http://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/new-hot-rods-are-soupedup-vintage-cars-electric-motors New hot rods are souped-up vintage cars with electric motors January 14, 2019 Jason Clenfield & Chisaki Watanabe Bloomberg
[image https://assets.theedgemarkets.com/porshe-1968_20190114112426_bloomberg.jpg ] They are faster, safer and easier to maintain — and way more cool Osamu Furukawa’s garage [ https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/news-photo/osamu-furukawa-chief-executive-officer-of-oz-motors-news-photo/1080527108 ] is full of gorgeous electric cars, but none of them is a Tesla. There is a yellow 1977 Volkswagen (VW) Beetle alongside a rare three-wheeled Messerschmitt from the 1950s in cherry red, and both are in buttery-smooth working order. The bodies may be antique, but their engines have been replaced with electric motors and batteries. “This is about how fun a car can be,” says the 47-year-old mechanic. Furukawa’s shop on the outskirts of Tokyo, Oz Motors [ http://oz-motors.com/ ], is one of a dozen or so boutique garages around the world that specialise in “EV conversions,” the process of turning an automobile with a combustion engine into one powered by electricity. They have sprung up from London to Southern California, all catering to a growing number of car fanatics who enjoy classics but want more power, reliability, and fuel efficiency. “The guys who come into our shop tend to be forward-thinking, progressive,” says Michael Bream, proprietor of EV West, a garage near San Diego whose clients include tech executives and Hollywood types. “They’re looking for a way to differentiate themselves in a car that has some history.” Electric-car conversions have been around since the 1960s, when hippies and engineering geeks began trying to power old cars with stacks of golf-cart batteries, using generators salvaged from airplanes as motors [ https://www.google.com/search?q=generators+airplane+as+motor ]. During the oil crisis of 1979 ... thousands of do-it-yourself conversion kits [ https://www.google.com/search?q=do-it-yourself+ev+conversion+kits ] ... had a bumper sticker that said: “GM can’t build this car [ https://www.google.com/search?q=GM+can’t+build+this+car ], but you can.” In those early days, concerns for the environment were the main motivation. Now it is largely about style and speed. “Every single conversion that we do ends up having more power than the original,” says Richard Morgan, owner of Electric Classic Cars [ https://www.electricclassiccars.co.uk/ ] in Newton, Wales [UK]. “These aren’t slow milk floats that are boring,” he says, referring to the battery-powered trucks that delivered milk across the UK. “These things kick ass.” Ever since he was a teenager in the 1980s, Morgan says, he loved driving, racing, and customising cars that were older than he was. But the older the cars got, the more problem-prone they were. Replacing their complex, cranky engines with electric motors, which have few moving parts, was a way to make them easier to maintain — and speedier. A 1973 VW Bug that Morgan converted, for example, went from 40 horsepower (hp) to 400hp, he says. And because electric motors deliver their power instantaneously — like flicking on a light switch — the acceleration pins you to the seat. Even some classic-car purists who first saw conversions as sacrilege [ https://www.google.com/search?q=Electric+conversions+sacrilege ] have been convinced. “I used to be the biggest petrol-head you could find,” says Tim Madeley, one of Morgan’s buddies. “But I’ve come around.” After just three years in business, advertising mostly on Instagram and Facebook, Morgan sees orders to his small-town shop coming from all over the world. Last summer, he and his team of three mechanics sent five custom-built stunt buggies, each costing about US$30,000, to a buyer in China. “It just snowballed,” Morgan says. “Every time we have one car leaving the shop we’ve got another three coming in.” Converting an a 1980s Porsche into a battery-powered sports car was how Tesla Inc co-founder JB Straubel [ http://www.evalbum.com/223 ] got his start, but the craft can be learned by non-geniuses, too. A website called EV Photo Album [ http://www.evalbum.com/ ] has thousands of posts from hobbyists who have made electric vehicles out of unlikely prospects, whether a Toyota Celica or a 45-litre Coleman beer cooler [ http://www.evalbum.com/5357]. (The latter looks vaguely like a lunar lander, with a red and white plastic body mounted over four knobby wheels.) Matthew Quitter, a former composer who in 2017 opened a garage in London, says he taught himself how to do conversion work by watching YouTube videos and studying sites such as DIY Electric Car and the cheekily named Electric Cars Are for Girls [ https://www.electric-cars-are-for-girls.com/ ]. Quitter’s one-man shop, London Electric Cars [ http://londonelectriccars.com/ ], specialises in refitting a British sedan that had its heyday in the 1960s called the Morris Minor — a vehicle beloved by the English for its fuddy-duddy, end-of-empire awfulness. “Lots of people grew up with their parents having these cars,” he says. “There’s a real nostalgia for them.” At EV West [ https://evwest.com/ ], Bream is cranking out more exotic vehicles. Last year he helped build the world’s first electric Ferrari, a 1978 308 GTS that sold at auction for US$80,000. There is an 1985 DeLorean [ https://www.google.com/search?q=Electric+DeLorean ] in the shop now, as well as a 1996 BMW M3, a 1968 Porsche 911, and actor Ewan McGregor’s 1954 VW Beetle [ https://www.google.com/search?q=Ewan+McGregor+VW+Beetle ]. There is no Morris Minor. The big thing these days, Bream says, is taking Tesla drivetrains and putting them into beautiful older cars that are smaller. He says there is a robust secondary market for Tesla batteries as well as those from LG Chem [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Chem ], which makes the electric motors used in the Chevy Volt [pih] and Hyundai Kona [EV]. Think of it as a modern version of old-style hot-rodding [ https://www.google.com/search?q=old-style+hot-rodding ], using a power source designed for a heavy sedan to propel something much lighter. The mismatch makes for serious speed. “I have a motor where you can be going 100 miles (160km) an hour down the freeway, but you blip the throttle and it will still smoke the tires,” Bream says. That may sound a little intimidating, but Bream says added horsepower makes his refitted electrics, if anything, safer than the originals — being able to really accelerate can be handy when an sport utility vechicle behemoth is bearing down on you. One of his clients is Chris Sakanai, a programmer for the Call of Duty video game franchise. He considered buying a Tesla, but instead opted for a hands-on project. After a six-month search, Sakanai found a 1951 Chevy pickup [ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/481885228868654751/ ] with a carefully restored red body — and almost everything else wrong with it. It cost him US$20,000 (RM82,000). Since the truck’s innards would be torn out anyway, it did not matter that the engine and transmission were shot and oil leaked everywhere. After an additional US$40,000 spent on parts and labour — and six months of work at Bream’s side — Sakanai’s dream machine is a hassle-free antique with 48kWh worth of Tesla batteries [ https://www.google.com/search?q=Tesla+batteries ] under its rear bed and a 240km range. From a stoplight, it jumps off the line. “I get tons of reactions,” Sakanai says. “People are expecting this big, rumbling V-8 that you hear from a mile away, but when I start it up and it’s completely quiet, they’re like, ‘Whoa, hold up. What’s going on under the hood?’?” — Bloomberg [© theedgemarkets.com] [video dated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U24W86k1HM OZ MOTORS Power vack portable battery storage OZ MOTORS Published on Jun 5, 2016 portable battery storage 2 modules of Nissan Leaf battery inside ] + https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Vintage-cars-with-electric-heart-transplants-13533431.php Vintage cars with electric-heart transplants Jan. 14, 2019 They’re classic cars fit for a concours d’elegance, a royal wedding or simply a quiet drive down a country lane ... https://s.hdnux.com/photos/77/76/17/16770032/5/gallery_xlarge.jpg For EVLN EV-newswire posts use: http://evdl.org/archive/ {brucedp.neocities.org} -- Sent from: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/ _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
