An electric samba bus! Some high school and university students transformed a wrecked kombi into a brand new electric vehicle.
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Sure. Did I mention the magic word; “subsidized?” 
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Part of my point. Industry needs to produce new cars, not conversions.
All those kit cars relied on the Beetle’s floorpan to rebolt a fresh body onto. I believe that Volkswagen is planning to market an updated platform to serve such a rebody industry.
On another note, what ever happened to those wheel-hub electric motors that would more readily enable vehicles to be retrofitted? Somehow it seems like the auto industry is wedded to churning out new models rather than saving old iron from obsolesence. Perhaps there is scope for a large aftermarket industry? I would like to fiddle with electrifying Japanese Kei cars.
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Why not both? Plus, making conversion kits will add economies of scale to new EV production.
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Wheel hub motors suck, is the problem.They’re harder to keep cool. They increase unsprung mass, which makes the car handle worse. They have to be built heavier to be able to withstand the fact that they’re in the wheel instead of on the suspension. They displace the room for the brakes. The size makes it harder to make a good suspension. You have to have a motor designed for much lower rotation speeds, because you don’t have room for reduction gears, and those motors weigh more.
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My own electric car retrofit fantasy would be the largely unloved 2nd gen Toyota MR2. Midengine but totally underpowered compared to Gen 1. Very fine looking though!
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Frankly, this kind of conversion is going to be necessary, and subsidized, for most ICE-powered cars. Why build all-new electric cars when companies could create drop-in electric powertrains for all currently-running vehicles?
Louder, friend…think of how many carmakers share parts across models and how many Camrys, Accords, Civics are on the road…imagine a drop-in electric powertrain with battery packs that scale with the size of the car. President Gore would have signed an EO or gotten a bill passed to do this 15 years ago
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We will know that we’ve reached critical mass when companies start electrofitting Camaro IROC’s
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“If it has moving parts, it needs maintenance.”
– Granddad (on my father’s side) ca. 1972
Of course he remembered a time when cars (and any other machinery) had umpteen grease nipples in all sort of places that needed to be looked after in different intervals ranging from days to months, using at least half a dozen different types of lube/grease. And that’s not counting the ICE and the gearbox.
But even a drivetrain powered by an electric motor still has moving parts that are under considerable mechanical stress, so everything needs to be alligned just so or the thing will shred itself.
The same goes more or less for the electrical and electronic side of things.
Anything that transfers power needs to be looked after ever now and then.
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I suppose that the original 4 stroke engine will run on hydrogen.
No need to change the engine. Actually there are some T2 that were modified to run on methane.
Methane could be made from literally manure https://www.xergi.com/biogas-plant/biogas-plant.html so, it’s partially a renewable, by the way.
True, any engine that runs on petrol can be converted to run on more or less any other combustible gas. Basically the ignition system and the fuel injection system/carburettor must be replaced or adapted.
Thing is, hydrogen is not exactly easy to work with within the constraints of a small-ish using vehicle, and the energy density is way too low to offset that. High pressures/low temperatures, insulation, a very volatile gas mixture very fast, etc. LPG/LNG are fairly easy in comparison.
Every major automaker has fiddled around with using hydrogen in internal combustion engines at least at one point since the 1950ies, but it has only ever resulted in small fleets of experimental cars.
I looked into this for a bit 20 years or so ago. My thinking was that the low energy density wouldn’t matter that much with a big-bore V8 and if you had a large boot that you’d sacrifice to put the gas tank in, you could have a nice motor to cruise around in in an environmentally sound fashion.
So basically the idea was to convert something along the lines of a 1959 Cadillac convertible.
Combined with a little solar-powered hydrogen plant in the backyard.
But when I looked into it I soon realized that, while technically possible, it would be well beyond my means, ever.
As far as I can tell from my layman’s perspective, the only realistic use of hydrogen to power a car is to use it in a fuel cell in an electric car.
But that doesn’t seem to be that easy either. As far as I know, so far the only cars you can actually buy available in select markets) are the Toyota Mirai, the Hyundai Nexo, and the Honda Clarity.
And it took some 25 years to develop them.
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China has a bunch of companies involved in developing Hydrogen Fuel Cell EVs. Basically such devices will be range extenders for EVs. they are laying out an infrastructure to distribute hydrogen. Also of note is the battery swap system. Seems this is attractive to taxi fleets. Instead of spending hours of downtime recharging the vehicle you just pull into a battery swap station and slide out your spent battery “cassette” and insert a fresh one - all done and dusted in a trice. That could catch on.
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Nobody has ever implemented worthwhile steering or suspension* for that platform, so why bother with the drivetrain?
*sure, they handle better than a Mustang, but come on, so does this standing desk.
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Yes. I think I was subconsciously countering anyone who bemoans “devaluing a classic car.” Also the idea of turning a classic beetle into an electric car was something we used to bring up in stoned conversations in college for the same reason: people were already modifying that car, plus it was lightweight. (Of course back then we were imagining it as a two-seater because the back seat would be loaded up with batteries.)
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A FWD electric Supra? A step too far, surely?
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AWD. Gas to the rear, electric to the front.
I think this is the basic setup of the 919 Hybrid EVO:
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Problem with hub motors is unsprung weight. Not good for bumps and corners.
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Ok, now I’m interested.
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Also, those reduction gears need to be pretty beefy, since they’re getting constantly slammed with torque. Tesla tried to fit a multi-speed transmission to the Roadster, only to find they couldn’t get one to handle the motor’s torque without turning into scrap metal.
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