A Kit that converts a Classic Mini into 80kw electric Mini [pdf]
swindonpowertrain.com
swindonpowertrain.com
- Kit itself: 8,850
- 12 kwh battery pack: 16,000 (no indication on range)
- Motor-controller: 3,860
- Charger: 1,950
- coolant pump: 144
Total 30,804, or £36,964.8 inc tax
And that is before you add a donor vehicle (and other bells & whistles like LSD etc) and costs/time for removing old engine and putting right the "probably knackered" original body shell (and likely interior too). Call it £40k all in (min) assuming you get a good deal on a donor vehicle + repairs etc.
I know classic motoring is not about price or practicality, but just for the sake of comparison:
New nissan leaf: £26,845 inc tax
New Kia e-niro: £29,595 inc tax
New tesla 3: £40,490 inc tax
less than 30 miles at a guess. An optimized and integrated Model 3 has a 75kwh battery from memory, for comparison. This wont be optimized at all on anything with a vastly smaller battery. Still a fun project.
I suspect for many people that price is already considered well into luxury car territory (I've never bought a car >£5k, the used car market is large in the UK and the most common way people acquire cars)... Anyway my point is, 40k for most people is not an economical purchase, it's for fun - and even though I think Teslas are kinda cool - I find the idea of a raw EV powertrain in a classic like the mini quite appealing over all the distracting gismos and fairly normal looking modern car you get from a Tesla.
- takes cover, behind old mini -
Heat. You cannot just daisy chain batteries ad hoc wherever you find the space. These things produce heat. Too much and battery life will degrade rapidly. Much too much and fires start. And too little heat (drawing from frozen batteries) or inconsistent temperatures of batteries in the same circuit can cause all manner of nasty low-voltage surprises.
Plenty of people still want a unique vehicle, and electrical drivetrains are a lot simpler than everything required for an ICE.
E.g. https://eveurope.eu/en/product/tesla-model-s-module-53-kwhr-...
5.3 kWh @ EUR 1150 (ex VAT)
It would be dangerous to convert a car while you're on hallucinogens.
It's nice though to see an outfit with the kind of reputation that Swindon has earned in ICE motorsports jumping into the EV game. This is bound to be a straightforward and high quality kit for those with the means and not the patience or ability to spend a year of weekends tinkering - that's a section of the EV conversion market that's always been missing.
For those who care about the cost and enjoy long tinkering projects, the hobbyist market's already been around for decades, and now the used production parts market is becoming well established.
By the way, can you tell me how to make a good covid19 vaccine?
Gasoline is only financially viable because of oil refinery at scale. Once electrification begins to take hold gasoline prices are going to suffer destabilizing swings as low demand drives prices down and bankrupt refineries drive prices up again. These swings are going to drive more consumers over to EVs for purely economic reasons, since at least an EV is price stable to charge.
Once it’s done I doubt there’ll be enough hobbyist gasoline users around to fund a single refinery, let alone any distribution mechanisms. What few refineries that survive will be retooled (at great cost) to produce either the precursors for plastics, or kerosene for aviation fuel. What few ICE vehicles that will continue to work will probably use something akin to biodiesel, something doable in your shed if you’re brave, but extremely rare overall.
In general though a lot of “off grid” stuff is going to heavily prefer solar + batteries where possible, since it’s much easier to keep that running without having to constantly go into town for supplies.
Hell, as I mentioned in another comment - if you live in UK and are willing pay premium(like £5/litre) for it, you can still purchase leaded petrol for your classic vehicle which you stubbornly refuse to convert to regular unleaded because "collector value" is a thing.
The first journey of any length in a motor car was made by Bertha Benz in her husband Karl's 1888. She bought her fuel at pharmacies...
Here's the video, if you're interested:
People will pay a premium to replicate an experience.
Not sure what you mean by "enough", but even if gasoline goes away you'll still be able to buy Avgas which should be useful in cars. Plus there is a ton of equipment out there that burns gas which will drive some demand. Generators, two stroke mowers and equipment.
There will be gas widely available for at least another 50 years. I do agree gas prices will go up quite a bit though. In particular, anywhere real estate is expensive gas stations will get driven out in favor of more profitable uses for the land.
I’m actually in the market now for a lawn mower, and electric is price competitive once you factor in lifespan and maintenance costs. Plus I don’t have to deal with two stroke motors, which are awful things. I genuinely doubt that they’ll even sell gas lawn mowers by the end of this decade.
I've thought about bodging my own battery pack, but I don't want to burn down my house.
Yep. The only reason I find it viable is because I built up a big supply of compatible battery powered tools. Prices for batteries are coming down though, hopefully this will trickle down to tool batteries as well because I want a couple more batteries for my chainsaw and really can't put out $300 for them right now.
> I genuinely doubt that they’ll even sell gas lawn mowers by the end of this decade.
Yeah, I have a DeWalt and love it. It does burn through batteries fast though. Fortunately I have a bunch of batteries for a lot of different tools.
The vast majority of gasoline engines that are produced typically last about a decade or two. While we all think about the hand full of beloved 1960s sports cars that are carefully maintained by their enthusiast owners, the median gasoline engine is installed in a Toyota Corolla and will be melted down 13-17 years after its first produced. If we start electrifying now, the vast majority of gasoline engines will simply age out of the population on their own. This will happen faster if the electric equivalent gets cheaper, or if my hypothesis about gasoline prices turns out to be true.
Selling my car lads. Ya boi getting a horse!
It also would be problematic to find the oxygen you need to burn the fuel.
We need more of these 'drop in' style conversion kits. If only to keep classic cars on the road.
I can't see BigCar Co. being happy though, they are having enough trouble selling new cars as it is, and even worse luck trying to sell [overly expensive] new EV cars, without people converting their favorite small cars to electric.
Hell, some places(UK!) still sell leaded(!!!) petrol specifically for use in classic unmodified vehicles. It never got completely banned because the impact of someone taking a 100 year old carriage for a drive and burning couple litres of leaded petrol is absolutely not worth worrying about. Last I checked there were still 3 companies in UK authorized to sell it.
[1] https://www.holtsauto.com/redex/products/lead-replacement-mu...
Edit: Yep, I had to look it up - certain metals used in old engines make them incompatible with common additives. You can however, buy an additive( Tetraboost (Tetra-ethyl lead)) that contains lead, effectively making any unleaded petrol equivalent to leaded petrol:
There seems to be a total of 13 garages in the UK authorized to continue stocking actual, real leaded petrol.
It's one thing pleasure-driving and keeping a can of fuel around to keep it going. Needing to spend 20% of your fuel on getting fuel - and then being forced to queue either inside the shop to pay, or outside on the forecourt - is what kills a vehicle for commuting.
Electric loads are like 10% of a car’s use, and here I am burning gas extremely inefficiently to kill my alternator to generate it.
And more stuff is becoming electric instead of belt drive (e.g. cooling pumps and power steering pump).
If my average trip is 50 miles, being able to shunt all electric loads to a supplemental li-ion battery does just as much good as having a hybrid plug-in drivetrain that can do 5 miles engine-off.
Not quite, but I think we’re missing a huge opportunity to turn entire fleets into 5%-10% electrics.
Would be cool if my alternator could be used for some regen, (new automatics are doing engine-braking!) but that’s probably outside of the scope of a drop-in kit.
Car alternator output is on the order of 1 to 2kW. A battery [1] which can do ~1kWh - 100A at 12V - is about $300 and weighs 12kg. It's also big - 40x20x25cm - stick it in your boot and you'll notice the space reduction.
That would just do 1 hour, at the lowest level of alternator output. If you need more power or more range, double it; more of both, double it again.
The next question to ask is do you trust keeping a $300 Chinese battery in your car without it blowing up? You probably want a reseller who'll stand behind their products, ensure the supply chain maintains quality, has sufficient safeguards, etc. The price is going to go up even more.
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/1KWH-Deep-Cycle-LiFeP...
This wouldn’t physically replace the alternator, just let it free-spin until drained.
The economics are already confirmed (or not?) by the presence of plug-in electrics, it’s just that they go engine-off for some miles, while this idea goes engine 90% for 10x the distance. It’s perhaps even more efficient to make electric loads fully electric instead of building an electric drive-train onto an ICE one.
https://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/home.detai...
The classic mini is a work of art. You can do just about anything with it. But the balancing act between weight, handling, size and power is a delicate one.
Adding batteries and an electric motor is for sure going to upset that balance in ways that you will not enjoy as much as you may think and I suggest that before you embark on a project like this to find one and drive it first, to see if it is something that you will like once it is done.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Mini's are notoriously hard sprung and that you're going to have a hard time getting it to handle safely. Personally I'd pick another platform, if you want to go vintage try a Citroen DS or a VW Beetle. Slightly more room to play with, especially the beetle is a breeze with the rear wheel drive drive-train.
It will also end up being a lot more reliable and probably cheaper too because you won't have to miniaturize everything and getting rid of excess heat will be a lot easier.
Finally, note that in most countries this is not going to be road legal, in the UK it can be done but elsewhere you are going to have to go through a very expensive test regime in order to get certified.
I’m not super involved in the mini scene, but own a classic Beetle. These old cars are super lightweight, so 40-60hp is pretty peppy as it is (although top speed is limited due to the 4 speed transmissions). 107 hp is gonna be crazy in a mini.
It's still an aerodynamic disaster, and whilst you could put a higher gear ratio in, why would you?
A stock 1000cc with nothing more than a tweaked cam profile plus LCB exhaust was equally exhilarating when I had it 20+ years ago. Loved that car. Didn't love the drum brakes and scary-fade-going-downhill as much though!
Properly envious that you still have a functioning 1275 - expecially an S (if you mean Cooper S?) and not just the GT.
90 hp in a mini that weighs just over 600 kg is going to move like a rocket. Make sure you upgrade the brakes as well! You can fit double caliper ones they have a lot more bite to them.
Yes! Also, if you've ever driven one of these things you will know how low to the ground they are... it's not the same as some silly lowered hatchback, the whole thing is _tiny_ compared to modern cars, so 60mph feels you are breaking some kind of ground speed record.
This will be a crazy fun car... I will kinda miss the manual transmission - I guess i'm getting old.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN7tl7nhV0s&list=PLp0KnUFYB-...
My own project is a Lexus GS450h hybrid that I bought with a broken ICE for very cheap. The two electric motors in the hybrid transmission are capable of about 220kW. And there’s little to be modified at the car besides de-ice-ing and adding batteries.
I think it's obviously not as cost effective as buying a standard electric car but still seems like a challenging and fun project.
https://www.electricclassiccars.co.uk/
are also making a TV show called "Vintage Voltage":
https://www.vintagevoltage.tv/
do this kind of conversions and seemingly also sell parts.
https://www.evwest.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=40&pro...