Ambler EV is going to officially unveil our full 914 electric conversion at our grand opening June 5, 207 & 211 South Main Street, Ambler PA. For those of you in the Philadelphia area, stop by and see the future. For those of you outside the Philadelphia area, follow our page on Facebook to see more teasers as the day get closer www.facebook.com/Amblerev. For those of you attempting this yourself, I am happy to talk end specs but questions about components used or design will not be answered (EV West is your source for that). If you are interested in buying a full electric 914 (or converting your 914 roller) so that it can handle level 2 charging, has a range over 200 miles, and will no longer contain any vacuum or 40 year old EFI electronics, stop by or email me at sam@amblerev.com.

*************** Deleted for being rude *******************

@AmblerEV

So 200 miles range.
Speed improvements?
Charing time, and requirements?
Weight added or subtracted from the chassis? How has the CG and distribution been moved?
Rear Wheel drive, AWD, 4 independent wheel motors. Do I loose the transmission?
Do I gain space, regenerative braking?
Can I run the wheels separate with input controls to make the car turn better, or in an odd case drive the wheels in opposite direction to build a spinning top 914? Won't need to back in or out of the garage anymore.
Everything fit with out cutting, odd welding, and none impressive design like some others I have seen?

So many questions come up with out me even wanting to build one.

What do you and your company really bring to this experience? What makes you better than an EV West or another shop doing this conversion?

BTW

Even if it is a blurred out teaser shot

@AmblerEV good luck with your launch wish you the best with your new endeavor.

They have a video on Youtube from a year ago.

They describe details of the 914 conversion:

Converting a classic 914 porsche
we are going for 60-70mph top speed, 200 miles of range , and to keep as much as possible stock incase we want to convert it back!
we are using an ME1003 motor alltrax 72500 controller , 44kw of chevy Bolt batteries an emus BMS and all stock gauges! AMBLER EV and DIYGUY

60-70 mph top speed??? This won't even be able to keep up with traffic on some PA highways.

I would much rather reduce distance and gain greater top speed. Better to have and not need then need it and not have.

That is a 15 HP motor, 26 hp short term. Talk about underpowered.

I'm not against electric conversions, but until it supports a 200 mile range without touching the trunks and has the power of a 3.2 six, then it makes no sense to me. Otherwise, I would rather buy a Tesla model 3.

Otmar did much better than that with his some 15 years ago. That thing was wicked fast. 1000 lbf⋅ft of torque!


http://evcl.com/914/
https://www.cafeelectric.com/rides.php

.
..
...

66 lbft of torque and we think a 1.7L is slow.

Sorry new guy but you have been outclassed by a 12 yo girl. At least she takes the time to gain knowledge before doing...

There’s so many things I would like to say and comment on, but I’ll just say good luck with the electric 914 boogey woogey woogey

I haven't seen any current specs for the proposed conversions. Maybe we could wait to see what those specs are before unleashing the collective krakens? Maybe?

Yes, I do wanna hear "Kum Bah Yah" . . . go ahead. . .ready. . sinnnngggggg!

You asked the same questions lingering in the back of my brain, Stephen.

That would be doable
Using napkin CAD
Peak Torque: 280 Lb Ft Peak
Peak Power: 210 HP Peak
Max RPM: 10,000
About 260 miles range
Over 300 mile range in the city (which is about useless)
Weight would be within about 100 pounds of a stock 6, most of the batteries in the engine bay the rest in place of the gas tank to keep the weight balance close.

The problem would be the cost of about 40K if you did it yourself.

I have a question - if you had a friend who wanted to electrify his Ferrari Dino, what advice would you give him and why?

It is hard to find many good pictures of the Dino chassis. Since the engine and transaxle are likely to be pretty rare and the transaxle seems to be part of the sump.
I would look to building a cradle to pick up the the existing mounting points and mount a small Tesla motor and gearbox. Have custom half-shafts made. Find which batteries will fit best in the remaining engine bay space, and in the tank space.

EV west and Electric GT converted a 308 that had burned in an engine fire. That would be a good place to start.

Electric Classic Cars in England also did a 308, I have not seen a Dino converted. Defiantly not as easy as a 911 or a Bug where you switch back and forth between electric and gas in an afternoon. A 914 is little harder since the battery boxes are exposed to the elements and the gas tank is a pain.

I wasn't really asking about the tecnicalities of the conversion. I was more curious of would you do it on such a rare car. For me, it's more of a morality question.
I find your answer repugnant and I wish you'd stay away from the cars we love.

Thanks for the response!! But for $40k I would rather have the Tesla model 3.
Maybe the technology will get cheaper over time, like everything else.

If you wanted to preserve the rare engine, but still enjoy driving the car why would you not? The rarer the engine the more likely I would convert it, I don't see a reason to consume the last of some rare parts, just to drive the car a few times month.

If the car does not have an engine anymore would you rather just scrap it? Mine hasn't had an engine for decades. The burned 308 kept a handful of other 308's drivable and itself back on the road.

How is it different than installing a six? far less modifications. For many classic car conversions the modifications to body, chassis, interior, and wiring are exactly zero, for many that is the point.

Not sure why the electric car discussions are always so polarizing? I just view EV's as "another option".....not as "the final mandate that we are being forced into"(possibly my own naivety). I view, at least an immediate future, where vehicles are powered by a variety of options including electric, hydrogen, H2O, and whatever other alien technology we are able to deconstruct and re-imagine. I also feel that there will always be some sort of exemption for gas powered vehicles to account for the "car hobbiest/enthusiast crowd", as well as other markets that will require diesel or gas. Like most things, I don't believe these discussions are always so black & white / cut & dry, etc.

That said, like a lot of people here, to me it's more about practicality, usability, & cost, along with other nuances one way or the other. To me, you've got to have at least a 300 mile range, 0-60 in the 7-8 second range, top speed of at least 90, and overall weight of 2100-2200 lbs. Those would be my personal goals, before even considering converting a 914...not even discussing cost yet.

I think I would personally enjoy instant torque, eliminating many moving parts, Oil leaking onto my carport, valve adjustments and trips to the gas station.

Conversely, I KNOW I would miss meaningful manual shifting between gears, as well as the sounds and smells of a combustion engine and the organic experience of that whole thing. It's my assumption that most people on this site have 914's because of that "experience"...the inexplicable smile that that you can't wipe off when you feel so attached to the road and to your 914, as you rapidly shift between gears, while careening through the twisties with the top down surrounded by the sounds & smells of a gas engine, the 70's leatherette interior that somehow still smells like the 70's, and somehow thinking that you might still hear the vague sound of your radio somewhere in the background.

I think some parts of the above adventure will be hard to duplicate with an EV 914..... but who knows.....I've never driven one....just my 2 cents....

What's the point of owning a classic Ferrari if you are going to take away the best parts?

You buy a sports car for the sounds and the twistys, electric kills both pleasures.

If you want the benefits of an EV then buy a car that was engineered to be an EV.

If you are not driving the EV everyday racking up the miles then a conversion is a huge waste of money.

We purists just don't like our beautiful German cars messed with. These cars are now a limited treasure.

Geez, people get their panties in a wad.

The 914 isn't a rare enough car to chastise people who elect to make modifications. Putting in a water-cooled engine also requires making permanent changes. EV drivetrain is a choice some owners make, like putting flares on a narrow-body car or dropping in a SBC.

I'm pretty sure most EV conversions don't start with a Concours-ready, perfectly original specimen. It's a way to customize and keep it on the road.

To each his own.

It is always the same misery with these EV conversions, maybe a systematic problem.
If you want to get people excited about a EV converted car then you have to outperform the existing ICE specs of that particular car in most diciplines.
Especially if you convert an old sports car, which provides at least 70BHP, please do not install any smaller than that ! And yes I know electric motors perform different from a power point of view.
Reducing the range is regrettable, but being slow is a shame for a "sports car" !

my two cents

Benno

Make sure you use a good old East coast car for your thingy.

"If you wanted to preserve the rare engine, but still enjoy driving the car why would you not? The rarer the engine the more likely I would convert it, I don't see a reason to consume the last of some rare parts, just to drive the car a few times month."


Ok, rare engines come in rare cars. Drilling holes and welding brackets is a no-no to many that own cars like an old Porsche. And the ones that do modify their Porsches, want speed as a trade off. I just don't understand why not a MR2, or a Fiero. Both mid-engine cars and everyone expects them to suck and no one would care.

"I don't see a reason to consume the last of some rare parts, just to drive the car a few times month."

Maybe it is greedy of me to want to drive my car, it is why I own it.

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.

"What I'm hearing is that for $40K we could have a 914 that outperforms just about any modified 914 out there."

The 40,000 price was a guesstimate, for all that HP. Not the car in question. 70 mph will get you killed on SoCal freeways. And the 200 mile range number, well I bet it wasn't at 70 mph. So I jump in my e914 and I zip up to angeles crest hwy, for a great day of camaraderie and playing in the twisties. Where do I plug in for the drive after lunch or funnest trip, the trip down? I'm glad you like it, e-cars are here, a Porsche 918 will get you to 211 mph real quick.

Some people are able to get around in an electric golf cart and others commute 100 miles each way by highway. Different strokes for different folks. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a 914 around town grocery getter that couldn’t do more than 50 miles between charges. I’m not going to spend 40k for it but price isn’t always the point for a toy. We are lucky in PA that classic car reg is a small, one time fee, no yearly taxes and classic car insurance is cheap. Finding space inside the garage would be the only concern.

For fun I found this list of real world range tests @ 70 mph and compared with charging station distances in my area. Note that Porsche is once again the king of understating their capabilities.

One of my favorite drives is down through Yellowstone NP out to Cooke City and over Beartooth Pass to Red Lodge. There are 11 cars on this list that would easily get me from home to the charging station in Red Lodge and that is the farthest distance between stations I'd be likely to drive for regional pleasure driving (or even cross-country driving for that matter).

The biggest obstacle now to switching the family truckster for EV is charge times. ID.4 (that I've been eyeballing) charges to 60 mile range in 10 minutes and to 80% charge in 38 minutes. That would tack on a lot of time to cross country trips. They get closer to my goals every year though.
https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/
Click to view attachment

"There are variables simply out of our control like wind, traffic, and weather. However, we do our best to control what we can. We always set the tires to the manufacturer's recommended pressure, we crosscheck the speedometer with a GPS for accuracy, we charge up to 100 percent and enter the highway either immediately or within a couple of miles. Then we drive at a constant 70 mph and in long loops so we end up basically where we started. "

Ok, sounds real worldly to me. I guess I'm less of a long loop driver and more of a squiggly line kind of guy. Besides, I don't care how many playing cards you put in the spokes, it won't sound the same.

I'm not against electric cars or conversions, per se...but I do experience a weird twinge when I see a classic sports car converted to electric. Here's my personal experience with it happening. I sold my 1969 Saab Sonett V4 to a guy back East. It turns out his Dad bought the car brand new, and he had driven it in college! Early Saab's are a pretty niche crowd. Then he sent me this:

https://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/sin...-210004790.html

The car looks amazing - better than when I had it for sure, but...It was 1/639 built in 1969. I sent 3 engines & 2 transmissions, and tons of spares with the car. I still feel gutted, but not 100% sure why; the Sonett is beautiful, and it looks like it drives nice. No clue on range, but that was not how it was used anyway. Maybe its the sound...

Had a Tesla Roadster a few years back. Cool car and always told people if this is where car tech is going, we're all in for a treat. Shoot, back in very early 1900's, 97% of the cars on the road were electric.

Sold the Tesla for two reasons:

Range wasn't what it once was, annoying to charge so much, not go as far, cost of new batteries was $40k back then

Tesla came out with the Model 3, there's a YouTube video comparing the X, S, 3 and original Roadster. Roadster came in dead last in acceleration.

Got me thinking, why own it anymore? Gonna cost a bundle shortly to keep it going and it won't keep up with family sedans. It's not an old-school Porsche or Muscle car.

Said bye-bye.

It's always been about battery tech. Once that reaches a certain point of cost and weight, things might change?

As for an EV 914, seen a few, ridden in one. Kinda neat.

I'm confused. Are you saying that those variable out of their control do not affect the range of ICE vehicles?

With California's draconian smog laws, I wouldn't be surprised if someone doesn't keep that Tesla Roadster with the dead battery . . .then puts in the elise/exige drivetrain (that it was essentially born to cradle) for a smog free thrill ride . . .until the CHP hears that obnoxious exhaust . . .

Another interesting bit of information:

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

Big difference when you can find fuel for an ICE virtually anywhere, and it can be fueled in 5 minutes if your range suddenly is reduced when 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.

Not anti-EV. I'm the guy that's been telling anyone that would listen that you simply can't beat the acceleration of a Model S P100D AWD regardless of how big the engine in your 914 is.

I've also been the guy hosed by a broken single charger that I assumed would be operational. Never doing that again!

We are having fun anyway.

Thanks for giving us a playground to play on!

There has been history here, including Otmar. But it's always been sketchy. People who are into electric get all exSTATIC about it. But electric needs a lot of development to make sense in a 914.

There is a vast difference between a car that was designed as electric from the beginning, vs a retrofit into an old car. It's evolving for future designs that are engineered around it. But it's not for retrofitting IMO.

Or... I'd love to see SirAndy vs Otmar on an autocross track. THEN you can come back at me.

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.

But not surprised

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

messy times.

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.