Tesla rear end swap Options

[Andyrew]

If it were me I would not bother with trying to reinvent the rear of the 914. Using the tesla motor and trans would be small enough to fit in the 914 under the trunk. Some custom axles and away you go.

Would be a very simple mechanical swap, then your just left with a standard run of then mill EV swap and mounting as many batteries as you can afford (the real hinderance here).

Probably easily spend 30k on this conversion, but hey you would have a pretty decent EV 914 that could run for likely hundreds of miles and be as fast as the fastest 914s out there.

[thelogo]

Im a little confused
I know the 1st telsa was a little ,lite weight
Sports car

But thats the only lightweight electric car i know of

I just do not understand why someone would want
To make a electric car that is so heavy


And a 914 that weighs 4000 lbs , just doesn't seem smart

[Mueller]

Im a little confused
I know the 1st telsa was a little ,lite weight
Sports car

But thats the only lightweight electric car i know of

I just do not understand why someone would want
To make a electric car that is so heavy


And a 914 that weighs 4000 lbs , just doesn't seem smart

No reason for it to weigh that much, the Roadster you mentioned is listed at 2800 pounds.

I think he was just throwing numbers out there. Of course weight to range ratio can be made higher or lower,

[Jeff Hail]

I am technician class certified on Tesla vehicles.

A lot of electronics needed to make this work. You will first need to come up with a 12 volt low voltage system. You will need to have both DC and AC sides for the 12 volt trunk. You will then need to come up with a 400 volt (high) system that is isolated from the 12 volt branch entirely. The 400 volt side will need to have an inverter which you have on the right side of the differential for the AC motor which requires 386 volts. Then the battery storage comes into play with enough to supply consistent 100 amps. Then the small stuff like the drive by wire to modulate the amperage to throttle the drive motor.

I think this is a great idea and with a minimalist approach could be done but it would take a lot of work and engineering ingenuity. Battery storage size can be reduced significantly with all the deletes of the bells and whistles that are not needed that would normally fall under a complete T vehicle. Based on what I know the 100 amp requirement should be able to be brought down to 50 amps and still work for 2wd.

On the flip side a small gas powered engine say a V Twin 22 HP (700 cc) industrial motor driving a generator could be used which we still weight less than a battery bank. I would look at turbine powered APU's from jet aircraft. They are pretty compact such as a The Tiernay TT10. 24 volts and 300 amps!!! The sound would be wicked.

[burton73]

I am technician class certified on Tesla vehicles.

A lot of electronics needed to make this work. You will first need to come up with a 12 volt low voltage system. You will need to have both DC and AC sides for the 12 volt trunk. You will then need to come up with a 400 volt (high) system that is isolated from the 12 volt branch entirely. The 400 volt side will need to have an inverter which you have on the right side of the differential for the AC motor which requires 386 volts. Then the battery storage comes into play with enough to supply consistent 100 amps. Then the small stuff like the drive by wire to modulate the amperage to throttle the drive motor.

I think this is a great idea and with a minimalist approach could be done but it would take a lot of work and engineering ingenuity. Battery storage size can be reduced significantly with all the deletes of the bells and whistles that are not needed that would normally fall under a complete T vehicle. Based on what I know the 100 amp requirement should be able to be brought down to 50 amps and still work for 2wd.

On the flip side a small gas powered engine say a V Twin 22 HP (700 cc) industrial motor driving a generator could be used which we still weight less than a battery bank. I would look at turbine powered APU's from jet aircraft. They are pretty compact such as a The Tiernay TT10. 24 volts and 300 amps!!! The sound would be wicked.

You say the small Eng. could put out 300 amps. Even my Lexus RX400H hybrid has massive torque with it Prius like drive in it. Punch it and it lays rubber in the front tires and pulls and pulls.
So if you had no batteries would this still work?
If you run a Prius almost out of gas it goes into a super slow crawl to try to find a gas station. Tesla only with battery tells you to get power. Mable something in-between

Bob B

[Mueller]

Hey Jeff, thanks for those images.

I've been reading up on how the chargers interact with vehicles for the last few days.

We have just installed 2 solar powered chargers at work and nobody in our group knows anything about them such as are they AC or DC output and what handshaking protocol is used in case someone wanted to plug in a home built EV into it. (I do now, not a expert just a little more educated on the subject)

This document has some great information which you might already be aware of:
http://www.ti.com/lit/ug/tidub87/tidub87.pdf

[Chris Pincetich]

While the Tesla would be the ultimate, there are some other crazy cool conversions going on, with my favorite on the DIY EV forum being a Lexus hybrid SUV transaxle into a BMW 3-series sedan. The SUV transaxle has two electric motors inside it, similar to but stronger than the Prius set-up, and can turn the driveshaft without an IC engine on the other end.

The Telsla motor is the perfect layout for the 914 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)
There was a guy trying it, who started over a year ago, in Sacramento I think....
It's here on 914World somewhere.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

The now discontinued Chevy Spark had an EV motor that put out 400 ft/lb torque. That would be an awesome junk-yard DIY budget hot-rod. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/aktion035.gif)