Thanks Steven for the reccomendation their site looks very professional.
Rather than a personal project, I was hoping for this to be more of a forum project, for whoever is interested, to bring together forum skills and so we all learn something. A bit of electronics, engineering, design, machining, etc.
The finished car could then be donated to A8parts as a demo car for the forum and for A8parts, and to show off how versatile a D2 platform is.
The ideal of course would be to have a two motor set up one driving the front axle one driving the rear axle to stay true to Audi's design. But to start with Mikki's idea is best just to go with FWD or RWD for simplicity. They spent $20k on the Maserati! that's nuts, I'll have to watch that episode.
I think weight wise it may be ok. Nissan leaf weighs around 1535kg. A rought back of the cigarette packet calculation for a D2
1730kg for a manual S8 so to get down to the bare platform:
1730
-198 engine
-85 gearbox + flywheel
-66 fuel
-10? fuel tank
-10? front shafts
-10 prop shaft
-11? various other engine bay parts
1340 chassis
+218 Nissan battery equivalent
+58 Nissan leaf motor (not clear if Power module is included)
+23? other random stuff to mount battery and motor
1630kg total
So it seems it would only be 100kg heavier than a standard Leaf. Should be able to move along
There are a few Leafs being broken on UK ebay already, if this project got serious I would be happy to buy a Nissan Leaf motor + power module for around £1300 and donate it to the project. It would probably be easiest to fit it in the engine bay to drive the front wheels and just adapt half shafts to fit the D2 drive shafts.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2014-Nissa...UAAOSwI2xX8l2y
Alternatively, we could get creative and look for other cheaper solutions such as motors from the various Renault electric cars, Kangoo, Zoe, etc. Or even build our own control module.
Battery cost would be the major hurdle.
I know its all a bit pie-in-the-sky thinking, it would be cool to see a electric D2 though. Or a D3 for that matter (only if we could get rid of the complex air suspension
). To me it seems the lighter weight of aluminium platforms is well suited to electric powertrains.