deebo68

I have been doing a lot of research on electric vehical conversions (EV) and thought this might be a new trend we start to see. All types of kits are available that utilize the existing tranny (manual prefered) and drive train. If you think power would be sacraficed then your mistaken, just check out this link: 0-60 in under 4 sec.

http://www.motortrend.com/features/a...lectric_muscle

They even have a 600HP version.

If your comute is short, say under 40-60 miles then this might be a valid option. Here are a few links I found with some kit and conversion info.
http://www.go-ev.com/projects.html

http://www.evfinder.com/evsites.htm

Just thought I would share, I am considering it for my daily driver.

Deebo

my77stang

we'd have to ride around with a recording of a real motor though, i couldnt handle driving a mustang with no rumble

67mustang302

lol +1 on needing the recording. Electric powered vehicles rock. I personally wouldn't convert a muscle car to electric, but if I had the money and the waiting list wasn't a bazillion miles long I'd buy the Tesla. Almost 300mi between charges and 0-60 in under 4 seconds with only 270hp. Electric motors>gasoline engines, x 1,000.

Gun Jam

In the R/C industry we use lots of exotic electric stuff like lithium-polymer, lithium-ion, lithium- manganese batteries and some new matrix type structure battery that they say be recharged as fast as it can be discharged. We use brushless outrunner motors (develop more torque by having the motor can spin around a static armature and are sent a dc pulse through a remote speed controller the pulse is not generated by brushes making and breaking contact with the armature)

So what im saying is if the car you want to make electric or buy has a brushed motor or batteries that contain any elements such as lead, nickel, cadmium your wasting your money. All those people who went out and bought a Toyota Pious are probably going to realize that in the end it didnt really pan out and ended up hurting the environment about as much as a normal car that gets 25 MPG.

Okay okay what im really saying is dont mess around with electric stuff just yet...give it another 5 years then ask that question again.

Gun

Scott H.

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baddog671

B'oh, Im gonna backhand you! Lol jk, i personally would never consider the idea of converting a mustang to electric, but if you want to, thats your choice. I'd have to draw the line here for restomodding and say "find a better vehicle"...

And Gun Jam, Prius's batteries are recyclable (sp?) and less enviromentally damanging than a normal car's battery...

Gun Jam

The tesla is a huge improvement over lots of electric cars But

It uses Lithium-ion batteries. Li-Ion has lots going for it no lead its light but it cant hold a high discharge rate. We measure discharge in C where C is a multiplier. You simply take the rated amp for you battery and multiply by C which is provided by the factory. For example a lithium polymer battery might be rated at 2.5 amps with 25 C discharge rate. To find you maximum discharge rate you take 2.5 amp x 25C = 63amp discharge maximum. Thats great and that number is on the low side newer lithium-manganese packs will soon have 30 to 50 C discharge rates.

The tesla on the other hand uses an inferior lithium-ion pack that I have yet to see more than a 3C discharge rate for so even if you have a huge cell like a 3 amp cell your going to have to gang tons of these together I bet they have 1000s of these batteries in that car. But they wont burst into a raging inferno if damaged like li-poly....Enter Lithium-manganese

-Gun

mustdoc

My $0.02.

If the CNW research can be trusted, these hybrid vehicles (and by extrapolation, possibly all electric vehicles that use today's battery technologies) may be worse for the environment than many gas guzzlers - <http://cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy/>. I dig what I have seen of the electric cars though. Wicked acceleration, quiet, smooth, etc...

You have to consider that most electricity in the US comes from coal powered plants which are really, really bad for the environment (CO2, SulfurDioxide, Mercury, Uranium, Thorium, etc.). Since there is no real thing such as Clean Coal (Clean coal is a marketing ploy promoting coal but nothing could be farther from the truth. Coal is the worst! FYI the Bush Administration, the day after his "talk up" of clean coal technology in the last state of the union address, nixed their funding of the new technology - <http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/30/future-gen/>.

We need for several things to occur:

More Nuclear Power supplemented by Solar and Wind.
Slowly switch our cars to Natural Gas (cleaner, more efficient and easier to handle - less infrastructure change).
Cellulosic fuel (switchgrass is much better than corn based ethanol) plays a part but it should not cause the rise in food prices that is occuring because of this change in fuel strategy.

Hydrogen fuel cells hold promise for many applications... but the least promise currently is for automobiles. There is a good book on Hydrogen from MIT Press I read several years back but I cannot remember the name.

67 evil eleanor

Big Oil has the goverment bought, and us by the lugnuts. What ever happened to coal liquefaction.They saywe have hundredsof years of reserves. I like the methane gas deal. When I worked in the mines, we were said to liberateover a million cubic feet a day. Yep, just let it go right up into the air and eat on the ozone layer. Thats not counting probably 40 or 50 gas wells that we had drilled in to the coal seam just to get the gas out of the mines (it explodes between 5 and 15%). I'm not sure how much was coming out, but when lite with a rock in a news paper thrown at a safe distance, they would shoot a flame up into the air about 30 feet. Now they are gas wells everywhere. We are the 5th dirtiness county in the state for air quality. Their is a coal fired plant only about 4 miles from my house. On the Prius, we have one and sofar its been great. Ithas cut mybosses fuel bill by 2/3rds, so the way I've got it figured, the savings will pay forit in about 8 years(around 16000). By then, she will want a new one. I did see a diesel/hybrid called the Reflex, made by Ford. It was a great looking 3 seater sports car and was said to get 65 MPG, and had very good acceleration. I hope it hits the market.

andrewmp6

I use to have a site that was a awd subaru with a electric motor on it they even raced it in scca.But theres one problem with a electric motor the power to charge the batterys is from burning coal for most of the us.A lot of aussies and kiwis use propane its a higher octane and burns nicely too.Gas prices don't bother me ill keep my gas powered cars tell they stop selling gas my 68 gets 5mpg my truck 8mpg and i drive 30 miles round trip to work everyday. But its worth it since i live out in the middle of no where.Only thing i don't get is why diesel is so high its a byproduct from making gas.