ICYMI: Ford offering an electric crate motor for less than $4000

In reply to paddygarcia :

You can do that today! It's basically like building an IRS from the power delivery standpoint.

For HVAC, thanks to mass-produced EVs we now have high voltage AC compressors (like this one on eBay). The rest of the system would be the same as an ICE. Heated seats are easy enough, and resistive heating isn't difficult to implement in place of a heater core (maybe using something like this). The fact that there are OEs making these things and that they're showing up in junkyards makes it a lot easier than it would have been a decade ago.

dculberson (Forum Supporter) said:

Mount the motor where the transmission is on my 1970 Ford F-250. Mount the batteries where the side saddle fuel tanks are now. Clean up the engine compartment and have a nice frunk. The e-motor weighs about the same as the toploader transmission currently in the F250. I could probably put together a battery pack yielding reasonable range the doesn't outweigh the all iron 360 that's in there now. HP and torque would be virtually unchanged. (215hp / 327tq originally) except the old ratings are gross so I bet the truck would be faster and more capable. Hmm.

Or, go whole hog and mount one directly on each differential?

My 95 F150 would make a sweet proto-Lightning with two of those motors. 

Keith Tanner said:

I am looking forward to seeing someone stuff one of these new generation of motors into a Miata rear subframe.

Although the small battery pack idea does have a flaw - a battery cell can only deliver power at a certain rate. Think of it as having its own little fuel pump, and it can only deliver fuel so fast. If you want more power, you need more cells. That's why you see better performance numbers from EVs with long range, because they have a lot of cells. 

So our "one small battery" Miata is going to be down on power compared to one carrying the full pack. Is it enough to overcome the lower mass? Maybe in a car where the batteries are a very significant percentage of the total mass, like a Lotus Seven type. In the case of a Miata, it will take some interesting experimentation to find out.

Keep in mind that the batteries are usually liquid cooled, so you might want to do the swap at home :)

This enables your own personal moon shot. You can find where the curves for weight speed and fuel delivery allow the greatest outcome.

That’s actually very cool. A complete bolt in / plug and play package for the Novice Electrician interests me for my MGB.

But (and it’s large BUT) the cost are way over the top.

Motor Swap Comparison

Electric Crate Motor - 4K

Battery Assembly - 16K (Factoring Massive Mass Production Discount from what TriGun quoted).

Traction Invertor, Control System 2K (Total Wild Guess)

22K or $22,000 US Dollars for our metric friends.

2.2 Ecotec L61 Core – $100

Rebuilt Head and Rebuild Kit w/ Internals & T Chain - $1000

Stand Alone Harness $1000

T5 WC - $350

Stuff I forgot about… - $2500 (Educated Guess)

5K or $5,000 US Dollars

So in my case the Electric VS Gas Motor Swap is 4 times as expensive.

Sure I’m only doing a low budget modernization swap, I’m getting a 50% HP increase, and I want this to be my 100% dependable daily. But I could go full turnkey LE5 Turbo for another $3500 and still be less than half of electric…

The future might be electric but not yet.

If you're looking for a legitimate comparison in prices, you should either use new crate parts for the ICE or an old Leaf with a damaged battery pack for the EV. This is not a valid  comparison as-is. I have no doubt the EV will still come up at a higher cost for a given power level, but if you're going to do math you should try to make it legit.

Also, I'm impressed you can rebuild an engine for $1000 once everything is accounted for :)

The inverter is the ECU, essentially. It is what interprets all the sensor and control input and determines how much juice to send from the battery pack to the motor. And, it turns stuff upside-down.

It's my plan if I can't get the Japanese Hemi to fit.........

Keith Tanner said:

If you're looking for a legitimate comparison in prices, you should either use new crate parts for the ICE or an old Leaf with a damaged battery pack for the EV. This is not a valid  comparison as-is. I have no doubt the EV will still come up at a higher cost for a given power level, but if you're going to do math you should try to make it legit.

Also, I'm impressed you can rebuild an engine for $1000 once everything is accounted for :)

You mean compare it like when I said get a new Turnkey Crate Motor? Or do you mean build for $1000 when I said add $2500 for what I forgot?

Don't be impressed, 1k in parts probably high for that motor. Pistons $80, Timing Chain Kit $100, Gaskets $60. Rebuild head was only $400 shipped. Etc...

New Parts or Old Parts. Until electric cars become commonplace they will be expensive, like every consumer product before it.

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to paddygarcia :

You can do that today! It's basically like building an IRS.

I've always admired the Ranger EV engineers for having the guts to put an aluminum and composite de Dion into a truck.

Great point about HVAC. The Passat TDI I had came with an electric heater to augment the slow warmup of coolant, and it could warm up that boat quickly, probably do fine in a big old car.

Taking more notes for retirement projects...

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I didn't say EV HVAC wasn't an insurmountable problem, just that there isn't a plug-and-play solution right now - compared to say the universal hot-rod HVAC components that can be adapted to work in almost anything.

I have little desire to go digging through junk yards for parts of questionable service history. Can it be cheaper? Sure. It also takes time. Time I don't have. I'm fine with paying more for solutions to problems.  I've bought one parts car in my life and it was a huge berking mistake.

Keith Tanner said:

Teslas don't do brake by wire as far as I know, but they'll have modern ABS systems so they'll just use that for proportioning at the limit. Not so easy with a retrofit...

Apparently they don't use brake by wire. I just assumed they did but according to something I read the brake booster balances the regenerative braking and normal braking.

Until we see if Ford offers controllers, etc, it's premature for me. And battery form factor is a biggie. They are heavy so you want them low and centered between the axles.

Irregardless, it's going to be a WAY more expensive project until such time as wrecking yards are littered with e-carcasses and e-gearheads have deciphered all of the parts that can be up-cycled into projects.

I'm looking forward to this.

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

I would argue that an electric AC compressor is literally plug and play :) No need to mess with belts or mounting and far more flexibility in packaging. If you want a new one, I'm sure the parts department is open.
I know there are all-in-one heater boxes as well, one just showed up in the electric car conversion group this morning.  So while there may not be as many options as for a small block chebby on initial glance, I think it's a workable situation at the moment. 

The only reason I am happy about this is it will (eventually when it costs less) save more fuel for the ICEs that matter.

dculberson (Forum Supporter) said:

Mount the motor where the transmission is on my 1970 Ford F-250. Mount the batteries where the side saddle fuel tanks are now. Clean up the engine compartment and have a nice frunk. The e-motor weighs about the same as the toploader transmission currently in the F250. I could probably put together a battery pack yielding reasonable range the doesn't outweigh the all iron 360 that's in there now. HP and torque would be virtually unchanged. (215hp / 327tq originally) except the old ratings are gross so I bet the truck would be faster and more capable. Hmm.

Or, go whole hog and mount one directly on each differential?

My mind read this and then went to: Hay . . . let's take two of them and make a cradle for them to mount them back to back so you have one motor powering each back wheel.  Not sure what the suspension solution would be but it sure would be fast.  

I've never thought to ask this before, but is it possible to apply EV credits to EV conversions when purchasing the power unit (and perhaps other parts) from a full manufacturer?  These crate motors would be coming from the same production line as the motors used in production model cars, right?  Tesla's been fighting against anyone using their parts, and I'm not sure that there are any major manufacturers with crate electric units on the market?

In an EV, the batteries are both the fuel container and power-plant. The motor is just part of the drivetrain. It's like a transmission or a differential, not much good without fuel, power-plant, and ecu.     
 

The costs and system integration challenges make more sense to me in this way.  
 

In reply to jb229 :

GM offers a crate motor although I'm not sure any have made it into external hands - especially not right now since they use Bolt batteries. They were only releasing it to shops that were trained. Nobody wants to see a car fail in a dramatic way after the conversion, so it's not a free for all yet. 

None of the other OEs other than GM and Ford offer swap-friendly crate ICE engines, so it's not surprising that we don't see EV options from them as well. 

OEMs.. PLEASE package this tech into a 'complete,' turn-key/modular kit.. there is a tremendous pent-up demand.. this coming from a guy that used to swap a V8 into everything, cause, you know, V8!

Old tech has it's place, and I love it too, but I'm super optimistic and excited for the emerging EV conversion kits to become affordable AND accessible for the hobbyist/DIY auto enthusiast.  To cobble it together effectively is still just beyond my skillset.. Package it up!  Plug and play  

I don't default to V8 swaps anymore, and I suspect we're on the brink of not defaulting to ICE swaps as well..  Bring it!!! 

--ccrunner

93EXCivic said:

Keith Tanner said:

Teslas don't do brake by wire as far as I know, but they'll have modern ABS systems so they'll just use that for proportioning at the limit. Not so easy with a retrofit...

Apparently they don't use brake by wire. I just assumed they did but according to something I read the brake booster balances the regenerative braking and normal braking.

They use electric boosters which can command full braking of the hydraulic system if necessary, as well as adjust boost on the fly.   They'll function standalone with a couple of power pins connected.  Also, they're much more compact than vacuum boosters to the point where I'm eyeing one for the S2000 in an attempt to fit a large supercharger on that side of the engine bay...

jb229 said:

I've never thought to ask this before, but is it possible to apply EV credits to EV conversions when purchasing the power unit (and perhaps other parts) from a full manufacturer?  These crate motors would be coming from the same production line as the motors used in production model cars, right?  Tesla's been fighting against anyone using their parts, and I'm not sure that there are any major manufacturers with crate electric units on the market?

I think it's on a case-by-case basis, and depends on the state.  For example, Colorado offers vehicle conversion credits, but it requires inspection of the finished product before it's assessed (c.a. 2019, anyway)

In reply to sobe_death :

Their boosters are very cool, but balance has to come into it as well, especially on the RWD cars. Easy enough with a modern ABS system. Even Miatas have used pure ABS for proportioning for (wow) 20 years.

I'm pretty sure the 1990 XJ in my driveway had an electric booster. Not a good one, which it why it was removed by a PO :)

In reply to David S. Wallens :

I'm going to watch this closely- if they sell it with a controller for a decent price and batteries aren't too terrible to source, it could be a perfect powerplant for my DMC-12...

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

There is constant work on cold fusion systems, unfortunately they’ve been 20 years away for the last 30 years.

Rons said:

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

There is constant work on cold fusion systems, unfortunately they’ve been 20 years away for the last 30 years.

True- but all that would do would be provide the electricity, I'd still need something like this to actually move the car. :p