Last updated on May 7th, 2021 at 10:45 pm
Converting a classic car to electric is not a cheap route to EV ownership, but it’s not an absolute fortune only for the landed aristocracy either. Aston Martin’s EV conversion might set you back half a million, but Electrogenic quotes around £35,000 for a Beetle conversion like Drummond’s own vehicle. This has seven Tesla batteries, and a potent Hyper 9 engine, which allow it to hit 0-60mph in just 7.5 seconds (amazing for a classic Beetle!) and achieve a range of between 140 and 180 miles.
Morgan says ECC could convert a Fiat 500 for between £22,000 and £25,000. ECC also sells kits so you can do the conversion yourself, which cost around £18,000. With a donor car of £8,000, that’s £30-33,000 all in. The end result is a little town runabout which will hit 60mph in under 10 seconds and has a range between 50 and 70 miles using three Tesla batteries for 15.5kWh. Adding an extra battery for £1,440 would extend the capacity to 21kWh and the range to around 100 miles and this still fits neatly inside a Fiat 500.
You don’t need to spend an absolute fortune to end up with something truly staggering, either. ECC’s famous Ferrari 308 GTSi conversion only cost around £55,000 (plus the donor car). This uses a Tesla direct drive system delivering 470bhp and 18 LG Chem batteries providing 47kWh of capacity. The result is a car that could hit 60mph in 2.7 seconds, although ECC has toned it down to 3.5 seconds so as not to stress the donor chassis too much. The original car took around 7.3 seconds, so this is still a huge leap in acceleration. It has a range of 150 miles if you drive it more gently, too. Perfect for city shopping. The handling is better too, because the weight is now distributed 50/50 across the car instead of mostly at the back.
Working out what this does to the value of your original car is hard. Drummond doesn’t want to guess about the final value of a conversion but argues that as they don’t do any major chassis modification, you could put the old engine back in and essentially have the same original vehicle, so you’re not losing any money. Morgan, however, thinks that the value would increase, because the result is unique, citing a Fiat 500 which would cost under £8,000 in original form but easily fetch £25,000 converted. A Porsche conversion ECC did was sold on for more than the cost within a few weeks of completion.
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