Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 14:12:12 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: This just HAS to be a new question...
In-Reply-To: <789991.5042.qm@web37311.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I studied doing a 'pure electric' conversion to cars for a while.
One guy was making a Syncro Vanagon into a pure electric vehicle.
A 'plug in at home' short range pure electric vehicle.
Disadvantages are cost, ( 7K is the lower end of the scale ) the weight of
the batteries.........for the cheaper led acid batts. we could be talking
over 1,000 lbs weight - which affects handling and braking etc.
Range - often it's only 40 miles. And recharging time.
I have a friend who built a pure electric vw Bug. Old thing , like a 68
Bug. Says it goes better than it stock. He uses it in town, charges it a
home. It has almost no affect on his home electric bill, and he hasn't
spent a penny on gas the last 6 months.
If he drives it to the nearby bigger city, ( about 25 miles ) and he goes
faster on the freeway, he's in danger of running out of juice.
The faster you go, the faster it uses up the charge. So he takes the local
non-freeway business road.
Someone will put a Honda or Prius drive train into another car
sometime......BUT....
It's hardly just the engine or power unit - the entire thing is so
integrated, the power unit, the trans, the batteries, all controlled by
computers ......it 'could' be done, and someone will, but pretty complex I
suspect.
Scott
www.turbovans.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Kyle Davis
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 11:11 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: This just HAS to be a new question...
Hey all,
From personal experience (and list lurking and
ebay hunting) powerplant transplants are pretty common
in the vanagons... A majority of them are well
documented 2.1 in a 1.9, air cooled to water, diesel
to gas, vw to suby, vw to porsche, vw to tiico, gas to
tdi, etc.
I also remember reading about an electric bus
(not vanagon) so I can presume gas>electric.
This brings me to my next question. Did anybody
ever consider going halfsies with that last one, ala
Toyota Prius or Honda Insight style?
The most bizarre conversion I've heard of was VW
to Ford 2.8 liter v6 (somewhere, Ben Pon must be in
shock, or rolling over in his grave.)
I would dearly love to tell the oil industry what
to do with high gas prices and convert the westy into
total electric, but a few things hold me back.
1.) Practicality. The westy is basically a
fully-laden with camping gear bus. An electric motor,
no matter how many batteries feed it, just may not be
able to do much with that.
2.) Cost.
3.) Safety. Excessive electricity around lpg
may be an inherently Bad Idea TM.
4.) Getting back to 1, it gets reasonably cold
here in the midwest, and my research of pure electric
cars mentioned using hair dryers as heaters.
So, how feasible would it be to meet in the
middle? And, I'm not necessarily saying bolt on a
prius or an insight, or even a ford escape hybrid
engine into this solution, or suggest that that would
even work. I guess I am just wondering if anybody has
tried this, and, if so what measure of success or
failure they were able to obtain...
Kyle
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