lionelhutz

The Vette with it's composite body will be hard to reduce the weight significantly, especially when the drivetrain is aluminum and you'll likely add that weight back in batteries and motor and controller.

I believe the active handling could work.

The traction control feeds a signal into the ECM so it's not likely you can duplicate that. It'd be hard to take that signal and use it to reduce the electric motor torque the correct amount.

The braking shouldn't change.

The transmission should go and you will either adapt to the differential or replace it with something that adapts to the motor easier.

When a C5 is heavily modified for racing the factory computers and interior and dash and everything else is stripped and the ECM is either modified to be stand alone or it's replaced with an aftermarket engine computer.

Your comment about using the sun to charge the batteries makes me wonder if you're somewhat dreaming. I'd guess that you'll need $20k plus in solar cells to get a decent charge time and you won't be able to use solar to charge at night and won't get much out if there are clouds.

The enviromental effects of building all these "green" electric components still needs to be considered.

Sorry I couldn't be more positive.

To me, it sounds like you're fairly green to the whole electric car world. I'd suggest you start with something like a VW cack (I have no idea what they are called but they look like a car but have a pick-up type bed - 1/2 car 1/2 truck). These VW's have been modified enough times that you can likely find lots of info and even custom made parts.

Peter

440music

Tom,

I have an 84 that has a conversion in it's future. With a custom bell housing costing between $300 to $1500 I'll keep everything from the 4/3 Standard trans back. In time I might do the complete conversion but if I don't like what I've done the flip will be much less.

Think about weight distribution and be creative, try locating the batteries as best you can between the axles.

There are motors available that will launch you to 60MPH in 3 seconds electric doesn't mean Prius ugly. What anyone thinks or says about my conversion isn't going to change what I do to my C4. I mean why not I can't hurt the value and just think what the guys with "What's My Car Worth", the TV announcers for "Barret Jackson" the only thing left is take a news reporter for a ride.

Like I said there's almost nothing I can do to hurt the value and try finding performance parts there's very little. If I replace the engine my budget will have to be $12 to $22k if I want to join the 500HP club. With a $9500 to $15k I can build a 150MPH Electric Corvette.

OK now here is what I think about building an Electric Corvette. You pull up next to me at the sopt light. You're MagnaFlow and headers are sounding good and I'm in my 84 and you're thinking "a whopping 205HP XFire dog". Now it gets fun, I bounce my nose, you laugh the light turns Green and before you can drop the clutch I'm crossing the crosswalk on the opposite side of the street.

You get to vote, is that worth $15k?
My Vote: YES!

Look at Formula E racing, check out the suppliers and do more then the usual amount of research on grounding grounding your car.

All the Best
Tommy TBones

Drunkonunleaded

I find your "high enough IQ" comment to be condescending, but I'll chime in anyway.

Experience: 2 years of EE classes (flipped majors), 2 years Formula SAE (ICE), 2 years of Formula Hybrid (VP and President), 2x Corvette owner (04 Z06 Z16 and 79 L-48), currently building a scalable platform for autonomous vehicles as my Master's capstone. I've also spent ~1000 miles on a Model S P90D, so I am speaking from a position of both designing my "own" electric vehicle and experiencing what is probable the most advanced BEV on the market.

While there are certainly a great number of true engineers on this forum, they haven't chimed in so you're stuck with me (for now). I'll try to address this in order:

Good luck. The C5 chassis design doesn't leave a lot to be "removed" in the name of weight savings. Same goes for the body panels. Considering it's not unheard of for guys to drop to < 3000 lbs. in a prepped track car, there's not a lot of room to drop weight without removing significant parts of the interior, but you'd obviously be sacrificing a lot in the way of "creature comforts."

You could also, theoretically, lose some weight by switching to dry carbon body panels, but the ROI wouldn't be worth it from a cost standpoint.

You're also overlooking the weight of the powertrain. Most electric cars are direct drive, meaning no transmission. The transmission weighs ~130 lbs. Add in another ~70 lbs. for the differential.

The Volt battery pack is one of the most common for electric conversions, and weighs ~435 lbs. The configuration is an odd shape, and doesn't lend itself to the C5 chassis. It would almost occupy the same room as the differential/trans. Only feasible area would be in the rear "trunk," but a Volt battery wouldn't physically fit. Neither would a Tesla battery, as the Model S/X are built on a "skateboard" chassis, not unlike GM's 2002 "Autonomy" concept. This is completely disregarding the fact that power density is much higher for gasoline when compared to even "modern" battery technology.

Yes, you could configure something else in the way of batteries. We've been building our own "packs" for two years now. Judging by your level of questions, however, I would not recommend you taking this sort of task on as a DIY.

Even if you were to remove the transaxle and effectively create a lengthened torque tube to connect directly to the differential, there is still a huge issue with packaging.

in regards to motors, you're looking at $15k for something near stock C5Z power:

http://www.evwest.com/catalog/produc...roducts_id=300

You're also going to need a great deal of heavy gauge wire, a controller, and charger.

Let's assume the radiator location of the C5 could adapted for cooling the electric powertrain, for the sake of simplicity. In theory, this could also allow you to run coolant through the heater core, and therefore retain some semblance of HVAC (in regards to heat, good luck with AC).

Nevertheless, your weight balance is going to be thrown completely off with shuffling a few hundred pounds from front to rear.

In theory, you MIGHT be able to get these to function as the ECU and BCM operate separately. AH and ABS are obviously on their own system, as they use the ABS pump in activation. Same goes for TCS.

Transmission is a huge sticking point here as it just complicates things and is relatively unnecessary in a properly engineered BEV. Shifting would not really be needed at this point, so retaining the transmission is more a case of "cutting corners" more so than anything else.


Good luck with this. You MIGHT be able to get the controller "battery level" output to match the resistance levels of the fuel gauge, but you wouldn't be able to retain any sort of range function without SERIOUS reverse-engineering of the software that controls the cluster. Considering that people still haven't gotten around to being able to reverse-engineer/flash the BCM to remove things like DRLs, the reality is that this is highly unlikely.

Coolant could, in theory, be adapted over.

RPM is the same, but the scale is different. The motor I liked to you spins at 10k RPM. The stock tach, as you know, runs out @ 7500 RPM.

This is A LOT of work to put into something to have a cobbled-together car that will handle worse than a stock C5 and have power levels similar to throwing some basic bolt-ons at your car.

Even if you were to commission a shop with a lot of experience in such conversions (see EV West), the packaging of the C5 is suboptimal for this sort of conversion. It would be MUCH easier to start with a kit car or something with an established "kit," unless you manage to be educated in both Automotive and Electrical Engineering. Software/Computer Engineering also wouldn't hurt.

clinthart2003

https://video.wired.com/watch/an-all...a-world-record I think it's a very cool idea.

Robrote

You've had 8 years. Is it done yet?

UM Rebel

Whether you take Global Warming seriously or not seriously, disposal of all those batteries will have more of a negative effect on the environment than burning all the gasoline that car will ever use. Yes, the batteries do go bad and will have to be disposed of. That said, if you do it, post progress and pictures.

jackthelad

I'm assuming not. Anyway, once you pull the ECU, you lose all the networked components, from IP to AH and ABS, and all the BCM functions. Essentially, you would have to strip everything out of the shell and start again.