTU9_iCGa6i_C38pwQyg0pBGoov76NNv&si=3J1qwDLjG8CxkFtN https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoTU9_iCGa6i_C38pwQyg0pBG... His channel comes highly recommended for anyone even remotely interested in cars by the way.
- shmeeed 6mo agoSecond this. I love his dry humour.
- RagnarD 6mo agoWell, when there's a software created accident, possibly horrendous, I'm sure Tesla will be relieved that it's one case where they can point to it being a completely unauthorized system for which they reject responsibility.
- hdndjsbbs 6mo agoIt's an impressive build of "putting a Mustang shell on a Model 3", but for God's sake why didnt they swap the seats and steering wheel at least. Got to be the worst-looking interior I've ever seen.
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