Has anyone been thinking about building an electric car (home-made) for themselvees any time soon? Options

[shawnbem]

I just read of how a man in Los Angelese has converted an old Porsche 914 to an electric car with a 60 mile range for $18,000 (24 lead acid batteries)
I thought to myself that's a good idea. Probably better to buy an electric scooter though, if you don't need to take the freeway often as is the case in L.A.

I'm now doing some investigation into that idea and I hope to begin building my own electic car also. Does anyone else have similar plans?

I have heard about how its actually better to convet old small pickup trucks (Ford/Toyota/GM) to electric pickups because the box can hold more batteries and the springs are easily upgraded to hold the extra tonnage. Lead acid batts are heavy but they're cheap, so that's why Lithium Ions are shunned for now.

[carr914]

Here's some info on mine:

http://www.evalbum.com/3439

I've got over 4 years of trouble free driving. I checked on the internet and so far there are over 48 914's converted to electric power in the US.

Jim

I say BS.

I say your range is optimistic at best. Hell,the Nissan Leaf or the BMW I3 can't do more than 100 miles.

You've added 500 pounds of weight in places it was never intended by the original designers. Fun to drive? I doubt it, especially if you add the low resistance, skinny ass, low grip tires.

It cost you $20K (if believable) to degrade the performance of the car with little hope of ever recovering such costs.

Sorry for getting so serious, but to me, sacrificing a classic car to fulfill your whims of being a "greenie" strikes me sacrilegious. There are plenty of shitty Corolla's out there you can play Dr. Frankenstein with.

I rode in Jim's car yesterday and I would definately say it was Fun! I think he told me after he sold off parts off the 914 his conversion was not that expensive.

Gotta ask, do you get on every Suby, -6, Corvair, V-8 Conversion Thread and tell people their cars suck?

[Big Len]

Here's some info on mine:

http://www.evalbum.com/3439

I've got over 4 years of trouble free driving. I checked on the internet and so far there are over 48 914's converted to electric power in the US.

Jim

I say BS.

I say your range is optimistic at best. Hell,the Nissan Leaf or the BMW I3 can't do more than 100 miles.

You've added 500 pounds of weight in places it was never intended by the original designers. Fun to drive? I doubt it, especially if you add the low resistance, skinny ass, low grip tires.

It cost you $20K (if believable) to degrade the performance of the car with little hope of ever recovering such costs.

Sorry for getting so serious, but to me, sacrificing a classic car to fulfill your whims of being a "greenie" strikes me sacrilegious. There are plenty of shitty Corolla's out there you can play Dr. Frankenstein with.

I rode in Jim's car yesterday and I would definately say it was Fun! I think he told me after he sold off parts off the 914 his conversion was not that expensive.

Gotta ask, do you get on every Suby, -6, Corvair, V-8 Conversion Thread and tell people their cars suck?

Never said his car sucked pal.

If you reread what I wrote, I'm not buying his range numbers. Toyota, Honda, MB, BMW EV's, with the best engineers can't achieve those range numbers in the real world. Only Tesla can, but that's a whole different price range.

You said you drove in Jim's car. Did you drive it or were you a passenger? If you drove it, can you honestly say it was as much fun to drive as your own with the added 500 lbs?

Using his own numbers, it costs $16,500 to convert to EV (plus the car and charging station) to drive a car with very limited range, 6 hours to "refuel", and adding 25% of the car's original weight. And he didn't save it from the junk yard either.

Perhaps I have a bit more reverence for 914's than you do. To me, the car is a rare, classic sports car and it should be respected as such, but that is not to say it can't be improved upon. But I put the 914 in the same category as a Austin Healey 3000, a Triumph TR4, a VW Karmann Ghia or others that I mentioned. Doing an expensive EV conversion to any of these hardly seems like an improvement and in my opinion, does a disservice to the original concept of the car.