what does a car need to have in it for an electric conversion?

4 Comments

1. Don't Panic says:

   February 11, 2010 at 3:05 pm

   four wheels, suspension, breaks, chassis, body, glass, interior.

   That’s it.

   You’re going to have to find some place to put the batteries. That could be just as simple as making a tray to put where the back seat used to be.

   You’re going to have to get an adapter plate to mound the electric motor to the transmission. A lot of these are pre-manufactured for certain cars, if you can’t find one for your car you can have one machined, it just costs more money.

   http://www.canev.com
   http://www.electroauto.com/ “VoltsRabbit” Kit
   http://e-volks.com/
   http://www.cloudelectric.com *********very good
   http://www.electricmotorsport.com/store/index.php ********very good
   http://www.evalbum.com/ – photo album
   http://www.electricmotion.org – DIY electric motorcycle plans
   http://www.electric-cars-are-for-girls.com/
   http://www.thunderstruck-ev.com/ – motors, controllers, batteries
   http://www.azuredynamics.com/ – they make complete drive systems, they look pretty good
2. Jakester says:

   February 11, 2010 at 3:11 pm

   Some of the secondary systems to consider: manual steering is simpler, otherwise you need an axillary pump to drive the power steering, unless your find is one of the few cars with electric steering , you usually end up adding a vacuum pump for the power brakes (yea get a donor car with brakes) The old heater core can be cast off along with the radiator, portable home electric heater cores seem to work as replacements.

   Most of the conversions retain the transmission just because the exact right fixed gearing is hard to predict and implement in a home conversion. Some do like those commercial electrics (Tesla, Tango) and go with fixed gearing. A manual transmission is much more desirable than an automatic. You can get by without a clutch.

   Nice collection of links by don’t panic.

   If I may add one, a statistical summary of 50 home conversions that found the average cost around $10,000, range 35 miles, top speed 55, although there’s a lot of variation depending on donor car weight and battery/motor quality.
3. John W says:

   February 11, 2010 at 3:46 pm

   It’s just easier to leave the transmission in, no need to make sure the motor has a wide range of operation or the control circuitry to run it in reverse and no need to repair the hole that removing the gear shift would do to the interior of the car.

   The concept of a car sounds deceptively simple but the fact is that there’s an awful lot of stuff in a modern car, stripping them all out and then putting back what you need isn’t an easy task. Most conversions attempt to strip out as little as possible in order to save on the work but this results in a heavier car and hence lower top speed and less of a range. This is why the 70’s era UrbaElectric featured in Mechanix Ilustrated was built from the ground up starting with a tube frame instead of using a donor car, it’s easier to get the weight to a minimum if you start from scratch but it’s harder to get a finished look. Note that when GM started developing their electric car, they started by building an UrbaElectric known as GM’s Drive I or the Delco Electric.
4. Ron B says:

   February 11, 2010 at 3:50 pm

   The parts that you wont need for a converted vehicle are the engine, radiator, fuel tank and exhaust system. You can also remove the clutch pedal because you really don’t need a clutch to shift gears. Also consider converting a small pickup instead of a car because it is already capable of carrying the increased load of 16 to 24 batteries. See my recently converted pickup at http://www.evalbum.com/2340.