So has anyone thought about doing an electric motor conversion? I have gave it some thought but its currently out of my price range at the moment. I am gona first build a simple electric trike to learn the basics and start saving on gas. My savings on gas and other maintnence would most likly fund converting my LEX also.

Since the limit of the transmition is around 350 TQ, the electric motor would need to be between 300-350 TQ. Also, the motor would need to spin at around 6000-6500 RPM.

I know that most electric cars only go around 100 miles a charge.

 

lol no.

if you'll note, the big problem with every electric car made in the past decade hasnt been the motors, it's been the batteries/energy storage/recovery.

do-able? sure.
practical? not a chance.

 

It would be practical for Daily Driving. On average I only drive 60 miles in a day. The average electric car gets about 100-150 miles on a charge. I don't think the average person drives over 100 miles a day. For. thoes that do, you could also have a gas powered generator under the hood or in the trunk to constantly recharge the batteries. You could also just put a generator on a pully conected to the electric motor to constantly charge the batteries.

 

PD said it, it's the batteries that's the problem. i remember seeing a dude convert an s2000 to all electric and the whole rear end was purely batteries, among other complicated components.

http://s2kev.blogspot.com/

 

Doing It on a heavy car will destroy your range. Most do conversions on miata's, small pickups, old civics and vw bug's.
The real cost is the battery's and the more you have the more you weigh. They also only use manual transmissions generally and use no clutch. The motor has huge torque all the time so it's not needed just start it in 2nd and shift for highway speeds.
Anyway for a low end conversion your looking in the 5000$ range. Than you have to make or find an adapter plate for whatever trans you use. Than comes the issue of all the peripherals like power steering and A/C, using the radio. All these things eat up battery power and shorten the range. Even headlights substantially reduce range. This is another reason to pick a light simple car without too much electronics.

Like everything the better stuff costs mega (batterys,controller,charger,motor)and offsets much of the money you hope to save no using gas.
Been thinking about doing it for years on a old 88-91 civic or something. Weight reduction is really the biggest hurdle with range.

 

No. I bought my LS400 because I thought it would be a fun manual transmission swap project. If I wanted to do some kind of electric motor swap I'd have started with some kind of front wheel drive econo trash box.