Electric coupe?

Rewatched the Wheeler Dealer episode where they stuck 2 electric motors in a 1980s Maserati biturbo.

Surely it must be time that someone did this to a Coupe?

Obviously it would be a turbo base car to deal with the extra oooomph.

Ideally 4x4 conversion too to get the power down.

Someone could beat Fiat to this!

Thinking a donor vehicle is the easiest starting point?

Or the old FCSS Fiat Coupe Rescue Van?

Regards

MM

Yeah. A donor vehicle with a knackered engine. Should be room for a motor in there.

Joe and I have looked at this in some detail a few years ago, and sadly come to the conclusion that it's not worth the cost - we were looking at twenty or thirty k just for the batteries.

Things may have changed now - more motors and batteries available from crashed cars, for one thing - but I suspect you're still looking at a minimum of £20k to do anything useful. Not much fun doing 0-60 in 4 seconds if the top speed is 88mph and the range 88 miles...

More reason to do it then Neil, I mean it's not like you're using your Coupe with it parked in storage, and as it'll be an EV you could run around Berlin in this without a care in the world

In that case you only need the range to be the length of 1 carpark and you'll go back to the future to 2030 where petrol cars are banned.

Someone started doing one, the lack of an update for 2 years might be telling - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChny4AcbbzY0S7oXfdKPfYw

Hmm, yes, tie up twenty grand to have it parked in storage

Still, with that short range it shouldn't take me more than a week to get to Berlin.

Neil

What's the rush, you're retired aren't you

Sure I am, so my income is rather more limited than it was

.....but think of the saving on fuel and the convenience of being able to drive Anita around Berlin town centre instead of having to go in by bus or train

Actually Joe it's a lotta fun gadding about Berlin on their public transport, it's ace

Simon I'm trying to encourage him to go electric, not promote how fun it is to use public transport

You always need to try that much harder where Neil is concerned

You do when the Berlin public transport just announced tickets for nine euros a month for the next three months...

Of course, you could consider using these new graphene carbon mesh ultra capacitors instead of batteries: https://www.digikey.co.uk/en/products/detail/skeleton-technologies-gmbh/SKELCAP-SCA0300/13180993

Downsides: they hold only a quarter of the charge of a similar sized lithium cell, so you need four times as many, and they cost four times the price of a similar cell, so it's going to cost you sixteen times the price for the batteries.

Upsides: they deliver ridiculous amounts of current which is handy for acceleration, but most significantly, they charge up to a thousand times more quickly than lithium cells, *and* they last twenty times as long...

Overall, they're a good solution apart from the cost and I'd expect to see more mass production bringing the costs way down in time. Probably they'll be common when the licensing agencies decide I'm too old to drive... (thursday or so).

I don't really get all this converting an old IC car into electric, it's kind of like trying to put diesel traction into a steam locomotive - why? Just let the old cars become classics, for goodness sake the IC motor is part of the original mix of the car, an element that made the original so special.

What would be cool though would be if manufacturers could create a standardised EV chassis platform, and then offer their "Classic" body shapes on that chassis. Imagine a stunning new EV that has most of the Fiat Coupé design touches but is bang up to date, using modern construction techniques, materials and technology.

Why not? What's the difference between rebuilding all the internals of the existing IC engine and bolting on all sorts of different turbos and intercoolers and different ECU/software and suchlike, and replacing a different type of engine?

You do it because you can, and because it looks like fun, and because you want to know if it is, or you want to keep an old car that's been around for thirty years when it can't get fuel that works with it...

I like the standardised EV chassis platform, but it's not going to happen. I'd like to see car companies offering replacement engine modules - e.g. something that fits the same chassis as the coupe/tipo/kappa/brava collection, or that fits the older popular cars - escorts, golfs, whatevers. But that's not going to happen either, so they'll get scrapped when the engines die and the parts become unavailable.

I hear what you're saying but I just don't get it, sorry.

I love the Fiat coupé but for me it's an IC car, not an EV. It is a car of it's time, and if the future, probably well beyond me, dictates that IC must die then sadly I must say RIP to the Coupé

For me any EV chassis needs to have low down weight, with the cells inside the wheelbase. Trying to achieve that in a chassis designed for IC is just far too compromised, too much weight for a start. This can be seen in many early EV attempts by regular vehicle manufacturers. Those attempts have poor range, poor efficiency and insufficient tech management for the cell packs. If I absolutely had to build an EV kit then it would be on a bespoke chassis clad in some lightweight panels - a sort of Lotus 7 / Elise kind of thing.

I do sadly suspect the EV modification route won't be tolerated for long though. Videos and TV shows demonstrating super fast VW Beetles, Minis & Campervans will soon have legislators picking up on the lack of NCAP safety standards of these OLD vehicles, both for occupants and other road users. The EV conversion market could soon become a victim of its own success.

It does appear that manufacturers could offer EV sports cars in the future, so the future may not be bleak.

I'm not arguing with your conclusions.

https://www.e-legends.de/?lang=en

Now this looks cool. Hope for an EV Coupé yet.

Yes EVs are quick but I would miss the exhaust note and manual gears .