The Craziest Electric Vehicles | Translogic

[Music] on this episode of trans logic we zap you with an electric shock to your system a classic conversion hits the streets in Southern California a few two wheelers roll through Portland and a flat-out speed demon delivers thrills in Austin [Music] welcome to trans logic I'm Jonathan Buckley a few years ago getting your old internal-combustion car converted to an electric vehicle would have seemed like a daunting unrealistic task that most likely wasn't even an option but today things have changed and we're here to get the lowdown on evie conversions we saw the best of the business so I'm here with Michael bream the owner of evey West a company which in the last five years has come to be one of the top evie conversion companies in the country big five years yeah how did this all come out there were just some hobbyists just having fun we wanted to build a race car to be in W e36 m3 and we put that into Pikes Peak yeah like okay what's the best race it has an electric class that's been around for a while and Pikes Peak was a natural fit the second oldest race in America we actually took it really easy in the car and when we finally got our time we couldn't believe that we actually set a record for the you know street-legal electric class that's incredible and you're basing pretty stiff competition while you with it yeah you know talk about beginner's luck right we had these guys from Yokohama we have monster 2g mobile heroes to us and then at the end of the day we ended up eating them and I'm she's like a goosebumps doctor yeah you know the car has been really successful we brakes the car and tomahto cross Adventure drives both sides Dona Baja and I'm looking at doing more right yeah we've done the Mexican 1000 we're the first guys ever run a sanction off-road race in an electric vehicle we were charging along the path and we kind of figured that was a little tough we're going back to the Baja this year yep and we have a new angle we're going to take all pre charged batteries down there and hop swap them and we hope to be really competitive and so you've taken the lessons that you learn building the imagery right to what my guys are doing which is converting customer cars into fully electric street legal vehicles right so when a car comes into the shop do we just simply open the hood and stop pulling things out is that how it begins yeah pretty much drop the motor I mean it's messy you know it requires a lot of mopping on the shop floor afterwards and we try and get that done just get it out if you kind of look at it you don't abroad scope the whole process is fairly simple but the devil is in the details right the aesthetics and making it really safe and really reliable that's what we excel at when you take out things like the gas tank radiator drivetrain in the engine right replace it with a battery pack and an electric motor right generally smaller do you end up with extra space with image and it works out about the same right now in the weight of the components right now we usually add maybe 100 200 pounds to the overall weight of the vehicle but that's changing just in the five years have you been in this we've seen our battery density get a lot better so you know now we're getting more range we're putting less about weight what type of battery a year leaning towards well when it comes to well all of the lithium ion chemistry's and it's a real promising time I mean you know there's so many battery breakthroughs you know MIT all these guys are working on some really great stuff is that cause that you say that have come in where you like oh I really don't feel like massacring this car right after such AB you have an NFL guy come in he want to do a four five eight we just told him this note yeah right same reaction I can't such a flat crank b12 right sorry about that but is good the way Jim as new parts become available as technology improves is there possibilities to come back in swap over components seeing the advancements in battery technology this is something you might do a conversion now and maybe ten years down the road put a battery pack in there that's a quarter the size and maybe three times the range right and you're going to improve the performance of the car to make the car lighter for cars in the garage right now got the Ferrari try their Jeep a 69 Karmann Ghia we got an eighty Spyder we got the m3 we got a 57 bus out there we got a 58 ragtop at 65 912 a seventy 302 so I'm going to be going into common gear yeah super exciting out the driving these because I've driven many like the cars that have never driven one that's got something classic [Music] what Michaels done with this car is been to date a 1959 Karmann Ghia removes the powertrain traditional combustion engine replaced it with batteries and an electric motor [Music] probably wondering why I'm driving this old car quite like this well it's because Michael a particular asked me to drive it this way to show how capable a card is this old can be without anything going wrong electric engines are just so reliable that you can absolutely beat on them as nothing untoward going to happen so far we just right so just like in a regular car you have to change the gears if you want to talk like first will give you more talk than second but you can if you're sitting in traffic just take off in third and it's not going to do any damage at all it's just going to give you the punch that they don't reverse with you and with an electric engine you've got no worries about this thing blowing up you can literally put it into mutual like I'm going to do now hold the pedal flat the floor if you can hear that at 6,500 rpm it will never go beyond that will never blower piston you'll never explode we're not doing this really so much because we're the hardcore environmentalists or we're trying to say there we're doing this because it's horsepower I'm going to got a car out there that can produce you know almost 900 foot-pounds of torque instantly like if we can't at least double your torque and horsepower we won't touch the car specialize 120 foot pounds of torque it's got about a hundred horsepower it's got a top speed of over a hundred miles an hour the conversion itself $30,000 so it's not entirely for everybody but if you've got a classic car like this that you want to drive around as a daily driver without any real worries of the thing falling apart or blowing up or dumping a bunch of money into it weekend after weekend then you know this could be a solution for you we got these cars like this you know 50-plus year old car yeah I think we can both agree we want to see this car still rolling around 50 years from now and there's probably a better chance of that on electric than there is on the most traditional the world's changing right like and we can't control it you and I have no control over it we can just make it fun along the way [Music] so maybe it's not such a crazy idea after all to take the old pet project and turn it into an electric vehicle for the 21st century and while it's still kind of expensive but hoping those prices will lower over time we'd love to see this be an option for everyone a little later the zombie to-to-to will get the blood pumping the first works electric shows off their two-wheel TVs it's exploring downtown Portland got my Rover [Music] of resource from the latest vehicle reviews shopping advice and ownership tips helpful apps community forums and photo sharing Auto Blog where you can research shop and share everything on wheels let's fight to some of our favorite childhood memories is zooming down a hill on a scooter with a big smile on our plate unfortunately we grow out of them and we have to hang them up that is until you find a scooter that starts 35 miles an hour just exploring downtown Portland of motor over roof-rack finally on board will works electric Rover this is the VR version because it's got these massive fat wide tires it's super stable here in Portland there's a lot of things like tram tracks and things like that you just right straight over doesn't get you all squirrelly or anything super easy as soon as you get on it feels exactly like you imagine a scooter should feel like everybody having a look come on my god that looks like very much fun [Music] so bread baker is CEO and the founder of Works electric we're here is obviously to find out about the rover I liken it to if Mad Max under scooter this would be the scooter here this thing is a real weapon I've never heard of it being called a weapon but this all came about Juna because your wife has a massive Hill that she needs to get up to to go to work and you're like well so it'll keep the wife happy she had this commute which is like a mile away from where we live but it took her 45 minutes to get up there everyday like can we make something that I can just drive up there and just bring into the office with me you know it's like well it's kind of a good idea that is how it started and she was kind of my hardcore beta tester so there's two Moto's we've got the standards and the DR it's all electric the charge takes around five hours and we can also fast charge it in right around an hour the vehicle can go 35 miles an hour it's constructed entirely of aircraft-grade aluminum highest power-to-weight ratio any vehicle out there at least in that space so if for instance say I had a truck and I was heading into woods I didn't want to drive all the way into town so I feasibly pick this up throw it in the back of the track and get it out when it's time and drive the last two battens work and that's really like the whole point and then you have the optional add-on which is this seat as well for those who really just want to take it easy you can actually sit down other thing as well right yeah exactly it does solve what I like to call the urban dilemma you know which is you live downtown you work downtown and parking space for a car cost you two three hundred bucks a month if you're heading into work and you're thinking you know what I want to deal with traffic I don't want to drive all the way in and try and find a path you just leave your car ten miles away from work have a blast cruising into the city on your robot getting there way faster and then just carry it up into the office review if you like 35 miles an hour and you're keeping up with traffic at that point if you're long as you're not on the freeway I mean you're doing traffic speeds I mean that's no slouch full-disclosure 35 miles an hour with this vehicle on the street not legal okay anywhere if you bring the top speed down to 24 miles an hour the vehicle is legal everywhere you can drive it in bicycle lanes you can take it on bicycle trails you can drive on the shoulder of the road you don't need insurance you don't need registration you don't need license plates there's a lot of potential markets can we get off the road on it as well yes you can you know you're not going to take this down the side of a mountain but fire roads gravel roads things like that awesome all right so I'm just taking it on the dirt now a little bit bumpy just want to see how it holds up the vehicle itself is all-weather capable you know it can go rain snow you name it the vehicle itself is going to be fine yeah it's not for doing jumps on a supercross track that's for certain but if you need to go down a driveway or dirt track somewhere hardly fun well you're a busy man not only with the Rovers but you've got another project that you've been working on as well we stand in front of it right now the electric chopper what how did this come about so it began with me just wanting my own electric motorcycle the vehicle itself Emma kind of my baseline offering a top speed of right around 100 miles an hour right around 80 foot-pounds of torque and it'll have a range of 60 miles and then from there we can go very high upwards of 140 miles an hour into that hundred mile range Territory you know close to 150 200 foot-pounds of torque Syria that's serious so normally when you ride an electric motorcycle you expect it to be completely silent it's changing of it we've got this confident metallic whine beside you how do you feel about the electric motorcycles now I mean there's offerings from you know mythological yz0 Brammo even harley-davidson but then yet live wire where do you see the future of electric bikes going it's absolutely the future in my mind at least the real tipping point is going to be when they start performing look better than the gassers and they're going to the big pump kinda looks like something out of a movie all my DeLorean tasks rivet aluminum body challenge and middle to be running around have you got many customers for the choppers right now I'm very particular and so it really takes a very special person to get moving on a custom building so it just has to be something very passionate about it but when it does absolutely make the blog that just goes to show way you can do your backyard you've got the brains to do it let's build this between my hand and [Music] we've had a wonderful day here in Portland playing with some toys from a company it seems like they're out to change a few perceptions one that the scooter isn't just for kids and it can actually be a viable means of transportation and to the choppers don't have to be the obnoxiously loud conversation killers that they once were they've done the both in stylish fun and quality packages stop next bloodshed motors unleashes the zombie - - - this job is gone with one thing and one thing only and that is sheer [Music] this show we've seen its fair share of electric vehicles from homemade rides to top-of-the-line Tesla's EVs are trans logic staple but we may have found one to rule them all performance wise at least and that's why we're down here in Austin to bring the heat the Texas heat with their zombie - - - oh my god what have I gone and got myself into [Music] [Laughter] first off straight out of the gate the 68 fastback is one of my favorite classic cars something about old-school American Muscle just really gets my blood pumping but then when you take two locomotives in this case at it producing one thousand eight hundred foot-pounds of torque with 800 horsepower and you've got something really really special but obviously when you're in a muscle car you're going to want to do is test to see if it can do a Burnout [Music] he's lucky with the world's quietest turnout [Music] here we tighten with the world's quietest burnout I just feel guy oh this thing just wants to spin and spin and spin so I'm here with Miss Medford in the bloodshed the place where I guess the birthplace of the zombie to to to which was your brainchild where did it come from so I just went and googled the words electric dragster and up came this little car called the white zombie which is a 1972 Datsun 1200 could do 0-60 in 1.8 seconds from that second I couldn't get the image out of my head of taking a bigger version what had been done to that little Datsun and put it in the coolest most iconic of American muscle cars Mustangs they're good cars for this because they're small and lightweight and and let's face it there's nothing more iconic globally than a 67 68 Mustang Fastback did you have a goal in mind when you started working on the project I wanted to start a company that would do nothing but specialize in converting vintage iconic cars into super cars we have to take Detroit metal and leave the fenders leave the glass we can't cheat I'm going to make a drag car right and it's got to be able to go toe-to-toe with super cars actually outrun them by the looks of things it seems that you've achieved your goal I mean I can see you've got a piece of paper in your hands there and you're dying to show it to me this is a series of numbers that you achieve at the drag strip let's start with your zero to 60 time zero to 60 time is now one point nine four seconds this car is quicker off the line that every production supercar in the world but you've also got some other impressive numbers as well because you end up the Texas mile one hundred and seventy four point two miles an hour in a street electric car the previous record had been 155 miles an hour yeah it didn't take but an hour and I started getting emails going 200 you got to go for 200 we're actually kicking off a Kickstarter right now to try to race a little bit extra money to help get the car ready for the 200 mile an hour ten this car was designed with one thing and one thing only and that is sheer speed a zero to 60 time of 1.9 four seconds to put that into perspective that means that it's technically faster zero to sixty percent of course or nine one eight but you got a Veyron then a Ferrari laferrari these are million dollar cars you've gone with a pretty unique configuration two motors and 1.1 megawatts of power the battery yes the motors and the controllers are capable of doing so much you have to have a battery pack that can feed those systems yeah 800 horsepower but it's the torque figure that really got me 1800 foot-pounds of torque yeah how are you getting that much power well I use DC motors very briefly AC motors are a lot more like turbocharged 4-cylinder rotors that can rev very very high but they don't have as much low-end torque DC motors are much more like a 1200 cubic inch v8 their torque monsters but you can't rev them very high so what we decided to do was to keep that unbelievable torque and get me top speed so I can prove the world that it's not just a quick car but it's a fast car yeah I use overdrive units you will get up to a certain speed say 70 80 miles an hour you'll throw into one overdrive and the car literally will throw you back into the seat again because it's dropped the RPMs way down today goes oh hello I've got 1,800 foot-pounds of torque begin let's take a vector in shall we excel all right and oh wow [Music] well I think one thing that you guys are doing that you're taking something which is good for the environment but you're also showing you can be good for the environment and faster I've noticed most of the haters come from people who read magazines or just read about things you have opinions if you go to a track where a guy spent hours and hours and 1000 dollars trying to make a car run faster and faster down the track you know what these guys care about speed then they go how much does it cost and speaking of cost how much does it cost if you take a vintage car like any one of these Mustangs sitting here and you want it to perform at the level of the two to two which is supercar territory it's approximately $125,000 and that's everything meaning you bring the car and then we do all-new suspension frame reinforcements the electric drivetrain battery installations all the wiring and everything [Music] having driven the amount of cars that I get to drive in this Charlotte this car has really taken the Cape as far as sheer numbers horsepower excitement and just see to the pant acceleration we're getting 40 to 50 miles range it seems to me to talk about range in a car like this because it's not designed for range this is designed for getting 174 miles an hour at top speed and beyond you're the only the second non bloodshed motors member to ever drive this car I want to enjoy it territory and very privileged and once the zombie to-to-to hits the magic 200 is there another project the zombie to-to-to has been breaking electric records now it's time to break records gasps orale [Music] there are very few cars that I've driven that have left me as unsettled in a good way as a zombie 2 2 2 it's so raw and so powerful that it almost verges on madness that being said though if this is the future of EVs then we're looking at a bright and beautiful future the trans logic I'm Jonathan Buckley will catch you next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: Autoblog

Views: 72,990

Rating: 4.8554215 out of 5

Keywords: cars, car videos, autos, automobiles, vehicles, driving, autoblog, EVs, electric vehicles, zombie 222, EV West Karmann Ghia, Works Electric Rover and Custom Chopper, electric mustang, fastest mustang ever, fastest electric mustang, ev, white zombie, electric car, black zombie, mitch medford, tesla, mustang, zombie, blood shed motors, texas mile, electric, 1967 mustang, 1968 mustang fastback, 67, muscle car, lightning rod, 68, coupe, fastback, austin garages

Id: -WvBT9wfx_M

Length: 22min 18sec (1338 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 24 2017