openinverter forum

Hi All

I have been researching for a while now on converting my old 1970 Beetle to EV. I looked at Warp9's and HPEV AC-30 and such but they all have huge prices attached to them. I think I have narrowed it down to going the Nissan Leaf route. I plan to use the exisiting Beetle gearbox and make a plate and coupler to the leaf motor.

I think its most cost effective to find an accident damaged Leaf and buy the complete car. This would give me access to the bits I need, Motor, Inverter, Charger, Batteries etc.. I plan on splitting the batteries into two, one set will be behind the rear seat and the others up front under the bonnet along with the charger.

Am I missing anything obvious with running the setup like this?
Thanks
David

DavidH74 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 4:18 pm Am I missing anything obvious with running the setup like this?
Thanks
David

There are lots of videos on youtube where they restore these cars and they seem to need to upgrade - beef up the transmission which is costly. Otherwise putting all that power through a 30+ year old transmission may not last long. If it fits why not go with a whole motor and transmission setup? Might be more work initially to fabricate the driveshafts but you would be future proofing your setup - reduction gearboxes will be plentyful if yours fails for some reason. And it should give better driving experience. If leaf motor is too big why not go with smaller one like Outlander rear motor? Somebody has already fitted it to a beetle.

Hi David, I found that the Outlander rear motor can indeed be made to fit neatly in the back of a 72 Super Beetle without any structural changes. A couple of days with some 50mm sq tube and a mig welder and using the original engine mounts. If you go this route make sure you get the Mitsubishi drive shafts as the inner CV joints seem to be made of unobtanium. This eliminates the need for the original beetle transmission which, in my case, would require a major overhaul costing around Aus $2000.

I have not yet made much progress on getting it running but am hoping that my Toyota Yaris inverter will do the job. I have replaced the control board and made the other modifications written about elsewhere on this forum (a few resistors and capacitors) but have not yet been able to demonstrate that the inverter itself is in working condition. I.e. it doesn’t buzz as expected when I apply 12v to pins 1 and 3. I’m looking for an easy way to test whether it is in fact a working unit or if I have done something wrong with the mods. If it’s not a goer I will probably look for a native inverter.

I am currently working on restoring the rest of the vehicle and, as usual, waiting for the wonderful guys on the forum to solve problems for me!

The Leaf units do look like another good option but they are not readily available downunder.

Chris

To me it would seem like a full Leaf battery pack is quite a lot of weight for a beetle.

I’m working on replacement stub shafts for the leaf gearbox. they’ll have the type 2 and 930 cv bolt patterns, so stock vw axles bolt right up. Goal is for straight forward vw leaf swaps

Not a problem, ‘cos you couldn’t fit a full 24kWh pack in! Apparently we never had the 30kWh packs in Aus and I haven’t seen any 40kWh packs on the local market so I will eventually be looking for a more energy dense battery. At a rough (very) estimate I can potentially fit up to 86 x 70Ah prismatics in for 133kg + boxes and giving a nominal 275v and around 20kWh. All hypothetical of course.

Thanks all, I did look at the outlander rear motor as well but figured a complete leaf would have all matching components. Regarding the batteries I would probably not use the full pack because even the smallest pack weighs around 300kg apparently . If I can get a range of around 50 miles I would be happy to start with. Does anyone know what the gear ratio is on the leaf and outlander units are?

From memory the Outlander is 7.6.

Re batteries, I have completed an install on a 70 beetle for the company I work for, we went down the route of hyper 9, orion BMS and 10 jaguar ipace batteries, about 24 kWh, 6 behind the rear seat and 4 where the fuel tank goes. Total weight of batteries is 120kG. We also put a clutch and bell housing adapter on.
Car sits ok, at first you thrash around using all the gears but we soon just drove it using 3rd and 4th. So if you don't use regen on off throttle you dont need the clutch and bell housing adapters.
To conclude it works and cost a fortune for all the parts but it does put a smile on your face.
I have a full Nissan Leaf 2018 110 kWh stack and will use everything on it including the on board charger, thanks to Damien Maguires fantastic Zombieverter VCU.
Rough guess £10000 cheaper. Probable more reliable and economic to run. Batteries will be ex VW ID 3

celeron55 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 10:11 pm To me it would seem like a full Leaf battery pack is quite a lot of weight for a beetle.

My plan was 30 of the 48 Leaf modules in the Squareback, that would be weight neutral. Adding 10 more is like having a full tank of gas and some junk in the boot. Much of the pack weight on the leaf is the container and bracing, like a LOT of it.