[Driving] VW LT 35 with GS300h (L210) + Ioniq 5 Battery 650V

[Marvin]

Hej everyone,

I’d like to officially introduce my project, now that it’s becoming more reliable — and since I’ve recently moved closer to the workshop, I can finally spend more time working on it.

The Vehicle
It’s a 1993 Volkswagen LT (Lastentransporter), originally powered by a six-cylinder diesel engine putting out a mighty 51 kW. I bought it in 2021, just before starting my first job in Denmark, under the excuse that it was cheaper to buy than rent for the move.
After driving about 10,000 km between Denmark and Germany at a full-throttle 90 km/h (and 90 dB…), the engine gave up in late 2022. That’s when my brother convinced me to just electrify it instead of swapping in another noise machine. (Every LT driver knows it stands for Laut & Teuer – loud and expensive!) 


The Conversion So Far
I was familiar with GS450h conversions, and at the time, Damian’s work on the GS300h caught my attention. I sourced a GS300h motor and inverter, mounted them in the van, and began the long journey. Progress was slow since I lived 1,000 km away from the vehicle, but I kept collecting parts and refining the setup — multiple LV-VCU wiring versions later, I’m finally happy with the result.
The motor is mounted using the original LT gearbox mount at the rear, while the front is supported by a laser-cut steel plate and a pair of Peugeot motor mounts.
The inverter currently sits beside the motor on the driver’s side but will move soon to the passenger side to make space for the battery pack. The battery will be split between the original fuel-tank area, the driver-side underbody, and possibly the old engine bay if more capacity is needed.

Components
* Battery: 30 × Hyundai Mobis modules (≈ 72 kWh). Hoping for around 200 km range and decent fast-charging capability. All in series. In future if all works super well and I have weight capacity to spare I might go double or lower the voltage but upper the capacity, let’s see. For now it stays at it is.
* Cooling: Roll-bonded cooling plates from an electric truck conversion company; they fit well enough to support liquid cooling in the vehicle to make fast charging possible..
* DC/DC: 2.5 kW Coloumb unit from eBay — after signing an NDA, I received the DBC files, but I still need to figure out how to make it work.
* OBC: Porsche Taycan unit (for 650 V support). I’ll tackle that once the BMS is sorted — no need to burn down the shop!
* BMS: Working with a WDR Automatising BMS on the Ioniq 5 modules; verifying functionality before building the boxes. But it is happening somewhat in parallel.
* Power steering: Volvo electric system with an AN-fitting adapter — works great! Just waiting to connect CAN control to the Zombie.
* Vacuum pump: Golf pump (first one fried, second one hopefully luckier), which will also control the selectable locker from an LT2 4×4.(I swapped the rear axle, after I got stuck once)

Next Steps
1. Diagnose MG2: Sometimes it works perfectly, sometimes not. After redoing the resolver plugs it ran great, but after swapping 12 V batteries, MG2 stopped cooperating and even tried to go in reverse… Hoping for some “magic recovery.”
2. Finalize BMS setup: Verify WDR BMS operation with rearranged Ioniq 5 modules before final battery assembly. This will be a milestone, has someone experience with that setup.
3. Relay integration:
Has anyone successfully reused the Ioniq relay box (similar to the sBox) for such a setup?
I’d love to use it for its clean integration, but I assume we’d need a CAN log to make it work. Alternatively, I could transplant the beefier components into the sBox. Any experience or advice would be greatly appreciated!
4. Throttle: Confirm that my VW T6 gas-pedal potentiometer is reliable — might switch to shielded wiring for good measure.
5. DC/DC + OBC: Get both units communicating.
6. Finalize vacuum and power-steering systems.
7. Everything I forgot…
Thanks for reading — and big respect to everyone contributing to this field.
I’ll keep you posted as things progress.

Cheers,
 Marvin & happy building.

Not sure how to post a video but It does indeed drive. But MG1 has so little power, therefore MG2 must work.

[Jacobsmess]

Amazing, I had planned on a gs450h into a Mercedes 310D that shared a lot of components and qualities (loud and slow) with these vans but the rust was too much work for me so I sold the van and replaced it with a 2005 VW T5 that im electrifying. I look forward to seeing the results with the GS300H. So you are running your whole system at 650V?

[cajamatt]

nice find with that cooling plate! what are you planning for thermal paste between that and the ioniq modules?
I also have a WDR automisering BMS that i have wired and I'm probably going to fire up this week or next, so i'll be following along with your progress. I'm a CAN noob.
It was unclear to me, are you starting at 650V with the full ioniq pack or cutting it in half to ~400V levels or something like that?

[Marvin]

Yes, the plan is to keep all 30 modules in series for 650V i think this is the best way to make this an actually usable van as it will be able to fast charge. I will either reuse the original thermal compound. But they are also sold by ESDI or similar.

For testing i am just running a few modules so currently i am at 170V.

Learning about CAN integration will be an endeavor but i am confident that it will make sense to me at one point just need to get to it.

[Heye]

Hey Marvin,

what a great project! I drive an LT28 myself (which, likely, won't be that well suited for a conversion because of the lower weight limit). Going for 650V is also a really interesting approach. I'm going to follow this thread closely.

Good luck!