That depends. IMNSHO (In My Not So Humble Opinion), the only two benefits are saving gas, and being green. But even disregarding the cost of the conversion, the limited range that most of the conversions have would completely kill any thoughts of going electric for me (if I need anything beyond Lowe's or Walmart, it is a 120 mile round trip).
Consider this also...how much do you really spend every year on gas, and how many years would it take you to recover the conversion cost?
Although I admit....the DC Plazma guys do make me want to build an electric drag car.
It should also be said this really isn't something an amateur should do. There's a lot more involved in an electric swap than just "an electric motor and some batteries."
You have to work on braking logistics (since your brakes will no longer work off of engine vacuum), account for a now spread of different weight distribution across the vehicle (i.e., potential suspension modifications that no one makes parts for), constantly ensure the wiring setup is in proper working order at all times (you may be making checks daily to every few days of all the wiring layout so as to not cause problems within the system), and ultimately deal with a vehicle that at best may travel 60 MPH with a range of well under 100 miles.
I do like electric conversions however, but would never do one. There's much better options in standard internal combustion engines to achieve whatever goal you desire (fuel mileage, power, etc).
The only electric car capable of going 200 miles on a charge is the Tesla and its like $200K. The elctric Fiero conversions that I have seen only go about 25-30 mioes on a charge and IMO thats terrible performance unless you just want to use it to get around an old age community.
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I am one of those guys who does not care if the car runs on gas, CNP, electric, or unicorn juice. If the car is fast and gets to me where I want to go, things are fine. I keep running the numbers on converting a Fiero to electric, but it keeps coming out to around $20k. My commute to work is 18 miles each way. In normal traffic, that takes me between 45 to 60 mins. By converting to electric and charging at work, I can save $1000/yr in energy cost. I would save 20-30mins by driving in the car pool lane. What kills it for me is the 20 year ROI. Sure, it might be less if gas prices go up. Now if converting the car to electric cost $10k, got 50 miles to a charge, but did 0-60 in 4 seconds, I would be all over it.
yeah, $20k for a reasonable size battery doesn't do it for me. If I was going to do that, I'd just go buy a Leaf for $40k instead. The weight of the fiero and the aerodynamics (or lack there of) would have to be addressed as well, to give it reasonable range.
Fiero84Freak: yeah, not only the vacuum, but the shear weight of the batteries. I saw one writeup of a conversion where the guy really had to beef up the suspension and brakes. He also had to come up with a cooling system for the batteries. If you use a transmission, like I remember another guy did, a manual, it's very difficult to drive a manual when you can't really hear the engine to gauge the rpms. I'd be more interested in a hybrid with a small water-cooled engine. Without the waste heat and extra power of an ICE it's hard to provde decent heating and cooling for defrosting the windsheild and saving your toes and bos.
I am one of those guys who does not care if the car runs on gas, CNG, electric, or unicorn juice. If the car is fast and gets to me where I want to go, things are fine. I keep running the numbers on converting a Fiero to electric, but it keeps coming out to around $20k. My commute to work is 18 miles each way. In normal traffic, that takes me between 45 to 60 mins. By converting to electric and charging at work, I can save $1000/yr in energy cost. I would save 20-30mins by driving in the car pool lane. What kills it for me is the 20 year ROI. Sure, it might be less if gas prices go up. Now if converting the car to electric cost $10k, got 50 miles to a charge, but did 0-60 in 4 seconds, I would be all over it.
Shane, I also once was concerned about ROI. Then I thought about it a bit and questioned why it was a concern. How many things do we typically buy that we expect a ROI for? Real estate is about the only thing that comes to mind. Well, that and stocks. When we bought our Fieros was it for the investment potential? Probably not. Most of us don't use our Fieros as daily drivers which means they weren't purchased as a necessity but rather as a luxury which means they represent extra money that we spent on something that we wanted but didn't need. Also, on the ROI topic is the possibility that you may be under estimating the lifespan of a conversion. I've determined based on the battery data sheet that the pack in my car will likely go well past 252K miles. That's plenty of opportunity to recap the initial investment. So far after 13K miles of use and no indication of capacity or range loss I'm thinking that 252K might just be doable.
On the performance topic I think you are right, you need to drive my car to determine if it runs to your satisfaction. If it doesn't there are a couple of things to consider. You have indicated that you only need half of range that I need. That translates to a 325 pound weight reduction from my existing pack. If you were to use the new AC-75 motor which makes an additional 70 ft-lbs of torque over my AC-50 some of that weight reduction would be offset but you might end up with a Fiero as quick or quicker than an 86 GT 4 speed. The 86 GT was good for about an 8 second 0 - 60 time. I had one and felt that was plenty quick enough.
yeah, $20k for a reasonable size battery doesn't do it for me. If I was going to do that, I'd just go buy a Leaf for $40k instead. The weight of the fiero and the aerodynamics (or lack there of) would have to be addressed as well, to give it reasonable range.
Stubby, I did some research and learned something very interesting. Would you believe that a fastback Fiero has aerodynamics nearly identical to a Nissan Leaf? We have all gotten in the bad habit of quoting only the Cd number for a given car. We say the words "drag coefficient" but we forget the meaning of the word coefficient. The true figure of merit is the CDa. To find it you have to multiply the Cd times the frontal area of the vehicle. The fastback Fiero's Cd is .360 which looks much larger than the .280 number for the Leaf but the Leaf has a much larger frontal area. The Fiero's CDa is 6.75 where as the leaf's is 6.94. The Fiero's CDa is better by 0.19. That is a very small margin but it's still nice to know that the Fiero wins. http://ecomodder.com/wiki/i...ficient_of_Drag_List
Also, I don't know where the $20K number keeps coming from for a battery pack. I bought a 29.6 KWH pack for less than $14K.
Originally posted by PePe-LePu_For_2: Also, I don't know where the $20K number keeps coming from for a battery pack. I bought a 29.6 KWH pack for less than $14K.
It should also be said this really isn't something an amateur should do. There's a lot more involved in an electric swap than just "an electric motor and some batteries."
You have to work on braking logistics (since your brakes will no longer work off of engine vacuum), account for a now spread of different weight distribution across the vehicle (i.e., potential suspension modifications that no one makes parts for), constantly ensure the wiring setup is in proper working order at all times (you may be making checks daily to every few days of all the wiring layout so as to not cause problems within the system), and ultimately deal with a vehicle that at best may travel 60 MPH with a range of well under 100 miles.
I do like electric conversions however, but would never do one. There's much better options in standard internal combustion engines to achieve whatever goal you desire (fuel mileage, power, etc).
Fiero84Freak, I guess I missed this posting from you. I should have mentioned that my conversion can go 97MPH and has gone 105 miles on a single charge. Does this sound a bit more appealing?
The only electric car capable of going 200 miles on a charge is the Tesla and its like $200K. The elctric Fiero conversions that I have seen only go about 25-30 mioes on a charge and IMO thats terrible performance unless you just want to use it to get around an old age community.
Check out Tesla's web site. The new ones are around $80,000. I can't buy one here in MI, thanks to our Governor. But if you check the specs on their model S it's equal to if not better than the Corvette. That's a 7 passenger vehicle. The price is also comparable to the Corvette, some where on here I posted the price comparison between the two.
Ha! Dennis wrote that comment in 2012. There is no industry that is changing quicker than the battery industry. Your comment will be out of date by June!....
What's a 7 passenger vehicle?
[This message has been edited by Gall757 (edited 03-19-2015).]
Ha! Dennis wrote that comment in 2012. There is no industry that is changing quicker than the battery industry. Your comment will be out of date by June!....
What's a 7 passenger vehicle?
I don't know for sure how they fit that 7th passenger in, but that's what the model S says.
Yep, Elon Musk has four kids and didn't think it would be appropriate for him to build a family car his family couldn't fit in. Seating for seven was a requirement from the get-go.
[This message has been edited by thesameguy (edited 03-19-2015).]
two summers ago, my alternator died about 1.5 hours from home. I drove about 1/2 hour on battery. Car had more power since the alternator was now acting like a free pulley. I got towed to a near by Autozone and charged up my battery for an hour and bought a 2nd battery. I hooked up both batteries in parallel and drove another hour home. Luckily this was during the day. A week later I brought my car to the dyno, still on batter power but I had charged them up at home. My car made about 8 rwhp and 11 ft*lbs of torque more than before. I'd even take it to work and let it trickle charge with some solar panel kits I bought from Harbor Freight.
Converting to electric water pumps also restore about 7 to 11 rwhp and a similar amount of torque from your accessory losses.
For a while I considered cutting out the center section of the front hood to in-lay a 100 watt solar panel and also one flat on the rear hood and eliminate the needs for an alternator all together. This was for my 'race' Fiero. I had raced most of that summer on battery power using the two batteries in parallel. I seemed to get almost 2 hours of use out of them. Helped my fuel economy and obviously power level.
Then I thought further - what about the cam and valve train? How much energy is turning that taking away from this process? Why couldn't someone design ceramic heads with cast-iron (or aluminum) combustion chambers with valves that actuate via electro-magnetism? Now that would be one efficient engine.
Combine this with thermo-electric generators to recoup heat losses as electricity and you'd have one powerful engine for the same displacement... I actually can't believe we are still using cams to open valves..
If you're converting a Fiero to electric to save the cost of save, you'll pretty much never recoup the cost. You COULD convert it to electric to make it faster?
There' a guy doing an EV conversion on a VW bus, and he somehow got ahold of what appear to be older Tesla Roadster batteries.
Check out Tesla's web site. The new ones are around $80,000. I can't buy one here in MI, thanks to our Governor. But if you check the specs on their model S it's equal to if not better than the Corvette. That's a 7 passenger vehicle. The price is also comparable to the Corvette, some where on here I posted the price comparison between the two.
You can go buy one in Chicago, Indianapolis, Columbus or Cleveland. There were 4 or 5 running around metro Detroit when I left.
We took one to lunch a couple days ago, the back seat is as spacious as other modern sedans.