Hi everybody.
I have a Hyundai Sonata that has a dead motor. I am hoping that this will do as a car that I can use to convert to electric. Questions I have are many. Is it too heavy? Is there an electric motor powerful enough to make it run well. I am not after something that will break the sound barrier. Just a great little car that runs OK around town.
It will be a shame to throw away this car as except for the motor, it’s a top car to drive.
Any chance on some feedback please?
You can convert it, no problem, but it may not perfect or easy (like a pickup truck) , but no reason you couldn’t put together a budget and plan out a way to make it fit your needs.
Make a list of the data you need: weights, costs, specs,
and a list of what you want its limitations to be.
Obtain and organize all the info to see if you like the bottom line enough to do the conversion.
I am doing that right now for my 1991 S10 pickup, just collecting and scribbling down what I want it to do. I want it to be a minimal conversion to make it happen as quick as possible to reap the rewards as soon as possible, especially if gas prices go way up again. I feel like its a race against time before the next crazy-gas-price “storm” blows in, so I am not held hostage by the price of gas.
[I]Is there an electric motor powerful enough to make it run well.[/I]
is it manual/auto transmission? If it is too big and heavy, it is just going to be expensive and not really accomplish ‘as green as’ a smaller vehicle would…
Yes, the biggest question is whether it is automatic or manual. Manual is almost a must, unless you want to engineer a lot of custom parts. For a first conversion, you want to keep it simple. If you’re intent on really doing this, it’s best to buy a book that is written well and has all the pertinent information in one place. You can go crazy searching the internet.
I bought and read Mike Brown’s “Convert It”. I would give it 1 1/2 thumbs up. It is a little bit dated, however, it is a really good primer, and believe it or not, the fundamentals haven’t changed very much over the past 30 years.
There’s lots of other criteria to consider. There are ideal situations for particular applications. So, if you were to post EXACTLY what you expect out of the car, someone should be able to tell you if it was feasible.
