Go Electric for £1000 "WOT?"

[roberto]

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/u...ttle-%C2%A3900

[HPsauce]

So that's Go Electric for £1000 if you don't charge anything for your own highly-skilled time, massive expertise built up at great expense in time and money, and presumably a very well-equipped specialist workshop....
Not a good long-term business model?

[sarg]

I think it's a brilliant idea, and am looking forward to Mikki's what's in the electric workshop thread

[ainarssems]

£900..., You cannot get just a decent battery alone for £5k

[steamship]

Originally Posted by ainarssems

£900..., You cannot get just a decent battery alone for £5k

...and at least £2,000 for a Tesla motor, and that's without the electrics to operate it.

[strummagnet]

Might be worth a "Road trip" to gain a little more insight.

https://openinverter.org/docs/index....en_home,3.html

[MikkiJayne]

I've been watching EV conversions happening for a while, and I'm entirely up for it when parts get to sensible prices, but <£1000 is off in lala land. A Nissan Leaf motor on its own costs more than that. The article conveniently forgets some substantial hidden costs for the sake of a headline.

It is an eminently sensible option for the future, rather than replacing all combustion-engined vehicles with new EVs, but until parts are common enough to become commodity items, they are still going to be prohibitively expensive for 99% of motorists. A Tesla swap in to a D2 for example would be in the region of £15K just for parts, to get motor, control electronics, and enough batteries for a reasonable range. No one is going to spend that, but £5K and it becomes more realistic. Even to swap my Mum's Beetle Cabrio using Nissan Leaf bits is going to be in the order of £10K by the time it works, which is just silly. Yes, I have looked in to both extensively

We need more EVs on the road so that 1, the parts are produced in higher volumes and get cheaper, and 2, more of them end up crashed and broken for bits, and then we also need government subsidies or incentives to do the conversions in the first place. Only then will we see this becoming mainstream.

[tintin]

Originally Posted by MikkiJayne

A Tesla swap in to a D2 for example would be in the region of £15K Even to swap my Mum's Beetle Cabrio using Nissan Leaf bits is going to be in the order of £10K by the time it works, which is just silly. Yes, I have looked in to both extensively

Oh goody

[roberto]

D3 electric with massive spec
i would defo throw £10,000 at my A8
infact maybe its future is just that

very impressive S5 (tesla) on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGVVioOjCUU&t=140s

[MikkiJayne]

The S5 swap is interesting for being the first, and much kudos to those involved for reverse engineering all the stuff to make it work, but its a big compromise with the batteries taking up most of the rear of the cabin. That was done to keep the original quattro drivetrain - in the vid you can see the Tesla motor attached to the original gearbox.

An 8 is actually a decent recipient for EV stuff because it is so large, although keeping AWD would compromise range, simply due to packaging constraints.

My plan would be based on a Model S, and I'd basically replace the rear subframe with the complete Tesla rear subframe - drive unit and all. With the fuel tank removed there is plenty of height for the motor, and the Tesla subframe is a very similar concept to the D2 / D3 unit.

To try and do AWD would be a bit more of a challenge since the Tesla drive unit is quite wide so may be tricky to fit between the chassis legs. I'd need to get my hands on one to try it though.

Since there is no driveshaft or exhaust, at least two, possibly three Model S batteries will go under the back seat.

Up front, I think another 6-8 batteries will fit in the engine bay, although AWD would reduce that to probably 4.

For even more range, a couple more could be fitted under the boot floor. Of the 16 batteries in a Model S, I reckon 10-12 could be fitted in to an 8, giving a range of probably 200 miles.

For electronics, all the chunky stuff (and an electric AC compressor) can go in the tunnel since that's empty now. There are 3rd party control units available these days which can make the drive units, batteries, charging system etc run without the rest of the Tesla being attached, and which can output canbus to make the recipient vehicle still work so effectively the rest of the car would remain as-is. The ice drivetrain just gets replaced with electric.

Simples...