914 Electric Conversion, 914 electric conversion Options

[bbrock]

Big difference when you can find fuel for an ICE virtually anywhere, and it can be fueled in 5 min if your range suddenly is reduced as the algorithm for range updates in a non-linear manner.

Until you've reached your planned charging destination only to find that the charging station is out of order and/or has a hour plus queue to charge, you've never really experienced range anxiety while hoping you can find another operational charger before it dies.

You've just described about 25% of my trips across Wyoming. Drive across in an SUV with a canoe strapped on the roof. Your normal 300 mile range suddenly drops to the low 200s and it is a LONG way between filling stations. Yeah, range anxiety is real for ICE too and I've also pulled up to the station to find it out of order. Granted, there are still a lot more gas pumps than chargers, but the same thing was said about ICE as they replaced the horse and buggy.

And yes, like I said, charge times vs filling times is about the last hurdle standing between me and going EV for the daily driver. Blank spots on the map between chargers across MT and WY are about what gasoline stations were in the early 90s. I figure by the time they get the charge times down to suit, those blank spots will be filled in. There are definitely trade-offs, but I don't understand the EV hate that boils up so quickly. Not from you.

[914forme]

Another interesting bit of information:

- The OP has not even bothered to log back in after his initial post

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif) But not surprised

[wonkipop]

hard-line pressure is building here in aus to follow uk/euro deadline of 2030 for no new ICE vehicles = its coming from the urban left of the political spectrum.

but....aus is at the scale of texas (or the real USA west). think of driving to marfa and you have an aus road trip in terms of scale and emptiness. range is still the big one.

lots of elec vehicles starting to appear in urban areas as folks make the plunge on their current car purchase. but serious infrastructure for charging is not in place.

there is serious conversation about hybrid vehicles coming into play to tackle range and infrastructure limitations. japanese manufacturers seem to be pushing that one, more so than euro makers. perhaps the J have their eyes on the aus and USA markets. i have read that mazda are recommitting to the rotary engine as a generator unit that can be run at constant revs (to overcome its previous emissions problems) and run on a variety of fuels since rotaries are well able to do that. at least that way you can overcome lack of charging infrastructure in more remote areas a long way from the main high way arteries.

a car i fancied in my fleet was a honda insight mark 1. extreme in engineering, materials, design terms. taking efficiency like porsche took on performance. not many here and all tightly held even when the battery packs wore out. they seem to pull high $ when they rarely come up for sale.

electric cars will be like ICE cars. most of them will be vanilla. the performance ones will probably make your eyeballs squash into the back of their sockets. but will they let you drive them to their limits. our nanny state country will probably have speed limits down to 10km/h by then?

if i am still alive when petrol goes off the market and if i can still drive, i am going to set up a still and manufacture bio fuel to run the 914. i will probably have to pay for carbon credits to produce C02. i predict i will be 80 to 90 years old when that happens. i'm 60 now. being realistic i doubt i will be around.

i imagine the 914 electric conversion industry will get some serious takers.
there is no doubt there will come a point where you will be made to pay to drive a petrol one, or if things become draconian, then all ICE cars will be forced off the road.
i can see that happening in europe first.

[Rand]

It's all arguments.
I have no doubt electric will become more of the thing.
But no way you'll take it away from the fuel burners.
Remember, the "clean" fuel still comes from dirty sources.

[wonkipop]

It's all arguments.
I have no doubt electric will become more of the thing.
But no way you'll take it away from the fuel burners.
Remember, the "clean" fuel still comes from dirty sources.

that certainly was the case here with coal power stations.
i did the maths on it 10 years ago and the electric car would result in significantly higher C02 emissions.

but the generating infrastructure is being very rapidly pensioned off, at a rate that surprises me now. and aus has a reputation as having a very dirty electricity production industry. within 10 years that will probably be a had a reputation in the past tense.

there are now so many roof top pv panels installed throughout the country we are generating a surplus of electricity during the daytime that has become problematic.

the next phase already underway is the installation of large scale battery farms.
these are predicted to provide power at night that has been stored from surplus day time electricity. we have to wait and see.

things are moving fast at the big end of things here - much faster than i expected.

aus is lucky though, it has a lot of available sunshine to produce power.
but we have a widely dispersed population over large scale areas.
the travel range of electric cars at present remains a problem.
i guess it will be overcome.

very recently the state govt. here introduced a road mileage tax to be applied to all electric cars as part of registration. traditionally road tax has been levied via sale of petrol as a very fair form of user pays. the road tax pays for new highways and upkeep. i was surprised by the howls from the electric car lobby. there was a lot of sanctimonious guff about being clean meant you should get a break. a sign that the biggest problem will be keeping all the arguments scientific and rational rather than moral. awful lot of do gooder stuff getting in the way of the facts down here sometimes.

[bbrock]

It's all arguments.
I have no doubt electric will become more of the thing.
But no way you'll take it away from the fuel burners.
Remember, the "clean" fuel still comes from dirty sources.

that certainly was the case here with coal power stations.
i did the maths on it 10 years ago and the electric car would result in significantly higher C02 emissions.

In 2015 the Union of Concerned Scientists released a study on cradle to grave emissions and found on average EVs had less than half the carbon emissions compared with comparable ICE vehicles. True that reductions were marginal for coal-based electricity, but they weren't higher. https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/...full-report.pdf
Of course if we'd stop pretending that nuclear is the boogie man that it isn't, we could get out of this mess a lot faster.

[Rand]

Of course EVs have less carbon emissions. We are still a long way from clean electric. I just want people to be clear: Electric does not mean clean. Yet. So far it is only displacing the dirty. And THAT is what some green heads don't yet understand. Displacing it from YOU doesn't mean it's gone.

[bbrock]

Of course EVs have less carbon emissions. We are still a long way from clean electric. I just want people to be clear: Electric does not mean clean. Yet. So far it is only displacing the dirty. And THAT is what some green heads don't yet understand. Displacing it from YOU doesn't mean it's gone.

Agreed. All energy sources have impacts. Some are worse than others and carbon emissions are not the only impacts. Some sources are much better than others though. It isn't that obvious that EV would have less emissions than ICE when you consider the whole cradle to grave life though. EVs are dirtier to manufacture and at least at one time, dirtier to dispose of so it wasn't clear they would have a net reduction when powered with dirty coal electricity. It turns out that at least as of 2008 or so, the did. I didn't understand how until I learned that even as dirty as coal is, it still has fewer emissions per unit of energy than the average ICE car.

[wonkipop]

It's all arguments.
I have no doubt electric will become more of the thing.
But no way you'll take it away from the fuel burners.
Remember, the "clean" fuel still comes from dirty sources.

that certainly was the case here with coal power stations.
i did the maths on it 10 years ago and the electric car would result in significantly higher C02 emissions.

In 2015 the Union of Concerned Scientists released a study on cradle to grave emissions and found on average EVs had less than half the carbon emissions compared with comparable ICE vehicles. True that reductions were marginal for coal-based electricity, but they weren't higher. https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/...full-report.pdf
Of course if we'd stop pretending that nuclear is the boogie man that it isn't, we could get out of this mess a lot faster.

yes, now you are talking my stuff, cradle to grave.
i've been doing it in my line of work for 20 years.
i was quite serious about an electric car 15 years ago and stayed on the problem for about 5 years (i'd still like to pick up an insight if i could find one even though its not full electric).
i do it with my buildings.
run the maths.
inclusive of the imbedded energy costs of manufacture etc.
we have a brown coal electrical generation industry in victoria.
its about as bad as you can get. i was surprised i would be a worse polluter.
so i pulled up on it then.
C02 tonnage per megawatt hours etc.
black coal is a lot cleaner than brown.
i learned something 15 years ago i was a bit shocked by.
aussies are so up themselves about how good they are, but really......?
i stopped bringing it up at dinner parties. upset the natives.

once you move into the electricity coming from somewhere else the whole picture really changes. i'd include nukeleah in that. its doable. without the primitive teapot reactor tech dating back to the 50s.

what i have noted is despite the prospect of electric cars something else is going on in australian cities which is the demonisation of cars per se. by a quadrant of the political spectrum. and its short sighted. as covid has suddenly demonstrated.
the catastrophic thinking is around the blindness that electric cars need car spaces to charge in.
developers are being incentivised to delete car parking spaces in buildings.
that is really poor thinking?
its very clear that we will need quite an infrastructure for parking electric cars in where they can be charged over suitable time periods. that ain't going to happen in curb side car parking spaces. not secure. i know there is talk of induction charging but boy is that expensive to lay down in the streets, so i don't see that happening.

what worries me is not electric cars, but the general demonisation of cars.
don't know if this is happening in the USA, but its happening here.
and then all of a sudden covid comes along and not a single person wants to ride in trams or trains anymore and they are all out in cars.
the price of second hand cars has gone through the roof in aus.

and i'm not even going to go into the idea of demonizing the idea of the car driver,
ie self driving cars. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/barf.gif)

messy times.

[914e]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/av-943.gif) Every time one of these threads pops up, my desire to own an electrified 914 grows for the spite factor alone. I miss the days when people turned up their noses and shunned my 914.

What I'm hearing is that for $40K we could have a 914 that outperforms just about any modified 914 out there. My question is, why hasn't this been done? What does it cost to stuff a rebuilt 911 engine into one of these thing? Compared to some of the awesome builds I've seen in my short time here, the price tag doesn't seem out of line.

We celebrate transplanting all sorts of engines into this amazingly flexible platform that Porsche designed, but take stinky dead dinosaurs out of the equation and the crucifixes come out. Why tear up a perfectly good 914 to put a Subie engine in instead of just buying a Subie? The same could be asked about a 911. The reason, of course, is that the combinations of these engines with the 914 platform creates an experience like no other. Why is transplanting an electric motor so different?

The car does need to perform though. I wouldn't even feel safe in a car with top speed of 70 mph in the land of 80 mph speed limits. It has to be capable of reaching triple digits just to have the margin of safety. I'm looking for a car capable of at least 250 miles of range on a 30 minute charge before replacing our main driver with EV, but for a 914, I'd be happy with less because driving the 914 is less about gettin' there as it is goin' there. I could afford to spend a little more time at the charging station to let people sneer at my car in disgust. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Look at EV West, Zero EV in the UK and Electric Classic Cars in the UK it has been done.

I'm more happy with 125 HP and 170 pound feet of torque in a 2000 pound car. So far I have only made it to 4th gear this weekend. It seemed at 70 mph I should shift to fourth
For 40K I think what you asked for is possible @Jonny Retrofit I believe is putting a Tesla motor in his 914. He might be wonderfully insane.

It is kind of fitting to put a Tesla motor in a 914, if it was not for JB Straubel's (Former CTO of Tesla) 944 conversion where he worked out cell level battery management there might not be a Tesla, he seems to be the key person that brought everyone together. (could be why Tesla seems spinning in circles since he left).
For your requirement I spent 30 seconds searching and can with an AMR motor
Peak Torque: 280 Lb Ft Peak (w/150kW controller)
Peak Power: 210 HP Peak (w/150kW controller)
Max RPM: 10,000.
There is good chance a a 901 transaxle would not last very long. Even a 915 transaxle might have a short life. The torque band on a EV is about 10 rpm to 5500 rpm and ruler flat. Higher voltage extend that torque band, which why the Taycan at 800 volts is brutal and relentless. If Porsche releases a Taycan crate motor in few years maybe two gears is enough.

I like to shift a small light car so I keep the transaxle. It is likely cheaper and faster to have more power than the chassis can handle with one speed reduction and map the power down.

There are hundreds of 914 conversions most of the them done by universities, colleges and, high schools for engineering and racing competitions. Bugs were equally common, unfortunately most of those Bugs seem long gone, that history is lost. It seems the bugs did not have enough value to keep around. I have not been able to find one. The 914's 25 years ago had just enough value to keep them from being crushed.

[euro911]

I believe the range issues will be mitigated with the deployment of quantum/glass batteries ... estimated to extend the range of a Tesla Model-3 to 1,000 miles.

Will be interesting to see how that pans out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/popcorn[1].gif)

[Big Len]

Let's suppose I buy 2 914's in similar condition. The first one keeps it's original engine. The second gets the EV treatment. I keep both for 4 years while driving about the same number of miles on both. After the 4 years, I decide to sell both. Which one do you think will have the greater resale value?

[bbrock]

Let's suppose I buy 2 914's in similar condition. The first one keeps it's original engine. The second gets the EV treatment. I keep both for 4 years while driving about the same number of miles on both. After the 4 years, I decide to sell both. Which one do you think will have the greater resale value?

At this point, I wouldn't even guess. I have a numbers matching 73 2L fully restored to what I think is a strong #2 condition (if not a weak #1). I know of a couple recent examples of very heavily modified 914s, with very little that is original, that have received serious offers WAY above what my car is worth. It seems there is a market for very well-executed modified 914s. And done right, an EV could be fully reversible.

[ClayPerrine]

If I ever win the lottery, I will take a 914 chassis to Porsche and give it to their special wish department. I will ask them to flare it, make it really nice inside with a leather interior, plus full AC and heat. And have them put a full Taycan drivetrain under it, complete with all the electronic bells and whistles the Taycan has.

Then I will show up at parade and kick everyone's butt in the Autocross competition.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/driving.gif)

Or maybe I will do it myself. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/idea.gif) But I kinda like the whole factory warranty thing.

Clay

[cali914]

A friend of mine sent me a picture of me sitting in my car after taking his son for a ride. I was smiling from ear to ear. For you purist at that time i had a honda V6 in my 914. The reason for the photo was at present i have not driven my 914 in over 2 years trying a new engine combination, and have not seen that smile I had while driving my car in over 2 years. The bottom line is driving our cars and enjoying them whether they have a stock 1.8, a jet powered engine, an electric motor, or a twin turbo LS is what gives us that happy feeling and puts the smile on our faces.

[mepstein]

A friend of mine sent me a picture of me sitting in my car after taking his son for a ride. I was smiling from ear to ear. For you purist at that time i had a honda V6 in my 914. The reason for the photo was at present i have not driven my 914 in over 2 years trying a new engine combination, and have not seen that smile I had while driving my car in over 2 years. The bottom line is driving our cars and enjoying them whether they have a stock 1.8, a jet powered engine, an electric motor, or a twin turbo LS is what gives us that happy feeling and puts the smile on our faces.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/agree.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[914e]

I believe the range issues will be mitigated with the deployment of quantum/glass batteries ... estimated to extend the range of a Tesla Model-3 to 1,000 miles.

Will be interesting to see how that pans out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/popcorn[1].gif)

We have already seen that type of range increase in the last 15 years. The GM EV1 had a range of around 80 miles when it came out in the mid-late to 90's. If you put it the same weight of modern batteries it would have over 700 miles of range. Nothing really happened between the EV1 and the Tesla roadster.

In my 914 which has been electric for over 25 years, the school that converted had to use big old heavy lead acid batteries adding about 1500 pounds. Considering the weight off the engine gas tank and other parts that was removed, half the car weight was batteries at the time. There was batteries everywhere in place of the engine, the gas tank, the front trunk. The rear trunk was filled with the controller, relays, shunts, fuses. It might of had 50-60 miles of range. Now I have second generation Chevy Volt batteries which are 7 year old battery tech at this point. I have a bank in the front in place of the tank. and a second back laid out flat in the rear trunk just so I can drive and test things as I fit everything back in the engine bay. It has the same range as the the old lead acid batteries the whole car is sitting at 1700 pounds.
My plan is to have four banks total three in the engine bay around the motor and transaxle and one in the front. It will have about 124 miles of range. The weight and balance should within 50 pounds of a stock 6.

If I wanted to spend the money on brand new batteries (16K) I could bump that range to around 265 miles. The weight would go up 200 pounds.

Batteries get about 10 lighter, have 10 percent more power, and keep dropping in price, in every generation of batteries. So many people are working on this now a generation is about 18 months.

In 5-6 years an electric Cayman might be out, maybe I will switch to that drivetrain and batteries.

[wonkipop]

If I ever win the lottery, I will take a 914 chassis to Porsche and give it to their special wish department. I will ask them to flare it, make it really nice inside with a leather interior, plus full AC and heat. And have them put a full Taycan drivetrain under it, complete with all the electronic bells and whistles the Taycan has.

Then I will show up at parade and kick everyone's butt in the Autocross competition.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/driving.gif)

Or maybe I will do it myself. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/idea.gif) But I kinda like the whole factory warranty thing.

Clay

and you definitely will win the ax in it.
assuming you do not black out.
-- i think you can still get astronaut training at nasa in houston?

if i ever make it back to texas, one of my favourite places, i will beg you to be strapped into the passenger seat. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/barf.gif) i'll need a plastic bag taped to my face to safely contain the effects of g forces.

[Chris914n6]

It has the same range as the the old lead acid batteries the whole car is sitting at 1700 pounds.
My plan is to have four banks total three in the engine bay around the motor and transaxle and one in the front. It will have about 124 miles of range. The weight and balance should within 50 pounds of a stock 6.

In 5-6 years an electric Cayman might be out, maybe I will switch to that drivetrain and batteries.

There is no way your 914 EV weights 300lbs less than stock when the engine and full gas tank weigh 400lbs.

So how much will the Box EV swap cost per saved gram of co2? Not to rain on your parade but you spend major money on a minor improvement, or a zero improvement on a national scale.

My Nissan swap passes OBD2 smog standards, gets 300-400 miles per tank, refills in minutes and allows me to do 914 driving events. At less than 5000 miles per year has no effect on co2 levels.

[Dave_Darling]

Anybody who is driving a sports car for "cost reasons" is doing it wrong. We don't get these cars because of $/CO2 saved, we get them because we like to drive them. Or work on them. Or shine them up.

I like electric 914! I've seen a handful of them, ranging from scary wild (Otmar's "California Poppy") to mild (a guy who used his to take the carpool lane over the bridges on his way to and from work, not having to pay tolls). They've been done with varying degrees of skill and finesse, much like any other conversion.

I have liked them all for what they are. I would be happy to see more done, especially as EV tech improves. I expect them to get even cleaner and cheaper to operate as our power generation gets cleaner and cheaper.

I also expect that it's going to be a minority of 914s that get electrified. And I am quite happy with that as well.

--DD