Like countless others before me, the allure of doing an electric vehicle conversion has cost me hours of scouring the internet for ways that I could make it happen. From paying someone else, to doing it myself. This leads many to electric vehicle conversion kits. These kits provide the closest you can come to a bolt-on conversion. But even still these kits require you have some base knowledge electric circuits, potentially fabrication, and obviously some mechanical skills.
For most of the kits you can find out there they may not even deliver on everything you want. There are two types of electric motors available for cars, AC (alternating current) and DC (direct current). Many conversion kits come with either a small AC motor or a DC that has <150hp. They also require an adapter plate to link up the motor to the transmission which can prove tricky and relies on the quality of the donor car’s transmission. So what’re you to do?
Well, may I present the farthest thing from a novel idea: Tesla-fy your car.
The Tesla drive unit will allow you to rid yourself of nearly all of the donor car’s components and drop in a Tesla drive unit that -- with some finagling -- can connect directly to your axles. The Tesla drive units come in multiple sizes with varying outputs. The drive units come in two sizes for both RWD and FWD. The smallest drive unit having an output of up to 250hp with the largest (the Ludicrous) output being 645hp. There’s definitely a price difference between them and if I’m being honest here the price of even a small drive unit is the cost of a whole conversion kit.
So this is only for those who want the power and engineering of Tesla in their old classic.