EV conversions

[landroversforever]

I saw an interesting article from Volvo the other week, it was comparing the environmental impact between two different XC40s. It took 140,000km (I think it was) in the EV before it offset the manufacture and was less polluting per mile than the ICE equivalent. When you then add to that the average UK driver keeps a car for 26 months it doesn’t look great until they can bring down the energy inputs at the build stage. Obviously those cars then filter into the second hand market, but it’s still going to take a while unless drivers start upping their mileage!

[Anderzander]

Did everyone see the JCB approach on Harry’s garage ?  That seemed a good alternative to EV’s …. But probably too late to really capitalise with the retail markets direction set. 

[simonr]

I'm sensing a bit of negativity in this thread 🤣

Any of you who have not driven an EV - go and take a test drive in something.  Just treat it as a fun day out - rather than an admission it might be any good.  I think you might be surprised!  Even some of the more crappy ones are really fun to drive! 

I used to think a V8 was the best engine to drive, on or off road, until I bought a Td5.  With a bit of tweaking, that knocked the spots off most V8's.  Unfortunately, it still sounds like a bag of spanners compared to the lovely sound a V8 (petrol) makes.

Then I built an electric Freelander (Mk1) - which is a fairly crappy car.  With the electric drive, it transformed it.  The quietness & smoothness rivaled the most expensive Range Rover.  The torque / acceleration were way too much for the Freelander chassis - I could feel the whole body twisting as it took off.  I ended up tuning it right down to make it safe to drive on wet roads.  In it's original form, I could spin the wheels a any speed!  Also, driving fast / accelerating hard, murders the range.  The whole thing cost me under £1000 to build, including the car.  It only had a short (27 mile) range - but that's all I needed to get to work & back.

Eventually I scrapped it - but only to build a better EV.  The problem is, I never found the 'right' donor car.  Right, for me was something small, lightweight, mechanically simple which could handle a lot of power.

Until now - that is!  I bought a Polaris General XP1000 last year.  It's great fun to drive, has a huge amount of torque (and handles pretty well) and only weighs 600kg.  It's engine is about 100Hp and VERY LOUD!  The only negative is it's full of CANBUS & Electrickery - but I can deal with that.

My conversion (later this year) will reduce the power to 80Hp.  It will only have a range of 60 miles & will weigh 50kg more than the original.  I do have a very specific use / need for a vehicle like this.  It's kind of an experiment - as I have another future Electric 4x4 planned which will need a lot of the same CANBUS hacking.

I have no illusions about it being 'green' - and don't really care.  They are just amazing fun to drive!  That said, I've just put in planning permission at home for a 12kW Solar 'pergola' - which is enough to run the house and an EV, particularly if I use one EV as part of the battery storage.

I find this evolution of the automotive market really interesting & exciting.  There's hardly been any big changes to the car in the last few decades - other than trying to turn them into a disposable fashion accessory.  The manufacturers have developed a product that people buy and have not needed to push the envelope, just a series of small incremental changes

The last really big change was from Steam to ICE.  That brought about a total change in the manufacturers who dominated the market.  The same is happening again and that more than the change in fuel will change the mindset of what a car is.

Go & try one!  It might change your mind!  They are not ideal for everybody or every application - but they definitely have a place, even if just from a smiles per mile point of view!

[jeremy996]

7 hours ago, Anderzander said:

Did everyone see the JCB approach on Harry’s garage ?  That seemed a good alternative to EV’s …. But probably too late to really capitalise with the retail markets direction set. 

I worry about this as the marketing is better received than the physics!

For most people and applications, a BEV is likely to be the best long term solution, (assuming the population at large want personal mobility and shy away from mass public transport). The travelling A to B efficiency of a BEV can be as high as 90%. The A to B efficiency of an ICE vehicle is around 35% and the same applies to a Fuel Cell BEV running on hydrogen, if you include all of the electrolysis, compression, storage and distribution costs. A hydrogen ICE vehicle might just about match the liquid fuel ICE, but past experience suggest not, (BMW had a H2 fuelled 7 series in the 2000s, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7).

Past H2 ICE engines had an issue with NOx emissions, that JCB feel they have solved by altering combustion temperatures.

H2 for mass transportation makes no sense in energy efficiency terms, but does have utility for high utilisation plant, (where there is no down time to recharge), as a way of storing excess electricity and where bulk hydrogen is available on site, (like the FCBEV Ineos Grenadier on a refinery fleet).

Synthetic liquid fuel makes even less sense, although it would ensure the continuing value of existing infrastructure and green up, (a little), the existing vehicle base. As such the petrochemical industry is really, really keen on it; now there's a surprise!

As a general rule, progress goes from slave power to low efficiency that works, (like steam engines) to high efficiency, smaller installations, (like electric motors in your grinder rather than a big engine and line-shafting), but this can be sabotaged by venal politicians that want to be bribed, dishonest pressure groups or just plain, dumb decisions. 

[monkie]

This is an interesting conversation, particularly so as a company car driver and the only option now for a company car where I work is a full EV, not even a PHEV (you can opt out of the scheme if you want and get your own car of your choice). I am going to take up the offer of a couple of week long loans to see how I get on driving 300 miles daily before I make a decision. It will be interesting. 

H2 is not an energy source and should not be viewed as. It is just a carrier of energy. It has potential use though as a store for excess energy produced from renewables when they generate beyond demand, but I very much doubt that H2 will be a mainstream "fuel" for personal transportation. 

Another point to consider with ICE is that petrol and diesel have already contributed to quite a lot of emissions before you even burn them (extraction, refining, distribution). This is not often considered in comparisons from an emissions point of view, so the figures don't give the full picture. 

[reb78]

Be interesting to hear how you get on with the mileages you do Phil. My commute (start and end of a week) is just shy of 300 miles and I can often clock up a fair bit more in a day. An EV just doesn't seem sensible for me at all. Any issue not getting charge or getting stuck in the cold winter in traffic and needing heat and I can see me stranded. 
 

Public transport just doubles the time it takes me to drive and I cant transport much of what I need. Many places I need to visit are nowhere need a train station or bus stop. It also costs as much one way as the return trip in the car and COVID has lessened my desire to use an inconvenient and generally dirty mode of transport even more. 

Edited May 22, 2022 by reb78

[deep]

7 hours ago, simonr said:

I'm sensing a bit of negativity in this thread 🤣

Any of you who have not driven an EV - go and take a test drive in something.  Just treat it as a fun day out - rather than an admission it might be any good.  I think you might be surprised!  Even some of the more crappy ones are really fun to drive! 

 

Until now - that is!  I bought a Polaris General XP1000 last year.  It's great fun to drive, has a huge amount of torque (and handles pretty well) and only weighs 600kg.  It's engine is about 100Hp and VERY LOUD!  The only negative is it's full of CANBUS & Electrickery - but I can deal with that.

 

Go & try one!  It might change your mind!  They are not ideal for everybody or every application - but they definitely have a place, even if just from a smiles per mile point of view!

Yes, I have tried electric vehicles, both on road and off road.  There are appealing aspects to driving them (easy, torquey) but my take home impression is that they are bland beyond belief, which really divides us on how we see motoring.  The "masses" love bland (look how well Toyotas sell) but petrol heads absolutely don't!  That's probably one of the reasons early marketing of electric cars focussed on expensive cars with stunning acceleration - an expensive car can't be entirely bland.  

Some friends have an electric off-roader very much like that one (different brand though).  Their farm is about three miles across.  Despite claims of a very respectable range, they found battery life disappointing and recently bought an uprated battery pack for it.  So, they have to plan their charging a little ahead but that also applies to diesel for their farm machinery and petrol for their other little off-roader.  The telling thing is that, now the novelty of electric power has worn off, the petrol one gets used every day and the electric one has become the backup.  That's more because the petrol one is bigger and more useful but it was also much cheaper to buy and is more convenient to use.  (These people are electric vehicle fans and travel long distances in their electric cars on a regular basis, by the way.)

[geoffbeaumont]

12 hours ago, landroversforever said:

I saw an interesting article from Volvo the other week, it was comparing the environmental impact between two different XC40s. It took 140,000km (I think it was) in the EV before it offset the manufacture and was less polluting per mile than the ICE equivalent.

What's the realistic working life of the current battery technologies? Are they still giving decent range at that point, and if not how much does replacing the batteries affect that comparison? (Not a dig - I don't know the answers).

3 hours ago, monkie said:

Another point to consider with ICE is that petrol and diesel have already contributed to quite a lot of emissions before you even burn them (extraction, refining, distribution). This is not often considered in comparisons from an emissions point of view, so the figures don't give the full picture. 

That's true of both ICE and electric - very hard to make any worthwhile comparison when most figures bandied around seem to leave out part of the picture. If anyone knows of genuinely comprehensive figures for the impact of both technologies I'd be interested.

[monkie]

14 minutes ago, geoffbeaumont said:

What's the realistic working life of the current battery technologies? Are they still giving decent range at that point, and if not how much does replacing the batteries affect that comparison? (Not a dig - I don't know the answers).

That's true of both ICE and electric - very hard to make any worthwhile comparison when most figures bandied around seem to leave out part of the picture. If anyone knows of genuinely comprehensive figures for the impact of both technologies I'd be interested.

There is a chap on YouTube with a channel called engineering explained. His videos are detailed and he quotes his sources back to scientific literature so you can look it up. He did an episode covering this topic. Basically EVs are alot better than ICE in terms of emissions over the lifetime, but as to how much, well it depends upon how your electricity you use to charge the car is generated. He compared a US state where they predominantly burn coal to another state with lots of renewables. It was an interesting video to watch. 

[Arjan]

EV to drive are boring but mostly smooth and quiet to use.

Where I live - rural sort of covers it - makes charging them at home a challenge.

Don't get me started on HBV, tractors etc. that all will have to be electric. Present technology is just not there any time soon.

People who make these laws and all that have the money and too much distance to the real world to understand the problems most of us have to simply pay the bills.

Retro-fit a Series LR to EV makes no financial sense and here the legal problems are huge.

I'll keep the old diesels and petrol unti I die.

I'll get me coat.

 

[cackshifter]

I think a lot of this conversation assumes there will be a free choice of using electric  or ICE. What if not? Or maybe you are only allowed certain mileage or to purchase so many litres of fuel per year? Or maybe oil fuels just become stupidly expensive. Ok this may be surrendering some freedoms but it will be 'for the greater good'. I can see some degree of hybridisation even for existing vehicles might be useful.

[JohnnoK]

https://www.popularmechanics.co.za/wheels/sa-man-converts-his-jeep-to-electric-power/

This is a good few years old now, so with the advances in technology it shouldn't be too difficult to do a Landy EV conversion.

[steve200TDi]

On 5/22/2022 at 11:41 AM, simonr said:

I'm sensing a bit of negativity in this thread 🤣

Any of you who have not driven an EV - go and take a test drive in something.  Just treat it as a fun day out - rather than an admission it might be any good.  I think you might be surprised!  Even some of the more crappy ones are really fun to drive! 

I used to think a V8 was the best engine to drive, on or off road, until I bought a Td5.  With a bit of tweaking, that knocked the spots off most V8's.  Unfortunately, it still sounds like a bag of spanners compared to the lovely sound a V8 (petrol) makes.

Then I built an electric Freelander (Mk1) - which is a fairly crappy car.  With the electric drive, it transformed it.  The quietness & smoothness rivaled the most expensive Range Rover.  The torque / acceleration were way too much for the Freelander chassis - I could feel the whole body twisting as it took off.  I ended up tuning it right down to make it safe to drive on wet roads.  In it's original form, I could spin the wheels a any speed!  Also, driving fast / accelerating hard, murders the range.  The whole thing cost me under £1000 to build, including the car.  It only had a short (27 mile) range - but that's all I needed to get to work & back.

Eventually I scrapped it - but only to build a better EV.  The problem is, I never found the 'right' donor car.  Right, for me was something small, lightweight, mechanically simple which could handle a lot of power.

Until now - that is!  I bought a Polaris General XP1000 last year.  It's great fun to drive, has a huge amount of torque (and handles pretty well) and only weighs 600kg.  It's engine is about 100Hp and VERY LOUD!  The only negative is it's full of CANBUS & Electrickery - but I can deal with that.

My conversion (later this year) will reduce the power to 80Hp.  It will only have a range of 60 miles & will weigh 50kg more than the original.  I do have a very specific use / need for a vehicle like this.  It's kind of an experiment - as I have another future Electric 4x4 planned which will need a lot of the same CANBUS hacking.

I have no illusions about it being 'green' - and don't really care.  They are just amazing fun to drive!  That said, I've just put in planning permission at home for a 12kW Solar 'pergola' - which is enough to run the house and an EV, particularly if I use one EV as part of the battery storage.

I find this evolution of the automotive market really interesting & exciting.  There's hardly been any big changes to the car in the last few decades - other than trying to turn them into a disposable fashion accessory.  The manufacturers have developed a product that people buy and have not needed to push the envelope, just a series of small incremental changes

The last really big change was from Steam to ICE.  That brought about a total change in the manufacturers who dominated the market.  The same is happening again and that more than the change in fuel will change the mindset of what a car is.

Go & try one!  It might change your mind!  They are not ideal for everybody or every application - but they definitely have a place, even if just from a smiles per mile point of view!

I'll look out for the build thread! ☺️

[Snagger]

On 5/23/2022 at 5:03 PM, cackshifter said:

I think a lot of this conversation assumes there will be a free choice of using electric  or ICE. What if not? Or maybe you are only allowed certain mileage or to purchase so many litres of fuel per year? Or maybe oil fuels just become stupidly expensive. Ok this may be surrendering some freedoms but it will be 'for the greater good'. I can see some degree of hybridisation even for existing vehicles might be useful.

I think that will be the case.  If not done by legislation, it’ll be done by practicality and cost.  But we can see the EV tax breaks and grants are already ending too.

[Bowie69]

Coincidentally, the Citroen Ami UK pricing was released today, and despite the mooted £6K price tag pre-all-this-stupid-inflation-business-and-war, it is £7695 OTR.

Now that seems a lot for a 30mph 2-seater. No idea what the finance deals are on it yet.

[Badger110]

16 hours ago, JohnnoK said:

https://www.popularmechanics.co.za/wheels/sa-man-converts-his-jeep-to-electric-power/

This is a good few years old now, so with the advances in technology it shouldn't be too difficult to do a Landy EV conversion.

That was a interesting...was there a follow up with the Land Rover's he talked about converting?

I believe the nature of the running gear of a defender just isn't suited to battery power as it'll lose too much energy turning the wheels after it's gone through 2 gearbox's, propshafts, etc plus it's a 3 ton vehicle

[FridgeFreezer]

37 minutes ago, Badger110 said:

I believe the nature of the running gear of a defender just isn't suited to battery power as it'll lose too much energy turning the wheels after it's gone through 2 gearbox's, propshafts, etc plus it's a 3 ton vehicle

I doubt you'd need the main gearbox, EV's don't bother with one - just bolt the motor to the front of the LT230 and call it good. An old 4WD drivetrain is never going to be as efficient as newer "motor at each end" EV setups, although the new Hummer EV manages to be spectacularly inefficient by EV standards.

[JohnnoK]

7 hours ago, Badger110 said:

That was a interesting...was there a follow up with the Land Rover's he talked about converting?

I believe the nature of the running gear of a defender just isn't suited to battery power as it'll lose too much energy turning the wheels after it's gone through 2 gearbox's, propshafts, etc plus it's a 3 ton vehicle

I've not seen a follow up on the Landy. I hear you on the energy losses, but the motor can go directly onto the TC input which minimises losses.

Let's face it, if you want to EV a Landy, efficiency can't be high up on your list, can it?🤔

[JohnnoK]

6 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

I doubt you'd need the main gearbox, EV's don't bother with one - just bolt the motor to the front of the LT230 and call it good. An old 4WD drivetrain is never going to be as efficient as newer "motor at each end" EV setups, although the new Hummer EV manages to be spectacularly inefficient by EV standards.

Mmmmm, turn the diffs 90 degrees and fit motor direct to input pinion?...... That could work.

[Snagger]

7 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

I doubt you'd need the main gearbox, EV's don't bother with one - just bolt the motor to the front of the LT230 and call it good. An old 4WD drivetrain is never going to be as efficient as newer "motor at each end" EV setups, although the new Hummer EV manages to be spectacularly inefficient by EV standards.

Doing that requires a big motor and a high voltage, high current battery.  Most conversions use Nissan Leaf or Hyper 9 motors, and they do need the whole transmission, typically using third and fourth gear on road but the whole range off road to get the required torque.  Tesla motors have much more torque, so the gear box or even the transfer box can be deleted, but they are a good deal more expensive conversions as you also need Tesla batteries.

[Snagger]

Have a look on Facebook for Don Incol and Dave Budge, the latter running a company called Jaunt.  They use the whole Series transmission for good reason.

[simonr]

1 hour ago, JohnnoK said:

I've not seen a follow up on the Landy. I hear you on the energy losses, but the motor can go directly onto the TC input which minimises losses.

Let's face it, if you want to EV a Landy, efficiency can't be high up on your list, can it?🤔

You will need the gearbox & transfer.  The reduction ratio of both is really necessary.  You end up driving in 1st or 2nd generally.

You're right about the efficiency of the drivetrain being poor.  However, that's mostly because we're driving with squidgy tyres and the driveline isn't well adjusted.  If you get some stiff road tyres and rebuild the axles properly, it's not much worse than a modern car.  You will loose a few percent on the range but it's not as bad as you might think.

Series have an advantage of being able to run in 2WD.  Better still with Freewheeling Hubs.

[Badger110]

This popped up on YouTube and mentions Jaunt @snagger  as supplier of their kits

 

 

[Ed Poore]

On 3/14/2022 at 7:05 PM, cackshifter said:

I have wondered if there is also a possibility of hybridisation, maybe off the PTO

That's an interesting thought because with a few sensors (perhaps not even that) you could supplement the ICE engine with the motor as it could provide additional assistance.

[simonr]

I should have mentioned, EVWest and ZeroEV in the UK can supply a new gear for the tesla transaxle which gives it the correct ratio to drop in to a Land Rover as shown above.  This has got to be one of the simplest conversions! 

You do loose the locking centre diff - but I think someone makes an ATB / limited slip diff for Tesla.