I have a 1971 Super Beetle that I’ve been wanting to convert but I have no idea on what my best options would be. I’ve been mainly looking at kits as I’m not afraid to work on it myself. EV West seems high quality but it is just out of my price range and honestly I am not looking for anything high performance. As long as the car works close to stock then I am happy. I have also been looking at the cheap conversion kits from China (I can link in comments if allowed) but I am worried about the range and can’t find any posts of anyone using them. Any ideas?
Gotta take the usual stance and say, after years of recommending them and endorsing them, screw EV West. They sent basically every single part defective to someone in the community, and then ghosted them for months, pretended not to be in the office, wouldn’t answer emails, etc. Tens of thousands of dollars in junk.
I’ll never trust or endorse them again, and I make an effort to warn others against them.
They’re overpriced too, but, no more than any other retailer.
A Bug is about the easiest, most common, and most traditional EV conversion out there. You can choose from dozens of other’s projects to follow.
You have awesome access, you don’t need a lot of power, it’s so common you can buy the few custom parts you need for pretty cheap since people have run batches of them before.
If I was doing it, and budget-conscious…
Probably pay $50 from a wrecking yard for a Gen 2 or Gen 3 Prius inverter, $150 for a motor/transaxle out of the same, gas pedal, power steering, even A/C from the same, a replacement control board from the fine folks at OpenInverter or EVBMW, connect whatever batteries I felt like buying when the time was right, $30 (last year $15 black friday sale) contactors from BatteryHookup, and that should pretty much do it.
Should get it done under $4k, range dependent naturally.
That or an old forklift motor for $150 and do it the way everyone did back in 2010. I don’t even know that that’s any cheaper nowadays though.