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stevieturbo

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Anyone see this on TV ? Another WD kinda thing, Welsh company doing conversions

The recent, maybe first program ? was a VW Karmann Ghia with a NI owner, conversion cost something like 30k !


Nice clean car, the motor and adapter looked decent.

Although their fabrication work looked good....one would wonder about the safety aspect of how and where they installed the batteries, even if a crash may be unlikely.
Huge weight of batteries literally behind the two seats, it didn't really make it clear how these were secured. Likewise more batteries up front, extending pretty far forwards into what might be any crumple/crash zones for a frontal impact ( even if such a car isn't really modern crumple zone kinda thing )

But overall, externally, no visible changes, dash gauge looked nice and owner seemed very happy. It'd certainly be interesting to see more detail on the install, and perhaps what sort of safeties are built in.

Still seems a healthy price for 150 mile range although overall a neat looking install, obviously some custom parts that probably cost a few quid., But apparently a fair power upgrade over the petrol engine.
 

vw1500

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Series was on at the end of the summer, did a Chesil Speedster (episode 2) lastnight. Serious coin to get converted, ghia would be maybe £15-20k car and then he's thrown £30k at it. Seems insane to me. Their work seems superb, but would need to be at that price. As you say adding a fair bit of weight to the front of it!!

The guy who runs the business has a 1303 beetle
 

stevieturbo

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The worked look good, I certainly wouldnt say superb. As said, some of the battery positioning from a safety standpoint didn't seem so hot.
From a weight perspective, using heavy steel for the battery cases seemed a bit odd too...simply no need for steel when aluminium would be better.

Although I get they are adding all the batteries without cutting into the structure of the vehicle at all, which I guess is a positive, so compromises have to be made.

£4k for the motor alone seemed pricey. You can buy a used Tesla LDU for that sort of money, and it'd be circa 400+hp with batteries to allow it.

Conversions would be a lot more cost effective if they used motors from salvage vehicles. Although even battery packs from salvage vehicles seem to be big money
 

stevieturbo

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One other aspect they seemed to ignore in that expensive conversion too...when the guy was driving it in the rain, there was nothing at all to demist the window. Not sure of a KG ever had anything to start with, but that would be a major problem
Presumably it did have some sort of heater even with the air cooled.
 

gary1365

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Great news
One other aspect they seemed to ignore in that expensive conversion too...when the guy was driving it in the rain, there was nothing at all to demist the window. Not sure of a KG ever had anything to start with, but that would be a major problem
Presumably it did have some sort of heater even with the air cooled.
They did a kg on wheeler dealers and it had a great big hole in the bulkhead where an after marker heater had been fitted. Can’t remember any mention of oem heater.
 

stevieturbo

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I think some Beetles used engine oil for the heater, not sure whether the KG would be too old for that sort of thing.

Modern vehicles tend to use the a/c system, heat pump deal to supply heat as it's a lot more efficient than using batteries to directly generate heat

But let's face it, something to demist windows is essential here
 

vw1500

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They take their heat from the engine basically and channelled up where the sills would be. This would have acted as a demister too by closing off some of the vents. Not having hot air pass through the channels isn't a great idea especially in our climate as moisture will stay there and with an electric motor it wouldn't be getting any hot air. Hadn't thought about that. There was an erberpacher diesel heater that campers etc would use, possibly was a version that would have done the cars.
 

KevM

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They did a Porsche Speedster replica there. Based on a Beetle chassis. They were sending the lad for a test-drive & told the guy to put the roof down, stick the heat on & enjoy.
 

NI_Volvo_Nut

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Volvo's!
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stevieturbo

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Never thought I'd see the day, a manual electric car.


It's because they just slap an electric motor onto the gearbox instead of then engine.

If the motor was powerful enough, you could just leave it in say 4th ( usually a 1:1 ) and drive away at it.

Ideally though the conversions would use a proper electric motor drivetrain and do away with the gearbox. But that would be more work in a lot of cases. Although for what they seem to charge for the new motor, fabrication etc.....it's hard to imagine it being more expensive to use a good used Tesla motor or similar.
 
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salster

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surely with the torque of an electric motor, it will just melt the gearbox bearings.
 

stevieturbo

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surely with the torque of an electric motor, it will just melt the gearbox bearings.

There is only as much torque applied, as you put your foot down to create. And the gearbox is still in use, with oil, etc etc. So no different than any other engine applying whatever torque to it
 
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