
Low-cost DIY electric car made from recycled parts - prostoalex
http://www.designboom.com/technology/low-cost-diy-electric-car-made-from-recycled-parts-380-mile-range-06-17-2017/
======
djrogers
All you have to do is ignore all current safety and road-worthiness
regulations, eliminate even the most basic of comforts like A/C and heat, and
fill the vehicle with batteries of questionable safety and quality. When
you’re finished you have a 2 seater with a longer range than a 5/7 seater that
didn’t skimp on anything.

Honestly, this is no different than the guys that stuff V8s into Miatas on the
cheap and get performance rivaling 100k sports card. We’ve been doing this
with cars for a century now, why would anyone expect electrics to be
different?

~~~
Taniwha
Our Makerspace shares space with a revolving group of people doing electric
car conversions. They take cars that are already roadworthy (NZ requires a
full road-worthiness test every 6-12 months) but maybe a sad engine. Rip out
that engine, leave the transmission, gas tank, radiator etc. Bodge up a
bracket to hold the electric motor and one to mate the engine with the
transmission, some people wedge the transmission into 2nd and remove the gear
stick. Find a spot for the power controller and hook it up, add a vacuum pump
for the power steering/brakes. Now fill the empty spaces (in the engine
compartment and where the gas tank was) with batteries .... drive it away ....

They start out roadworthy, and nothing that made them roadworthy is taken
away. They go down and get retested after they're done. None of the passenger
space has gone. AC isn't required here, we wind down our windows, I'll agree
heat is an issue.

~~~
codecamper
Where is this Makerspace? Sounds awesome.

Tesla should make their liquid cooled battery packs for the conversion market.

Of course their market cap dictates they can't go so low margin, but if the
Tesla beast collapses (next market downturn?)... someone should be ready to
jump in and convert their battery tech into these turnkey solutions for other
manufacturers / converters.

~~~
Taniwha
We're in Dunedin, New Zealand - the Makerspace isn't the group that's doing
the conversions, we share our space with a bunch of other groups that do
things like electric car and bike conversions

[https://valleyworkspace.org/](https://valleyworkspace.org/)

------
italophil
This looks like a death trap. Take out the engine that makes the front stable,
as well as dashboard and airbags and put hundreds of pounds of batteries right
behind the driver.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Handling is not an issue. What he did took a car and made it handle lie a
crossover.

~~~
Retric
Ignoring the battery specific issues, he basically put the gas tank inside the
passenger compartment. In no way is that a safe thing to do.

------
giardini
I still hope for a new version of the Baker Electric:

Jay Leno on electric cars:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRwEXaHTwsY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRwEXaHTwsY)

Except for the "steering wheel", the Baker seems the perfect suburban car for
Texas cities, where you never know which streets will be flooded or when
you'll run into a pothole.

~~~
averagewall
Nothing to wait for. They're already extremely popular in China.

[https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2-People-Seats-New-
Mi...](https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2-People-Seats-New-Mini-
Small_60204100296.html)

~~~
giardini
BTW the Indian car design, the Tata Airpod, runs on compressed air:

[http://www.drivespark.com/four-wheelers/2017/tata-motors-
air...](http://www.drivespark.com/four-wheelers/2017/tata-motors-air-powered-
car-airpod-launch-2020-020628.html)

And for those who demand A/C, The passenger compartment could be cooled using
depressurization of air, something electrical/gas storage can't so easily do.

------
jasongill
"lundgren hopes that if nothing else, ‘the powers that be’ within electronic
corporations will notice ITAP’s effort and will feel motivated to start
practicing what he calls ‘hybrid-recycling’."

Good luck with that. Regulatory issues, safety, insurance issues, quality
control, and not to mention issues with sourcing and the cost of upfitting to
electric means that there is never going to be a sizable market of "recycled"
old cars converted to electric and resold as new.

~~~
rhizome
There's a whole raft of vehicles out there that have had drivetrains and
powerplants "upgraded," and AFAIK a lot of them are street legal. I have to
think that the PtB quote is riffing on that idea.

~~~
grogenaut
Generally, from what I understand, street legal means that it still has the
brakes it started with and the rollcage hasn't changed. Also it has seatbelts.
You can pretty much do anything to a car after that.

Technically all welds have to be done by a certified welder.

Apparently the trick, if you are starting from scratch, is that you go to the
engineer at the state troopers for your state who would approve the design
before you start. Or you just start with a VIN'd frame and then you don't even
really change anything. If the engineer doesn't seem down, try and find
another. If you can't find one maybe you should move because you're not going
to get it road leagal very easily otherwise.

Source: Looked up how to do it when taking a fab shop class at a tech college
in WA last year. Asked the interent and the fab shop teacher (who had built
several motorcycles from scratch).

~~~
ethbro
Afaik, there's a big difference between "street legal built as a one-off" and
"street legal as a production car for sale to the public."

The latter triggers and adds a whole other host of regulations.

~~~
grogenaut
Yes good point. I was talking about this article which is currently a one off.
I believe even if they did this at a mass scale it's an aftermarket
modification and is still legal.

------
Retric
The guy fills the back seat with batteries making this far from practical.

If we are just talking about electric things with 4 wheels doing highway
speeds then: _By 2005, several teams were handicapped by the South Australian
speed limit of 110 km /h (68 mph), as well as the difficulties of support
crews keeping up with 130 km/h (81 mph) race vehicles. It was generally agreed
that the challenge of building a solar vehicle capable of crossing Australia
at vehicular speeds had been met and exceeded._
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Solar_Challenge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Solar_Challenge)

------
maxharris
Notice how it stopped because it blew a fuse? This is a really cool project,
but it's not a daily driver. And that's okay!

What isn't so okay is comparing it to those production cars that don't break
down after a few hundred miles of use.

------
ebbv
In order for him to prove this is a viable business model he has to prove that
he can produce something people will actually buy at a price he makes a
profit. Not just that you can throw a ton of batteries and electric motors in
an old car.

~~~
aiyodev
"In order for him to prove this is a viable business model he has to prove
that he can produce something people will actually buy at a price he makes a
profit."

A higher standard than Hacker News has for Elon Musk.

~~~
jacquesm
That's true but Elon is shipping. Whether it is profitable at scale and with
the UAW stirring the pot is the next question.

------
osteele
The Tesla Roadster with battery upgrade
[https://shop.teslamotors.com/products/roadster-3-0-upgrade](https://shop.teslamotors.com/products/roadster-3-0-upgrade)
is rated at 340m. This is probably a fairer comparison.

The DIY car posted here still wins on range, but by 12% versus Roadster
instead of 38% versus Model S. It massively wins on price ($13K DYI BMW, not
counting labor; versus ~$70K for a used Roadster + battery upgrade), and loses
on safety. [The Roadster is not as safe as the Model S and hasn't been crash-
tested, but is presumably safer than this thing.]

------
zurn
What's the life expectancy of 18650 cells found by cherry picking still
working cells from dead battery packs? Ie. if you test them and find ones that
seem good, will they last hundreds of cycles?

------
huxley
Haha there a couple of books in the 1990s that gave plans for how to do this,
here's one I remember taking out of the library at the time:

[https://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Own-Electric-
Vehicle/dp/08...](https://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Own-Electric-
Vehicle/dp/0830642315)

------
fareesh
I seem to be conditioned towards mild skepticism because I saw that ITAP logo
dropped in conveniently in a few places.

------
afeezaziz
I am wondering whether the recycled batteries are cheap enough to deploy at
grid level? If it does, then the biggest market is not EV as there is a lot of
safety issues that they will need to consider but the ready and willing buyers
are utilities.

------
Zorlag
The Beamer is a beauty! Totally overloaded with batteries and breaking down
before emptying out.

I'd drive it.

------
drannex
So basically they got a car to go farther than a Tesla, by loading up the
entire back seat of the car + more with just a whole bunch of batteries.

Yep totally safe.

------
madengr
Ha ha, I was thinking it's good he had a flame suit on with a mish mash of
lithium batteries.

------
jaimex2
Cool story bro.

I'm grad you didn't spontaneously combust.

------
newtem0
All they had to do was not spin the story as if this guy figured out something
that tesla didnt. There are ample explanations in the comments above. It is a
really cool diy project though, and i wish they had written about it as such.

On an unrelated note, i think that whenever a commenter reffers to other
comments in general, they should always say "the comments above" instead of
simply "other comments" as a way to be humble/polite. It would be a cool form
of hn etiquette.

~~~
taneq
I dunno if I'd even call it a DIY project, tbh:

> lundgren _and his team_ built the ‘phoenix’ in 35 days for just $13,000.

So a team of people spent 35 days building this thing - even if there's only
three people on that team, and it's calendar days rather than business days,
that's over $30k of labour.

------
srdeveng
I really hope people don't start doing this on their own.

Although I'd expect a lot of first responders now have equipment to handle a
lithium fire, will the DIY'er in their own garage?

The design of the charging circuit for lithium cells is not as straight
forward as NiMH, NiCAD or lead-acid. Load balancing is required. Using a
hodgepodge of old cells only makes it more dangerous.

Not at all surprised the demise of the road test was an electrical fault while
some cells still had a charge while others were possibly deep-discharged.

~~~
jacquesm
> I really hope people don't start doing this on their own.

People have been doing electro conversions of regular cars for many years.
Popular conversions are Porsche 914, the Beetle and the Toyota MR2. There are
companies that sell kits for many of these and others besides.

Most of them are quality wise a notch (or two) above what is shown in the
article, but typically do not have as much range because of the more practical
nature of their design. If you're willing to give up all the usable space in
the car for batteries then probably you can get any one of those to that same
range or even more.

[http://germancarsforsaleblog.com/1975-porsche-914-electric-v...](http://germancarsforsaleblog.com/1975-porsche-914-electric-
vehicle-conversion/)

[http://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=40](http://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=40)

~~~
srdeveng
> Most of them are quality wise a notch (or two) above what is shown in the
> article, but typically do not have as much range because of the more
> practical nature of their design

Then they are not doing "this".

I chose to use the word "hodgepodge" to show the recklessness of this design.
Repurposing an assortment of used rechargeable lithium cells is not safe.

