51 replies to this topic

[ryanlogsdon]

 

 

a single-gear reduction and differential in one housing. You need to use their custom output shafts to replace the original Mini shafts.

 

 

 

I don't really understand what this entails just yet.  I was wondering what it means that you can order a differential with their crate motor.  That's another reason I'm hoping to get a lot more information from Swindon.

 

All I know is if I get this kit, I'm going to document the heck out of my build, and I'll be spamming you guys with my build videos 

[Tremelune]

I'm building one with a Nissan Leaf:

 

http://www.theminifo...-ev-conversion/

 

I'm at about $10-15k in parts, another few grand in tools, and probably hundreds of hours in research and labor. I could see one of these kits being nice to avoid a bunch of fabrication and uncertainty (but I'm not sure they save you much of that—the subframe and axles are the largest cost outside the battery pack)...They're also missing a lot of things you'll need, like a controller, charger, battery management system, cooling system, display, contactors, wiring, fuses, charge port, HVAC...The bits can hit $5-10k pretty quickly.

 

Not one shop I've been in contact with (EV West, Zelectric, Moment, Swindon) will build an electric Mini for less than $100k. Maybe the scene will start to change with these dedicated Mini packages.

Edited by Tremelune, 18 June 2020 - 05:02 PM.

[MalcolmB]

Not one shop I've been in contact with (EV West, Zelectric, Moment, Swindon) will build an electric Mini for less than $100k.

Wow, I didn't realise EV West and the like were charging that much. Like you say though, it takes a lot of R&D to do the first conversion of a particular car, and a Mini is a special challenge because of its mini-ness.

I've been following your build on the DIY electric car forum - hope you manage to get the Leaf system working, that's quite a challenge itself!

[ads7]

Costs are still very high in the EV market and are likely to remain so. Tesla are trying get battery cost to less than $100/kw which for a Model S is around $8000 cost to Tesla for the battery alone. Add to that the extremely high tech motor(s) and the component cost gets pretty serious ... hence Tesla's long time coming to turn a profit. Their battery investment will secure their future though, the markets have already valued Tesla (momentarily) higher than Toyota who produce 30x as many vehicles. It's definitely the future though and as such classic conversions are likely to become quite popular.

Yes read about this a few days ago myself. Should be the financial turning point for EVs with a big push now to 2030 societal emission reduction targets. Once graphene on the anodes becomes affordable the performance bar will be raised considerably.

Really interesting thread!

[Tremelune]

The big push in the DIY space will be when someone fully hacks and open-sources software to control OEM components (such as a Leaf charger, Tesla BMS, Volt DC-DC converter) in such a way that any intelligent person who knows what an Arduino is can figure it out. Then the cost of a conversion drops almost to the cost of a used EV (which in California is like £5,000 for a Leaf).

 

This is what I really wish Swindon and the like were doing...The motor and controller aspect is a solved problem. I wish they sold an Allspeed subframe that you could bolt a Leaf motor into. I wish they sold off-the-shelf axles for said conversion. I wish they sold a bolt-in battery container and a nice harness. I wish I could buy a box that would control all the Leaf components instead of having to pay thousands for aftermarket stuff. One day, I suppose...

[mab01uk]

Vintage Voltage - New TV series on Quest
"Vintage Voltage follows Richard “Moggy” Morgan and his team of electric car experts as they convert and restore classic cars into electric power."
Thursday 25th June, 9pm Quest:-

https://www.facebook...f=page_internal

 

 

Edited by mab01uk, 20 June 2020 - 06:11 PM.

[mab01uk]

Featured in July MiniWorld magazine:-

London Electric Cars
"We convert cars to electric. Our goal is get more people driving electric cars. There are 1 billion cars in the world. As we convert to an electrically propelled society are we going to scrap all those cars? Instead, let's develop affordable ways of converting those cars to electric. We offer bespoke conversions. We recommend budgeting £25,000 or more for an appropriate conversion and other sympathetic upgrades."

A classic 1993 Rover Mini converted with a Nissan Leaf motor and drive train.
This is an original Japanese import.
We converted this Mini for the University of Birmingham.
A 20 kWh battery pack was split betwen the boot and under the rear seat.
Costs just around £1 to charge. Does 80 miles on one charge.
Charges from a 13A household socket. If you can charge your phone, you can charge this car!
Average London journey is 5 miles so, used daily, the car requires charging roughly once a week. That means fuel costs for this car can be as little as £50 per year!
Congestion Charge exempt.
ULEZ Exempt.
Free residents parking in many London boroughs.
https://www.londonelectriccars.com/

Edited by mab01uk, 22 June 2020 - 10:29 PM.

[Tremelune]

We recommend budgeting £25,000 or more for an appropriate conversion and other sympathetic upgrades.

 

That's actually not too bad...You bring them a gas car and £25k and they give you back an EV? It doesn't make much practical sense vs, say, a used Tesla, but if you're already someone bonkers enough to want an electric classic Mini for that money plus labor...

[SolarB]

5 minutes with a drawing package shows the Swind Life motor and diff. would fit.

 

 

[Tremelune]

The tricky bit is the axles. They will be of wildly different lengths/angles, which is a contributing factor in torque steer. How much of an effect this has becomes much more difficult to discern (according to my research), but I tried very hard to keep them the same length so that I could at least rule that out if any reared it's head with double the power over stock...

 

In addition, you can't just cut out the rear of the subframe, because the steering rack and body are right there, so the motor has to be a bit farther forward than the center of the wheels. It's slight, and looking at a few OEM cars that have been lowered for thousands of km, it doesn't seem like the extra angle is a big deal.

[SolarB]

Very good point on the drive shaft lengths, I hadn't thought of that. For rear clearance the motor assembly could move forward a little, but now we have unequal driveshafts at an angle.

 

I'm 2-3 years away from converting to electric but starting to think more seriously about it. At the moment my preferred route is still a motor on top of the existing gearbox. It's cheap and solves both the custom drive shaft and unequal length problems.

[Tremelune]

I'm afraid it's not cheaper, at least from what I found. Any aftermarket AC motor and controller costs thousands, and then you need to buy everything else (which probably involves a few grand to adapt the motor to the transmission). Then you have a transmission designed for half to a quarter of the torque that most EV motors put out, along with the weight, complexity, and leaks.

 

The cheapest way (at least in the US where they're reasonably cheap and common) remains to buy a slightly-wrecked Leaf and use as much as you can. The cheapest way into batteries for any EV that can go on a highway remains buying a salvaged factory EV (Leaf, Tesla, Highlander, MiEV, Smart). Around here you're looking at $5-10k for a complete five-year-old Leaf, depending on condition.

 

Some good news for anyone (who isn't me) is that in 2-3 years, this will all be significantly cheaper. Once someone hacks and open-sources software/hardware that can control these high-end OEM components, the cost for completion will drop by an order of magnitude (an aftermarket BMS is like $1500. A Leaf BMS is like $150...but you can't use it due to Nissan's secret CAN bus protocol).

 

The highest expense is skilled labor, then aftermarket components (charger, BMS, DC-DC), then batteries, then motor/controller, then "bits" (display, HV wiring, contactors, cooling stuff, throttle, HVAC)...Once Allspeed et al starts selling EV conversion subframes, that gets rid of a ton of skilled labor costs and uncertainty.

Edited by Tremelune, 23 June 2020 - 08:29 PM.

[ads7]

Elon Musk is on the verge of announcing a significant step forward in cost/performance on 'battery day' provisionally set at 15th Sept 2020

https://fortune.com/...mont-elon-musk/


As this kit filters down the secondhand market we should see some decent jumps forward in packaging/performance/cost

[ads7]

Anyone watched this yet? Swind E tested by Jonny Smith (Fifth Gear presenter)

https://youtu.be/X4QgKJ85vd8

[Tremelune]

Anyone watched this yet? Swind E tested by Jonny Smith (Fifth Gear presenter)

https://youtu.be/X4QgKJ85vd8

 

That battery pack is delicious. I was thinking of trying the same config by cobbling together Leaf modules...I wonder how they repositioned the handbrake like that...

 

9s 0-60 seems a bit underwhelming, though...I wonder if they throttled power down to avoid excessive spin and torque-steer.