EV West Electric Crate Motor, Thoughts?

[TRS]

I dont want to make a judgement if there is any justification for the concept of swaping batterys, but working battery swap Stations are already existing. Just Google "NIO battery swap". Not sure when they first demonstrated this in reality, but I was under the impression they where quicker then Tesla.

BTW, I believe the core thought is not to exchange the battery for lifetime reason but to imediately recharge the vehicle. I think it was way under 5min to change the battery to 100% charged one and therefore faster than a usual refueling stop.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by TRS

I dont want to make a judgement if there is any justification for the concept of swaping batterys, but working battery swap Stations are already existing. Just Google "NIO battery swap". Not sure when they first demonstrated this in reality, but I was under the impression they where quicker then Tesla.

BTW, I believe the core thought is not to exchange the battery for lifetime reason but to imediately recharge the vehicle. I think it was way under 5min to change the battery to 100% charged one and therefore faster than a usual refueling stop.

Tesla had a battery swapping station that wasn't getting used. Surveying owners they found that people didn't want to swap their battery probably for fears about getting someone else's battery that was poorly used or how it could effect their warranty, sale of the car in the future, or anything else. Besides that, the cost was too expensive. Besides swapping the battery, they need to top off and purge the coolant system for the batteries. Maybe Nio designed a way to do this fast, but I believe this part of the swap was omitted from Tesla's original stage presentation. It seems like Nio is truly swapping batteries and not just loaning out a full battery, so essentially they are allowing battery sharing, which should change the warranty on faulty batteries some.

https://www.nio.com/blog/brief-history-battery-swapping

[Irace86.2.0]

[Irace86.2.0]

I've been seeing some more EV crate motors. This one is by GM:

https://www.chevrolet.com/content/da...yer_PR14-2.pdf

[Irace86.2.0]

For has the Eliminator Mach-E Motor:

https://performanceparts.ford.com/part/M-9000-MACHE

[Irace86.2.0]

ElectricGT has a few dimensionally similar drop in motors.

https://electricgt.com/shop/

[Irace86.2.0]

This is cool. He made a shell, so the motor looks like a classic V8

[Irace86.2.0]

Electrofit has a crate engine with transmission and inverter.

https://chargedevs.com/newswire/elec...v-conversions/
https://www.electrofit.com

[Irace86.2.0]

Equipmake's new Ampere-220 electric crate motor:

https://carbuzz.com/news/new-ev-crat...ny-classic-car

[Irace86.2.0]

A few pages back I joked about cutting the body off of a Tesla and drop the 86 shell on top, but I feel like that could be possible, and it might even be the best way. Would it be the easiest compared to doing a drop in motor in place of the engine or in place of the engine and transmission? Definitely not, but I feel like if you need an inverter, batteries, controllers, CANBUS converters, etc then a full skateboard swap could bring over all the systems.

B is for Build did this, and I'm sure the plan is to drop a shell on top of it:


The problem with this idea, besides the huge undertaking of swapping shells, is the wheel base is all off. The Model 3 has a wheelbase that is 12.2'' longer, and the battery is between the wheels, so the battery would need to be broken down to modules and relocated, which defeats a lot of the point.

[Irace86.2.0]

Then I asked myself, what EV does have the same dimensions in wheelbase and width? The BMW I3 has the same dimensions that would matter for a shell swap like B is for Build is going to do, but the BMW I3's setup frankly sucks, so that is out.

[Irace86.2.0]

Then I was thinking, there are different sized batteries for the Model 3, so maybe one is smaller, but this is and isn't the case. Tesla uses the same case for the battery pack, but uses different internal modules. For the standard range, the modules have been shorter, and they have been the same length, but inside the modules there will be rows of missing batteries, and they have been entirely different chemistry/module construction like when they started using CATL's LFP batteries. The LFP batteries are ideal for low cost, low/no fire risk, and high cycle life and performance, even if the battery density is not as high as lithium-ion on these units. Seems like the CATL batteries might be able to be removed in series, but this seems harder than that finding a short battery module.

Seems like this battery pack could be cut down by 12'' and welded back together along with the center of the car, which would make the wheelbase the same as the 86. Oh yes, it is a lot of work, but it seems like someone could do a wide body conversion and maybe do AWD or just RWD, depending on the donor car and swapping battery packs.

Tesla is starting to make the battery packs structural, meaning the packs are not filled with modules that float in a case, but are sealed in the case, which is more structural because of that rigidity and because of how it links the front and rear of the car with the seats mounted directly on the battery. See the video below. This type of design could be better for a swap or worse. I don't know. If they are doing the same pack size then the interior of the battery might just have more filling material/adhesives in place of batteries, so if that is the case then the older batteries would be ideal, but maybe it would be still easier to use an older pack in this type of cutaway for a swap. I don't know. The future will see what makes an ideal swap.

[Irace86.2.0]

As for lining everything up, it would take a lot of welding and work to get things mounted. Someone could either use the Tesla interior with 86 door cards, or someone could swap seats and the dash and integrated the HVAC and Tesla screen into the dash. I think I would probably use the 86 seats low mounted and keep the Tesla steering wheel and dash to keep things simple, but I could also see myself hybridizing the system. Sounds like a crazy, but fun project if it all worked.

I was seeing salvaged Teslas for cheap with running drivetrains that just have some cosmetic damage. If only I had a bigger garage...

https://erepairables.com/salvage-car.../tesla/model+3

[alex87f]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

Great idea, but they went bankrupt last March.

The economics of retrofitting are hard to make work: lots of highly local ($$$) production, small batches of different cars, hard to transform an ICEV into a BEV without reengineering the whole chassis or putting massive limits on range, no "shine factor" of a new car, old safety tech, etc.

You'd have to focus on a very small amount of models that are :
-widely available
-old enough to be a cheap basis
-recent enough not to warrant extensive refurbishing
-light / aerodynamic enough to make due with a small battery
-ideally available unchanged over a long enough time that you don't have to engineer several versions of it.

5 grand after subsidy would have made those a very interesting proposal, even with the limited range. I'm curious to see whether another company take the idea any further.