As a guy at the start of converting his bmw e39 to electric the biggest hurdles to this is both having to fight with the manufacturers documentation and computer systems and having to manufacture from scratch adaptor plates and splines. Also it is not cheap, if you buy everything new expect to pay $15-$20K. Kudos to AM for doing this, though I expect it will cost you a damn site more than $20K, though if you can afford an AM I guess it is not an issue.
An entrepreneurial manufacturer such as Tesla who make the best donor parts acording to the conversion community could get a lot of extra kudos for relatively little outlay by making battery/inverter/charger/motor kits available IMHO
It seems so easy to kill yourself with the voltage and amperage. ICE car kits are dangerous too, but death seems less likely. I don't know that any company would want the potential liability.
I bet it's much easier to kill yourself with the flammable, volatile, and toxic stuff that goes into the fuel tank. We just tend to normalize that because we've been using ICEs since we were kids and almost nobody is dumb enough to try to stick a lit match into the tank or take a fuel bath.
I thought vintage cars are usually exempt from these things due to the enthusaist population being too small to environmentally matter. That's why we still let people drive those century-old steam cars fired by coal, any damage just comes out in the wash.
Can we expect to see electric cars and conversion kits that simulate combustion engines? Mechanical gearboxes (or pseudo-gearboxes?), simulated noise and vibrations, exhaust pipes with simulated vapor?
I believe most of the conversion kits connect to the gearbox from the engine side in order to preserve as much of the car as feasible and also for simplicity (there seems to be less variation on the engine end than on the wheel side, but my knowledge is limited mostly to Brazilian cars - 3/4 of my family worked for Volkswagen).
Most vintage electric conversions I have seen leave the transmission, drive shaft and differentials in place for convenience.
Since electric motors have a much broader torque band than combustion engines you can usually leave the transmission in 2nd or 3rd and just drive around, but there is nothing stopping you from rowing gears either.
If the engine ever blows in my vintage car I'll think long and hard about converting it to electric. I wouldn't want to simulate sounds or vibrations of the real engine though. I'd want the experience to be whatever happens from swapping the engine for a motor.
‘60’s era Porsches are are joy. Only problem is, the motors are wearing out. There are few people casting new cases. You could build one up for 30K. If the car is clean, I mean super clean it will go for 175K. So you have a great car but the motor us shot. Converting to batteries might just be the answer.
An entrepreneurial manufacturer such as Tesla who make the best donor parts acording to the conversion community could get a lot of extra kudos for relatively little outlay by making battery/inverter/charger/motor kits available IMHO