How CHEAPLY Can You EV Convert Your Old Car?

foreign [Music] to the latest edition of huge man tiny car this is a classic Mini and it took a lot of yoga two bottles of baby oil and a long pointy stick to fit me in here and do not ask where the stick went but oh it was worth it I've always wanted to drive one of these and it's everything I hoped it would be I wish every CEO of every car brand currently obsessing over 700 horsepower three-ton performance SUVs would just drive one of these and be reminded that sense of speed tactility so much more important than actual speed when building a driver's car anyway not the point of today's video I'll get to the point this mini as you can probably tell has been turned Electric and it suits the car beautifully it's faster even lighter than it was as a petrol car it's a lovely thing but it's not cheap this exact mini that I'm driving on top of the price of the donor car we'll set you back about 40 000 pounds in retrofitting componentry and installation 40 Grand and the thing I want to find out today is will this technology will retrofitting ever become affordable enough to be something more than the indulgent pursuit of wealthy hobbyists while converting your car to Electric ever be a valid option for someone who just wants an electric car on the cheap but doesn't feel like getting a whole new car well to find out we've come to Bristol about 10 minutes from our office actually to visit a company called Felton who design and manufacture EV retrofitting componentry and we're going to find out from them just how cheap we see this technology becoming in the future and just how big a part it could play in our sustainable future first I'm going to drain this battery welcome to the fully charged show like the fully charged show then you will love our live shows being held around the world in 2023 up next we're back in the UK with fully charged live UK South this April and fully charged live UK North in May some of you might remember that last year we paid a visit to a company in France called transition one founded by a lovely charismatic chap with an excellent beard by the name of imeric Libo his goal was and is to create an ultra affordable Ultra simple one-size-fits all EV conversion kit that can be dropped into basically any car going and costs you no more than 5 000 Euro after government subsidies it's a wonderful idea but it would be fair to say that he and transition one are still a ways away from turning that into a reality and anywhere near that price point and that's why we've come to chat with Felton today these guys design and manufacture every component required for Ev conversions so they should have a better idea than anyone as to just how affordable this technology could become and how long it's going to take us to get there [Music] what we have here is a lovely old Mini and all the bits that you guys design and make to turn a lovely old Mini electric explain like I'm five run me through all the kit that we've got here so here we have a complete felt and electrified system mini bolting kit and this will take your classic Mini with your turtle petrol engine and convert it to Electric in probably about a day roughly installation as long as the car is not a rust bucket which is quite a common problem with minis as we know so here we have everything let out we have a front battery box with subframe so this is an original Mini subframe so it just bolts in like for like from the original on here we also have a 70 kilowatt motor with a single speed gearbox so we haven't got any gears it's just nice single speed definite like you get on a new OEM and then you've got the inverter up here all the liquid cooling system and there's a hidden brake pump down there just to maintain the servo and then we have I suppose the sort of more exciting bits and that we have gear selector down here which basically gives your drive neutral in reverse it's got a little lift up to go into reverse just to meet the European standards it's a lovely click and a lovely click and it's nice and it's Dillard aluminum and you can put different stickers on it and all sorts of stuff but we also fit um a new throttle instead of the little tiny little mini throttle pedal which makes it a lot smoother and we fit a crash sensor in case you ever crash it shuts the hate speed down so it makes it safe for the Emergency Services and we fit a brake sensor which means that we can actually have Dynamic regen so the more the more brake pressure you put on the more regen it puts on right so it actually helps you with your braking with the car which is really really exciting then addition with this we've done some custom software so we've got a level of traction control so it won't let the wheels Spin and stuff like that so that's really fun especially now I've got nearly 100 brake horsepower and a mini which is a little bit of a handful oh so this is a bracket which Chris has just informed me in great detail Buzz bar this is a buzz bar which is a thing that I know what it is and what you can see is that this is a really beautifully made component it's sort of rubber coated which gives it a little bit of extra durability and the important point to know here is that these guys are not trying to do this as cheap as possible this is not Bargain Basement component tree it's already quite expensive to build the kits to convert a car to Electric so while it's too expensive they're making an effort to do it really nicely once they've earned a reputation for being the best in the biz and once the price of batteries and other things come down a bit then there'll be run to start thinking about safely cutting some Corners to make it even cheaper in the rear of the car which is sort of where the fuel tank was you have a charger which is a 6.6 kilowatt so it's about three hour full charge on any normal type two we do type 1 type 2 charge port that actually goes into the original fuel ball hole in the mini without any modification that was a bit of a nightmare because it's so tight we have a battery pack that goes in the rear to help our get a weight distribution correct and then we have a DC's DC which basically works like an alternator just to keep the 12 volt system topped up but overall it's full bolt in no modifications the original vehicle and it weighs five kilos lighter once it's converted which is quite a surprise for most people it's actually slightly lighter than original I mean that's that's going to be completely shocking for some people to hear because everyone assumes that an EB conversion means adding half a ton of weight but I guess you've just been clever with the packaging and been relatively conservative with them much battery or matter you're putting in yeah so we're at 19 kilowatt hours which is about 110 mile wltp um which in a mini to be honest you don't need much more than 100 miles it's a city car you put around on it so you can do little Motorway Journeys but it's 100 miles in a minute your spine needs a break right yes so this is quite interesting this is the universal battery pack that these guys make this is for the Land Rover Defender but because it's just a big Square thing it will actually fit into a bunch of other models unlike that Mini pack that's really fiddly it has a very specific shape because the Mini's so small because you have to be very careful with what you design so that it fits properly this you can drop it in the front of a landing Defender you can drop it into the front of a bunch of other stuff and then you just make the right sort of brackets to fit it in properly to that particular model what we're seeing here is that Felton already has one eye on the mass market and building stuff that's really versatile fits lots of different models and will therefore be a little bit cheaper to buy and install and then what's the damage cost wise so someone has a donor car they go to a retrofitter who use your component tree for the full kits what are they going to be well first of all what the what the retrofit is going to be paying for the full kit so a retrofit for us so if we Supply to a retrofitter it's 27.5 000 plus the vat for a full kit and that includes the gauges which I don't have here right now um so that's the three gauges to go to go across the dash um and that's a full kit as you see here basically including the subframe and the sump guard and that stuff so it's there's nothing missing all the nuts bolts connectors you don't have to buy all these other extra bits um so we we have a couple of retrofitting locations spread globally the main one we've been working with a lot at the moment is recharge Heritage which is a spin-off from BMW recharged so they can actually use the BMW Badges and stuff on the cars so with the recharge guys you can take a mini in that you own already and drive it away in about a week of the full conversion I think it's just over 40 000 for that sort of service or they can find a car for you convert it because it's done through mini sport they can do full restoration and they've been doing minis since the 60s so they you know they were around at the start so the the quality of workmanship that they can produce and it's pretty much be a brand new Mini um but the the fact of the 40-ish grandma take a car income back out it's on par with the model threes and stuff like that so maybe people will go to classic rather than brand new but you never know ah you don't see that every day wall of Tesla Motors that's model three up the top there this is a this is a Model S performance that's about 600 horsepower of motor just there uh these are for the Porsche kits that these guys make if you need a 400 horsepower electric motor buying one of those brand new is going to set you back about 20 grand at the moment so for the high performance cars they use repurposed Tesla stuff for The Minis and the Landis brand new Motors that they make here the batteries are the standout costs they will slowly come down but I can't see it happening for a couple of years because the demand is so high for the supply of the raw materials at the moment that there's just not enough anyway so most of the stuff comes out China currently apart from batteries and stuff that we use in some of the other builds that come from LG um in Europe but I'm hoping that in America and other countries they may start bringing battery facilities online over the next couple of years then we'll be able to Source more locally rather than bringing everything out of China every time and that really would drag the cost down quite dramatically once we get sort of more batteries being built in more places right that makes a big difference and also the kits are going to help bring the pots down because we're going to start building like a mini kit one every week once you get to that point you're not doing one-offs I think a lot of the conversion industry up to now has been a one-off of that or that so you end up thinking hundreds of hours of laboring to make one whereas with this we're making say 50 of them in a year therefore that that design and development spread over it so once we get to a really efficient state where we're turning them out regularly we can start really bringing the costs down because we know our overhead constant our custom materials are constant and that that's what makes a massive difference VCU the brains of the car designed here made here and works using software also designed here these guys do everything some kits will be Universal for various models but really every car is going to need a few unique Parts in order to be compatible for conversion isn't it sure I mean the one thing we've been closely working on now is components that all work nicely together so the EV shops out there that are doing lower numbers aren't having to find bits to work with each other or do the software to interact it'll all be pre-done for them with the new Universal pack that goes in the defender for instance that fits in multiple Vehicles so it'll fit in jeeps and Broncos and Mustangs and so many different vehicles that we can build say 200 of them in a year and push them out and then those conversion shops haven't got to keep doing a new battery pack development every single time they just take a pack from us drop it in and they do the other bits which is the motor mounting and stuff but to be honest that's a bit it doesn't take that long the design and development of the battery pack itself is where all the time and energy goes into and it's the most dangerous bit because that's where all the HV stuff goes on so that's where you hurt yourself if you don't know what you're doing um it probably leads me on to the fact that we do a lot of training now so one thing we've learned in the market is that it's fine having these systems but you need to be able to train the people how to use them safely so we've got our training room with our city and guilds accreditation so we can do level two three and soon level four in city and Guild training just to give these people the qualifications they need to actually work on these systems and work on just modern day EVS because it's going to be an awful lot of work with them coming along and all of these things contribute to the currently High Cost of converting a car we've got the fact that batteries are expensive right now we've got the fact that you're having to design these components from scratch through process of trial and error and we've got the fact that there's not that many mechanics out there right now that know how to fit this stuff and it's up to you guys to train them okay I'm just going to put the question to you now this is the big one that we've come here to get an answer to do you see a future where people who've just got a regular old Banger that they're fairly fond of would prefer that it was electric don't have the resources to buy a new car do you see a future where it will be genuinely an option to retrofit that car turn it electric in a more simple and cost effective way than getting a new one I think eventually yes my concern I have is how long it will take to get to that point it's so I think we have a we have a window should we say of say five years to get to that point otherwise you sort of Hit the point where people just replace them with brand new cars so it's trying to juggle that I think is uh it's going to be an interesting task I mean and there's not a huge amount of incentives out there for people to do it I think that's the other thing I think we struggle with a little bit is that you buy a new car you get an incentive to buy a new electric car but if you convert a classic which is actually more environmentally friendly to convert it there's no incentive to to push people to do it um the other thing that's been putting a lot of people off recently is the lead times if you go to most of the big converters out there globally they've all got two year lead time people don't want to wait two years to get their car done so the kits like this will really help speed that up to months rather than years so that should help a lot more people get into classic electric vehicles a lot faster um but then there's also other work like we did work at BMW on this so some of the oems are really now starting to look at how can they retrofit their past vehicles and make them retrofittable into the future because the circular economy is going to have to come into play at some point they can't just keep throwing them away all the time ah don't mind me just charging my Pulstar up quickly using a bi-directionally charging electric classic Mini it's not something I thought I would do to be honest with you what do we make of all this then do we see ev retrofitting having a real part to play in our electric future or will it always be an expensive hobbyist game well I'm optimistic based on what I've seen here today that it really could play a big part in our future what we have to remember is that this kind of stuff is in its infancy this is new One Fine Day mechanics will be able to open up their computer they'll have a file for each car in the world with all the cad models for all the pieces that you need to retrofit they'll download the files they'll 3D print the pieces and it'll be so so easy but right now these guys here are doing all the front-end work required to make that happen they are painstakingly designing the pieces that are needed in order to facilitate that one model at a time beyond that batteries are still expensive supply chain issues are ongoing all of these things are contributing to the current High Cost of this sort of work but it's going to drop sharply over the next few years the question is will it drop fast enough because as Chris quite rightly says it is a bit of a Race Against Time 10 15 years from now most people will have already replaced their car with an EV so ideally we want this to become affordable and accessible sooner rather than later while people are still smoking around in Old petrol bangers fingers crossed that we do see this playing a big part in our future because it just makes too much sense of course we should try to repurpose as many existing cars as possible before building a load of new ones so there we have it Felton EV conversion not just for Posh old blokes in Tweed suits as it turns out please make sure to like And subscribe and if you have been thank you for watching

Channel: Fully Charged Show

Views: 272,175

Keywords: electric car youtube channel, why should i buy an electric car, green energy comment, grid storage technology, renewable energy youtube, new transport ideas, green technology review, renewable energy comment, renewable energy electric vehicles, electric vs ice cars, latest news on renewable energy, crowd funded youtube, kryten, fully charged show live, ev show, fully charged show, robert llewellyn, electric cars, fully charged, Jack Scarlett, Fellten, EV Classics, Mini

Id: dXCTXxL5lr0

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 31 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Car-face]

As the owner of a classic mini I'd consider this if I lost a gear up into the engine and needed a full rebuild... but not for 40k. That's basically 4 full engine and gearbox rebuilds, probably with a lot of go-fast bits thrown in and put together by one of the best builders in my area. In fact it's probably close to two full off the shelf KAD builds.

I get why it's so expensive, but the reality is that it's going to be the domain of really niche classics before it starts to get traction as a comparable switch vs. a rebuild or a way to complete a rolling shell.

[u/tokyo_engineer_dad]

For reference, if you wanted to convert a truck: the Lightning standard range battery is $32k. The front and rear motors are something like $2500 each so basically $40k for batteries and motors.

[u/DrZoidberg_Homeowner]

I can absolutely see more and more classic cars getting converted, but I think it will end up being the actual classics or other cars with enthusiast communities. I can' see my mum ever converting her 2005 Toyota.

One thing I don't see mentioned is how this is an attractive option for people who don't care about all the modern computerised stuff (big centre screens with no physical buttons), and prefer something much more simple, as well as stuff that can't be increasingly locked down for subscription models. I will sooner expensively convert a classic mini than give some dipshit motor company a monthly subscription for heated seats and other features that should be fucking standard.

[u/CyberBill]

Conversions will never take off as standard practice. They are fantastic for niche vehicles or for people who want to tinker and build things on their own. But there is no world where an average person is going to be able to say "it's time for a new car, should I buy a new EV or convert mine?" (And be able to follow through)

It is simply too expensive to do a conversion - more labor goes into it than building a new car, because of mass manufacturing. And then at the end of the day, you're left with an old car with old interior, worn out brakes and suspension, steering, etc. Lower safety regulations, fewer features, rattles and creaks. Anybody who has driven a new EV knows that there is no comparing it to a 20 year old car. Even a base model.

EV conversions are awesome for old classic cars, or things that hold sentimental value, and I would never go back and not do my conversion, but they are never going to be mass market.