Partly why I like my older truck--it's got no modem, no screens other than a little clock, and nobody in any large corporation knows exactly where I drive it every moment of the day.
I'm liking the trend of high-tech unchained lately, I'm seeing more instances of really great technology being supplied and built with consumer freedom and portability in mind.
While likely way more than I would ever pay for a vehicle, I appreciate the approach to design.
EDIT: If you've got a little time to kill. There are some videos on youtube that give a better idea of what these trucks look like.
Thanks!
Why do some webdevs think they need to re-invent scrolling?
It will be interesting to see how the larger issue of "ownership" is going to play out in an iCar (TM) world . Considering that you may still legally own the car but you're only licensing out your car manufacturer's software, it doesn't take much imagination of getting physically restrained by your cars' over the air capabilities:
- Missed an installment on your lease/financing plan? -> Grounded - Took your car in for service at an non-authorized shop? (think Apple disabling third party charging equipment) -> Grounded - (Some malicious actor injecting ransomware -> Grounded)
That said, Deere's made a business of it, so what do I know?
I think if market forces are allowed to decide fairly (they won't be) that consumers will choose a vehicle they own and have the right to repair over a Tesla that's licensed and can be bricked remotely at any time.
Similarly, I have more than a little trepidation at the quoted price point -- does that include the motor and the electronics and all the smarts to run both? Do I need their fancy dashboard from the concept? Is it included? etc. etc.
Disclaimer: I worked for Ford until the beginning of this year, so some of skepticism is likely sour grapes, but some of it is because I saw what difficulties there were in changing years and years of assumptions on a dime because you went from an ICE to a BEV.
Nope: https://performanceparts.ford.com/part/M-9000-MACHE
>Does NOT include: Traction inverter, Control system, Battery
I assume what you'd get with the crate motor is similar to what you'd get with any crate motor: You get the motor, the transmission (probably, since it's usually part of an EV motor package), the drive circuitry, and that's about it. ECU, HV battery, drive axles, etc are on your nickel.
Genuine interests.
Greetings
You can however retrofit your older truck with a more modern radio if you like. You can repair or upgrade a part of it (like a side panel) or just rip out the radio and install a new $200 dollar one that gets digital FM, Bluetooth and USB audio. Oh, that's another feature that doesn't exist in Teslas.
Most inland waterway inboards use marin-ized crate engines; often this is the Chevy line (v6, v8s), but the Ford Raptor V8 provided a nice alternative in ~2016.
281HP is also right in line with the market ~280-320hp.
Honest question.
You took off your license plate?
https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-trac...
I've a preorder for a cybertruck and I intend to refuse delivery if they can't build me one without radios.
They're surprisingly useful.
Payphones, nope. Still got a flip phone. Yep, can be used to track me, but I don't take it everywhere.
Also, your position seems to be something like, If you can't be perfectly private from every possible angle, any choice enhancing privacy imperfectly is silly. I don't agree with that.
Updates are a good thing. Since you said "Teslas in particular" you are misinformed about them being auto updating. It is true that they do automatically download the updates, but the updates are opt in.
Also, Tesla allows opt out for data collection from the car.
In fact, it seems like you will be very surprised to learn, the default setting value is opt out.
They also do collect a lot of driving data that they do not associate with the VIN or any other identifier, in my understanding.
You could argue that when the driver opts in to anonymous data collection (again, no identification of the vehicle, etc.) it is still getting exterior pictures of their home and driveway. OK. But, opt in.
There are tradeoffs. You allow collection of some data, or not… up to you. That seems like a fair setup to me.
>invariably turn your vehicle into an always-connected, auto-updating tablet, with zero privacy.
"Invariably"… no. "Always connected"… no. Often connected, certainly. "Auto-updating"… no. "Zero privacy"… no. This seems like a really poorly informed take, when it's opt out by default. Yet you currently have the top comment in this article.
Have a look at:
https://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=40
to see what goes into a typical EV conversion.
Batteries are here:
https://smallcar.com/vanagon-2.2-and-2.5-conversions/
https://www.bostig.com/bostig-vanagon-conversion-2021-2022-k...
Then you gotta build motor mounts, adapt to existing manual transmission or figure out some other gear reduction + attach to axles, cases for batteries and other components, wiring, etc.
It'd be a big project and probably around $40k all in by the time you were done.
I can see some of the EV conversion specialty shops using this Ford motor as part of their services though because it is higher wattage than most of the products the DIY market is used to.
Note that this is a higher voltage motor than most DIY electric car conversions are done with, too. So harder to work with safely and harder to configure battery pack.
My stated plan is to convert it to electric in 2025.
There’s good progress being made forging a path - see the DreamEV guys on YouTube for a currently ongoing 2wd Tesla vanagon conversion. They documented all the steps, are pretty entertaining, and just finished like 2 weeks ago.
If I was to do it now, I’d go Tesla engines front and rear to keep the AWD and ditch the engine and both diffs, which are the most troublesome part of the syncro anyway.
In 5 years, who knows. Maybe I’ll transplant the parts from a scrapped 2023 Cyber Truck!
...
> https://www.bostig.com/bostig-vanagon-conversion-2021-2022-k...
That second link says $8k, not $15k.
Not including a traction inverter or control system is like buying a LS crate engine without an ECU.
The challenge for EV conversion is not the motor, which is simple, it's the battery skateboard and the technology to process the stored energy into viable mileage.
EV's are a huge fire risk, my concern would be fast EV's and inadequate battery protection in a converted vehicle + impact damage to charged batteries = inferno.
There is plastics tech on the horizon to stop damaged ganged up batteries in a runaway thermal event from trapped energy contagion but right now little effort has been made to isolate batteries to prevent this.
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2021/10/22/electric-c...
>Weighing in at a svelte 205 pounds, this electric dynamo delivers 281 horsepower, 317lb.-ft. of torque, and generates a maximum speed of 13,800rpm. The Eluminator crate engine package includes a high-voltage motor-to-traction invertor harness, low-voltage harness connector, and vent tube assembly.
so, it sounds like the the motor traction inverter is included. Controller and the batter obviously still costs $$.
The text there says includes "inverter harness"... What does this really mean? You sure they're simply not referring to the inverter mount point / wiring connector at the top of the motor?
"Does NOT include:
Traction inverter
Control system"
Incidentally, the same literature claimed my warranty would also be voided if I failed to maintain the scooter properly. I'm not sure where to go from there...
And in many cases the warnings are there because the law comes down hard on manufacturers that enable bypassing the (mandatory) governor systems which limit the speed (and sometimes the torque) at which the vehicles can operate.
Running numbers, I'm seeing a "Tri+FSD" Cybertruck paying for itself at 410,000 miles just in gas savings, then amounting to a free second vehicle over the next >400,000 miles. That should make the frugal overcome "right to repair" issues.
I agree that it would be much more sustainable to convert our old fleet of cars into EV but unless someone brings forward a big leap in battery protection for these conversions, to me it still feels relatively unsafe when compared with a vehicle designed from the ground up as an EV.
These vehicles already are generally built without an eye for safety or compliance with standards of any form, and very few are driven a significant number of miles after the conversion is complete, so I'm not sure this is a meaningful issue for this specific product.
I'm in the process of increasing the capacity of the battery of my e-bike more than fourfold and even that is not a simple job.
I would speculate the problem with most conversions will be about increased mass, low quality suspension parts, and too small brakes. When gross vehicle weight goes up by 50% that will cause a TON of problems. I think this may be why pickup trucks are a good place to start.
On the Mustang case, more carefully design would be needed to make sure the weight distribution doesn’t make it worse. While driving in straight lines seem to be a popular sport, one would expect their car to be able to corner as well.
Ford wants to convert people. The people who would buy a pickup from them today, and aren't sure about this electric motor business -- they need to see something cool and reasonably aspirational.
They'll look at the F-100 at big car shows, and a few years later see e-crate conversions at the local car shows, and then when the price of an electric F-150 has dropped enough, that's what they'll be buying.
F-150 buyers are not that price sensitive. They are luxury vehicles, despite the working class veneer.
the point of a crate motor is literally converting vehicles though. That's what they're for.
> They'll look at the F-100 at big car shows, and a few years later see e-crate conversions at the local car shows, and then when the price of an electric F-150 has dropped enough, that's what they'll be buying.
The cars that people build with crates don't really go very far usually. The people that complain about road trips in an electric car aren't using the car they built. This could be their chance to play with electric to prove its good enough to ditch the ICE F150
What you want is economies of scale. You need to be able to design a drop-in replacement that works for millions of vehicles, not one-offs for 25,000 vehicles. An electric conversion will be made fairly early for the most popular vehicles and everything that uses the same engine (eg, Accord, Camry, Jetta). The Mazda rotary engines will not. They’ll end up being taxed to death, unless someone can make cheap adapters.
This ignores that many of the older cars just sound like they're powerful, but in reality would struggle to out-accelerate a modern day v6 commuter car. Plus nostalgia. Boomers who grew up won't suddenly want to put a motor where the engine should go-- no Saturday afternoon oil changes, $300 headers or custom exhausts. Gen X or younger will likely be the target customer here-- I know I have already mentioned the idea of one of these Eluminators to my dad as a swap into his 1965 Chevy C/10 when I first heard about them.
Eh, maybe. Area under the curve doesn't tell the whole story because ICEs have transmissions to keep them in the meat of the powerband past first gear, EVs don't (usually). With the exception of Telsas, EV drivetrains lose a lot of power in the upper rev band, so their highway acceleration is comparatively weak.
But an ICE can be kept in the powerband for as many gears as can be added. Ford's 10R80 keeps the GT between 6200-7500 RPMs between like 20MPH (depending on rear end ratio) and top speed. The average HP under that curve is like 450HP (out of 460hp peak).
Ford is bragging about how the Mach-E GT hits 60 in like 3.5 seconds (faster than any other Mustang, GT500 included), yet glosses over the fact that it traps 100mph in the quarter mile. Which is less than both the 2.3L ecoboost and the previous generation 3.7L V6 managed (around 103mph each) and is a far cry from what the 5.0L can do (115-120), or the GT500 (131).
They end up the reverse situation of the S2k: fast from a stop, slow from a roll. I haven't seen a roll race between a Mach E and a lesser Mustang, but I would bet starting at a 40mph roll, the Mach E would lose, despite being technically superior in power/torque.
I have a diesel truck right now and I can drive 400 miles on a tank easily, then spend 5 minutes at any gas station off the highway and be right on my way for another 400 miles.
The truth is that they have to put all this crazy luxurious tech into these cars to lure people away from thinking about the things that their old car can do that their new car will be incapable of.
The other car is gas powered, but we could totally replace it with an electric vehicle. Most day to day driving is in a city, and we drive less than 20 miles a day total. So having a vehicle with a 200-300 mile range is ok for that.
However if you are single and only have one vehicle then yeah getting an EV right now is probably not feasible if you do long road trips. I suppose you could fly or get a rental car for those once in a while trips though.
This'll have to go. "Fluxing on all windings"?
does not look like a rendering to me
> Can we safely call it vaporware for now?
But if you were to actually do a conversion: How does the heating/AC work? How does your power steering work? How do the brakes work?
Many things in a standard car work off vacuum. There's no vacuum on an electric engine. Other things run off the serpentine belt.
These things also make running a newer engine in an older car a pain. Sure, the engine from a newer Mustang you find in the junkyard might only be $4,000 but you're going to spend at least another $10-15,000 getting it to run in your older Mustang or F150.
Those are the easy parts because all 3 run off of hydraulics and electricity. As long as they get power supplied to them, they all just work.
Brakes don't even need power, I believe, and can work purely mechanically. Of course you won't have regenerative braking in a retrofit.
> Sure, the engine from a newer Mustang you find in the junkyard might only be $4,000 but you're going to spend at least another $10-15,000 getting it to run in your older Mustang or F150
That's generally an issue with high labor costs and not the car industry in particular.
Except the heat in your car is transferred from the coolant running through your engine. Which is why the 'heat' in your car doesn't work until you've been driving it for a little bit.
>> Brakes don't even need power, I believe, and can work purely mechanically.
Brakes definitely need power. Have you even driven an older car without power brakes or steering? There's a reason they used to have much larger steering wheels in cars. And most of your brakes are hydraulic with vacuum assist. Turn your ignition off (in a large parking lot) and try to steer or brake your car! The brakes will work once or twice...
You would need to add electric power steering to an older car. You can convert over a Volvo system, get an electric pump, or do it a few other ways.
>> That's generally an issue with high labor costs and not the car industry in particular.
I'm talking just parts. For example, you need a control pack from Ford which contains the ECU and wiring harness which is nearly two thousand dollars, and aftermarket systems aren't even cheaper.
https://www.jegs.com/i/Ford+Performance/397/M-6017A504VB/100...
Yow. Power brakes have been standard equipment since at least 1950. Disconnect the vacuum line on your brake booster and go for a drive to the grocery store and you will very quickly discover their importance.
Also is the intention here to just leave it in 3rd gear while running, like the Genovation GXE Electric Corvette mod?
Old trucks will be among the cheapest to convert since there is tons of space for battery boxes under the hood, between the frame rails, or just in the bed without much cutting or welding. Downside is old truck prices have really jumped in the last few years and are no longer the classic bargains they once were.
There are conversion kits for a number of vehicles already available and I'm sure tons more are coming.
* EV West has an air cooled VW kit for $8000 (plus battery)
* Swindon Powertrains has a Mini kit for £10,000 (plus battery)
* 2ECV has a Citron 2CV kit for £16,000 (inc battery)
* Zero EV is working on a Porsche 911 kit for SCs, G body and 964 that includes DC Fast charging, but I haven't seen pricing yet.
Series might get cheaper. Keep in mind that just the electrical bits will be $15 to $20K, and depending on how far the truck is gone you could easily spend that much more on getting it serviceable and pretty.
Car restoration rarely is economically viable unless you go for something exotic.
There will be some amazing barn finds where you could pull the motor out and bolt in batteries and an electric motor on a weekend and then there will be trucks where you basically rebuild the entire truck from scratch.
What might be interesting is an electric rolling truck chassis production and then various vintage looking bodies you could attach to them.
The other is that adding size to a vehicle adds very little to the cost to produce a car, but it makes the vehicle so much more functional and appealing to buyers. In most of the USA, vehicle size is not a constraint. So the size of one's vehicle is mostly personal preference. And bigger = more useful.
There's still plenty of options for compact cars, and if you want to go even smaller, motorcycles. That said, I don't believe there's many small electric cars. Electric motorcycles and bicycles are definitely a thing though.
It's not that. Older pickups that you see on, say, ranches carry plenty, but are not so huge, especially in terms of height, where a small adult barely comes up to the top of the hood if there's even a little bit of a lift.
Mr Money Mustache goes into this: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/04/28/what-does-your-wo...
Most electric car offerings are small cars. Prior to the current generation of EVs, most manufactures offered "compliance cars" which were EV conversions of whatever the cheapest car the manufacture offered in the USA was.
These were sold almost exclusively in California or NY and were sold at a loss. So like, Fiat 500e, Ford Focus EV, Chevy Spark EV, VW eGolf, etc.
A few use cases I have simply preclude modern pickups. For example, I sometimes need to drive on smaller forest trails which are cut for ATVs. Anything larger than a subcompact SUV can't even navigate these.
Shame there aren't photos of the inside of the bed or the rear axle - from the shots under the hood it seems like it would be difficult to fit without losing cargo space
I'd assume most engine swappers would be more interested in something that mounts longitudinally
Cheap MR2s will normally be rust buckets. That said, I did see someone driving an X1/9 on the GCP a few months ago - there can't be many of those still around
They were very pretty trucks.
I see this as a niche market at best. The ICE engine at the heart of a vehicle is an old design. Nevermind all the secondary systems that piggy-back off it, these can probably be adapted. But the distribution of drivetrain into the wheels simplifies the construction massively. One huge advantage of the new electric cars is the lower maintenance, especially with the drivetrain. Converted vehicles would inherit many of the legacy problems, plus new issues stemming from kit conversions and interfacing old systems with new powerplants.
Maybe things like this will help seed a new generation of hot rodders but I can’t see the traditional crowd turning in wrenches for a soldering iron.
Looking at what it takes to do a swap, it seems like it's far less soldering and still a huge amount of wrench turning. It's possible some of the old folks won't go for it, but I know a bunch of hot rodders that would totally do it. Maybe not exclusively, but at least for the novelty. Heck, the biggest electric-mod enthusiast I know is pushing 70.
While an electric engine doesn't remove all of that, it simplifies significant portions of it.
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I can see this being interesting for people who have a car with a frame/body that's in good condition but have failing engine or exhaust components. Instead of replacing them, put the money towards a conversion.
Big issue is lack of inverter. If you get a bigger motor need a bigger inverter.
With a lot of parts now if you buy a la carte you spend as much or more than buying them in the vehicle especially at low end. They price them as if you are taking away a car sale. Not a good model in my opinion.
Sure, they could probably drop the price some. But it's starting out at half the cost of GM's most basic LS3 crate motor, so it's not terribly priced.
Manufacturers are happy to sell crate motors just to pick up a little extra revenue but it will never be more than a tiny niche market for enthusiasts.
Considering that the venn diagram between "people who profess to care a lot about safety" and "people who profess to care a lot about the environment" has a pretty massive overlap I look forward to the inevitable dumpster fire as people are forced to reconcile that the tradeoffs exist.
Furthermore, a ton of ancillary stuff has improved so much over the last 20+yr that the cumulative difference is quite noticeable. Few people will drop "new Mitsubishi Mirage" money re-powering an '03 Civic.
as you hint at re. legislation this is heavily dependant on how any transition is structured - a heavy-handed transition would put alot of upward market pressure on new EV's and downward pressure on old ICV's that could create a market niche for conversions - they might not spend "new Mitsubishi Mirage" money on a civic, but they might opt to save 5-10k vs new/slightly used EV for a '15 converted mercedes ...
I find it odd they didn't include the inverter from the Mach E mounted on the motor, because that's how the Mach E is configured.
A full tear down of this motor (and its inverter) from the Mach E can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHVV52lPyIs
Notably this motor is potentially technically inferior to the one that Ford put in the front of the Mach E.
Indeed the motor price is competitive. But most of the competition from EV conversion shops is usually packaged along with a matching controller/inverter, so less hassle and also hard to compare price.
Most people doing a conversion would be better off just buying a salvaged Tesla drive unit -- which includes the inverter and gear reduction and can attach directly to short axles and has been reverse engineered so can be driven by third party software.
It's not cheap though. I think the Miata restoration was something like $40k excluding donor vehicle costs.
I've never known anyone that has purchased a crate engine, but doesn't it sound fantastic that such a thing exists? Fresh from the factory, with a warranty, support, parts, etc just by going to your local dealership! Put it into anything you can think of, whether that be an old car or something else entirely - limited only by your imagination and bank balance!