E-Car Conversions

[Hesse James]

Hello @ll,

I see more and more conversions from 911 into "green" E-Cars. What is your Technical opinion on that?
Is a 911 with all those battery packs in the front trunk still steerable or does all the balance get lost and you have a car that is not drivable?
I think it might be woth a try to convert a tub into an E-Car, but philosophically I doubt, that there is anything green with investing thousands of $$$ in Equipment which produced also a lot of CO2 for production. I think the "greenest" thing at all is to keep those cars rolling and not investing in new ones.
But I like the idea to keep the old metal on the street even in 30 years when gasoline powered cars can only be found in a museum. At the moment I do not see the technique to compete with fuel-burners. As long as the battery cels do not meet the needs for the daily use of an e-car, I think it is only a rich boys toy as you can see with the Tesla - Notebook Car.

Any thoughts?

best regards


Heiko

[Dan Morton]

There are a few people who have converted 911's but more who did 914's. The 911's from what I've seen are more of a pain and not the best platform for converting to elec. You can buy turnkey kits for the 914. Overall the expense outweighs any benefit IMO. I took a two hour class from a couple elec car geeks. One guy bought a car that was converted by GM in the 90's, the other converted a small pickup on his own. The converted pickup cost him about $20k+ and resulted in a range of 30-40 miles. My conclusion was to wait for a real factory elec car and buy a more fuel efficient car in the mean time. Of course now with Gas being cheaper, I'm not switching any vehicles at the moment. Of course in Europe it's a different story so maybe the economics are in your favor.

Do a search on electric conversions and you will find a lot of info. There's even a company in the US that takes 911's and converts them to a 959 look and elec. They are very pricey I'm sure.

-Dan