Electric vehicles

[RogerS]

People have been doing DIY electric conversions for years. I guess they just MOT it like any other vehicle.

A quick Google shows that indeed they have. Then looking at a website that did conversion kits, my eyes were drawn to this on their Home page

Prior to contacting us in regards to one off conversions please be aware that the average parts cost is currently in the region of £25,000+

 

[Terry - Somerset]

I can believe that there are a very limited number of cases where a full electric conversion could be worthwhile - eg: wedding and funeral limos, high end classic cars. These vehicles typically travel very limited distances slowly and are normally kept under cover in buildings with access to electric power for recharging.

But for most cars it makes no sense whatever. Any installation is likely to be compromised as the battery, motor and control systems are completely different size and weight to the components to be removed (eg: suspension components may also need upgrading).

It is unlikely to be financially attractive to convert a car only a few years old - removing engine, gearbox, ECUs etc would effectively trash any value. Almost certainly better to sell the existing vehicle and replace with a new EV.

And you have to question why anyone would comtemplate a very costly conversion on any car more than 4 or 5 years old.

 

[Geoff_S]

I can believe that there are a very limited number of cases where a full electric conversion could be worthwhile - eg: wedding and funeral limos, high end classic cars. These vehicles typically travel very limited distances slowly and are normally kept under cover in buildings with access to electric power for recharging.

But for most cars it makes no sense whatever. Any installation is likely to be compromised as the battery, motor and control systems are completely different size and weight to the components to be removed (eg: suspension components may also need upgrading).

It is unlikely to be financially attractive to convert a car only a few years old - removing engine, gearbox, ECUs etc would effectively trash any value. Almost certainly better to sell the existing vehicle and replace with a new EV.

And you have to question why anyone would comtemplate a very costly conversion on any car more than 4 or 5 years old.

I'm guessing it's just the challenge. A bit like my woodworking actually

 

[Trainee neophyte]

People have been doing DIY electric conversions for years. I guess they just MOT it like any other vehicle.

A quick Google shows that indeed they have. Then looking at a website that did conversion kits, my eyes were drawn to this on their Home page

Prior to contacting us in regards to one off conversions please be aware that the average parts cost is currently in the region of £25,000+

If they are the same people I found, it is because they do high end racing conversions, and use only Tesla parts. I found some other people who suggest about £5-6k for an average car, and a high performance car or big truck could get up to £10k.

Normally you would swap the engine, and attach it to the clutch plate for ease. I don't think you bother using the gears much though, as you get constant torque at all revs, but they will be there for those occasional emergency steep hill starts or whatever.

Regarding weight, the electric motor is probably lighter then the ICE it replaces, and the batteries (unless you have a Tesla battery) don't seem to be outlandishly heavy. Don't forget that you will have 50 litres of fuel to not carry around with you. If you were doing a hi-tec conversion you would do way with the drive train and gearbox and mount the engine on the axle. Even better would be a motor in each wheel, but that might be beyond the home mechanic.

 

[Lons]

What Terry said is correct though and in fact making the vehicle significantly lighter and probable redistribution of new parts to other areas can affect the balance and make the vehicle handle poorly at best and downright dangerous at worst.

Cars are designed with highly tuned suspension which takes account of all those factors and in many cases even a change of tyre make or type changes how it feels so altering most of the drive components without specialist knowledge is more than a little stupid IMHO.


I have a MB suv a little over 2 years old now and when I bought it I was aware that a model design fault on the RHD versions caused clonking and tyre skip on full lock at low speeds. MB tried to mask this by offering winter wheels and tyres or all season tyres FOC but eventually designed a new front wishbone set up which was duly carried out on my car last June.
Prior to that the car handled very well indeed and the all wheel drive and suspension set up kept it well and truly planted on the road but immediately following the wishbone change the car was undriveable on damp or wet roads, like driving on sheet ice. The battle with the dealer is another story but they had managed to get the set up wrong and that relatively minor change could have caused a very serious accident. I would seriously hope that any heavily modded car would have full compliance tests similar to self build or manufactured before allowing them on British roads.
Greek roads are a different matter and from what I've seen there on holiday they get away with murder already. :wink:

 

[Trainee neophyte]

Everything JP Morgan thinks you need to know about the future of electric vehicles. https://www.jpmorgan.com/global/researc ... c-vehicles

 

[Trainee neophyte]

What Terry said is correct though and in fact making the vehicle significantly lighter and probable redistribution of new parts to other areas can affect the balance and make the vehicle handle poorly at best and downright dangerous at worst.
...
Greek roads are a different matter and from what I've seen there on holiday they get away with murder already. :wink:

I've driven a pickup truck and/or 4x4 for so many years I tend not to think about shopping trolley design. The Nisan Leaf 39kWh battery seems to weigh around 175kg, but I am struggling to find a definitive figure, so that may be up or down a bit. That is completely irrelevant to a pickup truck, but might make a bit of a difference in a two seater. It's basically two chubby passengers, or one and a half rugby players. However, it can be spread around to distribute the weight low down and evenly - Tesla like theirs under the floor. Don't forget that you won't need the fuel tank (50kg or more when full?), and there should be a gain after throwing away the huge lump of metal under the bonnet, so a net gain of a bit over 100kg, or one passenger. Your comments are still valid about needing to pay attention to changes in handling, but I am not too worried personally. I think it can be overcome.

Regarding Greece and driving - it's a very simple attitude here, which mostly works very well: you do you, and I'll do me, and we will try not to hit each other head on. That last bit doesn't always go according to plan, but hey ho - insha'Allah etc.

 

[Rorschach]

Weight etc are not really the problem with a conversion. The batteries are heavy, but so is an ICE and full fuel tank. Removing the fuel tank gives you a good bit of space and the design of the car already takes into account the fact that there will be a changing, sloshing load in that area already.

As has already been mentioned the electric motor will weigh a fair bit less than a comparable ICE and you don't have oil and coolant as well. All these things add up. I would be surprised if the completed weight of a an EV conversion is much different to it when it was an ICE. Bear in mind though we are talking about a converted car that would be maybe 150mile range, a 300+ Tesla is a different story, they are beasts compared to an ICE but they are also performance cars as well so to be expected.

Your issue is really going to be all the other gubbins. How much of the drive train do you replace, how much of the electrics and ECU need to be replaced, not to get the motor working, that's trivial, but to get all the other components working, things like a range calculator, alarms, lights, wipers, ABS, speedo, power steering. On an older car these things might be "dumb" and fairly easy to convert but if you are trying to do a car made within the last 20 years then the ECU is going to be at least monitoring a lot of these things so that could be an issue.

 

[Droogs]

The IVA/SVA have sections that cover EV conversions and athey are treated like kit cars basically. But the pointabout the ecu is very valid. From a lot of the forums I read on BEV DIY conversions it seems that you need to be very up on how to reprogam them etc. The biggest chunck of discourse seems to be about the electronics and the ecu if you intend to convert anything sort of post early 80s

 

[Lons]

I watched this youtube vid a few days ago where they tested 6 EVs from full charge to zero and the range from all of them although much lower than stated figure was nevertheless impressive. Still not really true figures for my situation as most of the driving was motorway at fixed speeds where ours tends to be country roads and town driving etc. Interesting that there's no Golf there though!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH7V2tU3iFc

There are 3 cars including an equivalent of mine that I could have been interested in but at prices that are more than 50% over and above the comparably specified ICE model and that's before any additional discount that can be screwed from the dealers who are desperate to get rid, so for me they really aren't viable at the minute.
I can't find per mile costs for the EV comparable to my diesel but whatever it is it would take a **** of a long time to get back the extra £25K purchase cost! :shock:

As an aside, my daughter was rabbiting on about the new Corsa EV, she currently has a Fiesta 1.0 petrol eco, there was an article in the local paper yesterday.

* The Corsa EV starts at £27k ( after grant discount ) which is around £10k or 58% more than a standard 1.4 petrol.
* This is 7.4kw version which takes 7.5 hours to fully charge. A larger 11kw model is planned but at cost of around £32k.
* Stated range is 200 miles but "in real conditions could be as low as 100 miles"
* Vauxhall state that "fuel savings would be about £65 per month". That equates to £780 pa so would take nearly 13 years to get your extra £10,000 purchase outlay back in simple terms however I assume that saving is based on Laboratory figures and average mileage which would be different for those of us driving much less or more. It also takes no account of the likely drop in petrol and Diesel or the almost certainty that electricity prices will continue to rise and the government will need to recoup falling duty rates by taxing EVs, just as they did when following their recommendations millions switched to diesel and tax receipts fell like a stone!
Over simplification because they will also increase duty on ICEs of course.

 

[MusicMan]

Interesting video, thanks. I do suggest you check out leasing, however.

I wouldn't be so gloomy about the tax/price situation. The government really needs to shift a large fraction of cars to electric in order to meet its legal commitments to reduce carbon emissions. It's important to make cars zero emission at point of use, so that carbon emission can be limited to power stations. These are much lower emission than in the past, and the last coal stations are closing in 2024 or 2025. And CO2 can be much more easily dealt with at the power stations. EVs are only around 2% of total cars at the moment so there is a long way to go, so I expect more incentives rather than less over the next 10 years, and probably financial penalties for ICEs.

It's right that you cannot expect the stated range under test conditions to be achieved all the time. The test is a mixture of the more efficient city driving and the less efficient motorway driving (the other way round from ICE cars). Better regarded as a means of comparing cars accurately.

Very much liking my new Leaf, though as I've been stuck at home with a cold the last week I haven't had a lot of a chance to drive it yet!

 

[Lons]

The Leaf comes out pretty well in that video Keith, from my own point of view I was only comparing my own car with the alternative of the same type, size and spec which is reasonable given that I don't want at the minute to down spec. and while of course the future is speculation I think it's fairly certain that once the tipping point is reached on EVs and ICE vehicles sales are low enough that there will be taxes imposed on EVs to make up the shortfall, they have to get it somewhere and as soon as people are locked in they become easy targets as history shows.

The Corsa in my daughter's case is much more relevant and though she's very interested in EV she can't afford the price difference and her current circumstances make leasing difficult.

As an aside Keith, did you ever come across Sir Alistair MacFarlane on your travels? I did several jobs for and became friendly with him and his mad ( in a nice way), Welsh wife until she died a number of years ago when he moved and I lost touch. He was a member of The Royal Society and though retired still travelled regularly for them, I guess he'll be in his 90s now if he's still around.

cheers
Bob

 

[MusicMan]

The Leaf comes out pretty well in that video Keith, from my own point of view I was only comparing my own car with the alternative of the same type, size and spec which is reasonable given that I don't want at the minute to down spec. and while of course the future is speculation I think it's fairly certain that once the tipping point is reached on EVs and ICE vehicles sales are low enough that there will be taxes imposed on EVs to make up the shortfall, they have to get it somewhere and as soon as people are locked in they become easy targets as history shows.

The Corsa in my daughter's case is much more relevant and though she's very interested in EV she can't afford the price difference and her current circumstances make leasing difficult.

As an aside Keith, did you ever come across Sir Alistair MacFarlane on your travels? I did several jobs for and became friendly with him and his mad ( in a nice way), Welsh wife until she died a number of years ago when he moved and I lost touch. He was a member of The Royal Society and though retired still travelled regularly for them, I guess he'll be in his 90s now if he's still around.

cheers
Bob

Circumstances can make leasing difficult, though if it's possible it makes sense to me. The usual business advice is: 'Appreciating asset - buy, Depreciating asset - lease', especially when it is certain that better value and range in EVs will be available in a couple of years time.

Yes, I did meet Alistair on a few occasions and he's a famous figure in academic engineering. He's indeed alive (89 now) though I haven't seen him at the Royal Society recently. I never met his wife but am impressed that you knew them well!

Keith

 

[Lons]

I'll pm you re Alistair rather than hijack the thread Keith.

 

[RogerS]

I do suggest you check out leasing, however.

.....

No point. If an EV costs that much more than an ICE will cost then the leasing costs will also cost that much more. Simple economics.

 

[jeremyduncombe]

I do suggest you check out leasing, however.

.....

No point. If an EV costs that much more than an ICE will cost then the leasing costs will also cost that much more. Simple economics.

Economics isn’t that simple. Leasing costs depend on how much value the vehicle loses over the period of the lease. The initial cost of an EV is far higher than an equivalent ICE. If a three year old EV still attracts a big premium over a three year old ICE, the leasing costs may not be much different. At present there are not enough second hand EVs on the market to get a realistic idea of depreciation rates. I guess leasing will make sense in four or five years, when the EV market is better established.

 

[RogerS]

I do suggest you check out leasing, however.

.....

.... I guess leasing will make sense in four or five years, when the EV market is better established.

And prices much lower.

 

[Geoff_S]

We've leased ours (PCP) for 4 years. First time ever and only because we cannot be sure where the EV technology will be in 4 years time. If our current EV is then "out of the ark" we can just hand it back.

 

[RogerS]

Why do they call it 'leasing' when all one is really doing is hiring it for a fixed time period ?

 

[Droogs]

I believe, Roger, that's because renting is open ended . You don't buy a house and rent the land its on you get a lease