Talk Me Out Of Converting My 2.7 to Electric...

[ClickClickBoom]

Buy a Prius, be like the rest of the sheeple.....

[midnight911]

how about hybrid?
keep the 2.7 and add electric motor/ battery. Someone in CA was trying to commercialize one. Motor goes in to the flywheel space. Battery in the front. 915 gets a little bit of stress...

[RSTarga]

shocking idea

[75 911s]

^Yes get "Shadow Drive" by Vonnen. It's $69,000 + Installation.

[Coblue]

Originally Posted by Cloggie

Tiny correction....according to Frere, the drag coefficient of a '70's 911 is around .40, Tesla model 3 around .23...still a big difference but not all that bad as the 911 has a pretty small cross sectional area
D.

I'm looking at the 930 numbers from the late 70's, and wow, you're right. Where'd I get .61 last time I looked?!
Oh well. Forget I said anything.

[Ian Comerford]

I like this
“ Making it electric just defeats the purpose of a 911 and turns it into some sort of 911-shaped appliance that may as well be a fiberglas 911 body fitted to a Prius.”

[EC900]

Porsche Jeopardy - Category: Notable Gas to Electric Engine Conversions That Made Sense

[jpearson]

I'm curious if anything has happened with this.
I have a 75 - the tub went through a rotisserie resto and paint. Car needs to go back together. For money reasons it has sat like this for a few years.
Engine is non numbers matching and needs a full rebuild.

I am strongly considering this route also. Would love to connect with others that have gone this route and done it on their own.

[spoke]

I think I'm over the excitement about a battery EV. They are everywhere now and are no big deal anymore. There will come a time when people yearn for the throbbing of a V8 or flat 6 and will be thinking of converting a battery EV to a V8. Now that would be exciting.

[almostordinary]

Originally Posted by spoke

I think I'm over the excitement about a battery EV. They are everywhere now and are no big deal anymore. There will come a time when people yearn for the throbbing of a V8 or flat 6 and will be thinking of converting a battery EV to a V8. Now that would be exciting.

People are already scratching that itch.

[tmaull]

I’ll have a go at this. I work in electrification, with a fair number of Motorsport projects. The reason you don’t want to do this is that the conversions are pretty crap. They run at 400 volts, they use very basic pack architecture that ends up dramatically increasing the CG height, they run single motor so there’s none of the amazing vehicle control strategies you can employ in EV, they use archaic BMS products like Orion so you end up with low power limits, and stupidly high degradaron. The cells they often use aren’t very good, and they don’t have good balancing strategies so the weakest cell wins. Electric cars are amazing. Go buy one. Don’t convert your 911. It’s amateur hour.

[Jonny H]

I wouldn't convert a 911. Not only is the engine the highlight of the car, it's all wrong in terms of packaging. To get any decent mileage, you end up either with no rear seats or with no frunk space.

I have, however, converted a 914 and that is perfect but...

You must consider the whole car as a 'system'. Just bolting up a electric drive will result in a terrifying experience. You'll be adding extra weight so you will need chassis, damping and brakes to match. Do not forget about heating / AC if you want to truly modernise the car.

With our 914, it essentially is a scratch built car. Starting with chassis strengthening, front/rear weight distribution, uprated and adjustable suspension. Much more to it...

The results are worth it. I get GT3 embarrassing performance, 180 miles range, I've added Tesla brake booster and power steering so it drives like a fast modern car. It is no longer a 914 though...

You can read about it here:

https://www.classicretrofit.com/blogs/news/classic-retrofit-porsche-914-ev-wins-retrorides-car-of-the-year

[Racerbvd]

Just get one of those fiberglass 911 bodied kit cars and put the battery in it.

[PeteKz]

Listen to tmaull. I've been involved in a couple EV projects, and they were kludges, using the original trans and drivetrain, just replacing the engine with an electric motor.

If you still want to do this, buy a complete wrecked Tesla or other EV, then transplant the entire drivetrain, electronic controls, and other parts to the 911 shell. Good luck reconfiguring the battery packs.

[ahh911]

I won't put a large LIPO battery in my garage for safety reasons at this point in the technology.
Too many burning houses. Yes, gasoline fires occur, but... you can smell the fuel in the garage, and they tend to only flame up when the engine is hot.

The thing about the EV's is they burn without any warning and if you're not around, truly a scary thing. So unless they fix the technology, I'd have to park it outside, so no, not for me yet.

Phil

[Funracer]

MD Holloway joined in 2004. More interesting is he has over 22,000 posts. Never seen that many.

[Funracer]

Racerbvd 53,000? Amazing.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by tmaull

Electric cars are amazing. Go buy one. Don’t convert your 911. It’s amateur hour.

This ^^ times 1000.

[mikesarge]

Originally Posted by tmaull

I’ll have a go at this. I work in electrification, with a fair number of Motorsport projects. The reason you don’t want to do this is that the conversions are pretty crap. They run at 400 volts, they use very basic pack architecture that ends up dramatically increasing the CG height, they run single motor so there’s none of the amazing vehicle control strategies you can employ in EV, they use archaic BMS products like Orion so you end up with low power limits, and stupidly high degradaron. The cells they often use aren’t very good, and they don’t have good balancing strategies so the weakest cell wins. Electric cars are amazing. Go buy one. Don’t convert your 911. It’s amateur hour.

This is correct.
I say this as someone who amateurishly converted a 73 VW Type 3 squareback to run on golf cart batteries (72v architecture), then re-converted it to a 120v lithium system. This was in 2008 (and 2012).

I chose the type 3 because it didn't have power brakes or steering, so fewer things to deal with when the EV world was relatively tiny and folks were having to build everything themselves.

On golf cart batteries, it was fine around town, actually quicker than the sad little fuel-injected 1500 it came with, but the driving dynamics were trash. It was a squareback, so not a performance car to begin with so it didn't matter too much, but the car was also only like $1500.

Even on lithium, I could smoke the tires, sure, but it drove badly in corners, and if it were a valuable and nice-driving 911, I'd have been very sad with the loss of driving dynamics. My vanagon legitimately handles better than that squareback did.

Keep the 2.7, buy a bug or a squareback or something if you want the rear engine quirky old simple car, and shoot me a DM if you want some tips on what (not) to do when converting a car to electric by yourself in your garage.

The ending of the story is I now have a BMW i3. I ride my bike to work and the grocery store, so the wife drives the i3, and we use it around town for 99% of trips we can't do on foot. It has heated seats and auto climate control, it is nice enough to drive at 15mph in city traffic, and it cost less than $15k.

[ant7]

Please don't, you'll ruin a great performance/handling car by doing so, and end up regretting it, let alone removing most of the value.
Just my ramblings.