Car Electrical Motor

Were you thinking of a very long power cord, or some type of electrical storage device to energize this motor?

What year is your car? What color is it?

Yellow , 1.2 L , 1972

For a do-it-yourself type of effort, you might try to find a used electric forklift motor and a smaller version of forklift battery. Golf-cart technology would be similar, but probably would not give a good combination of speed/power.

I understand that there are several tens of thousands DIY EVs (electrical vehicles). I would imagine there are some user groups devoted to this, but I don't personally know of any particulars. If you search around on the Web, you might find some good info. Good luck!

Thank you Sir for your answer but I think the fork lift motor will be too slow and I think to run the car at least at 60 km/hr which may be not applicable for the fork lift and Golf-cart.

You are right about general forklift gear ratios, which would be too slow. But the horsepower is reasonably decent, if you can find a higher gear ratio. This is not likely to be standard, and thus may involve some tinkering. If you can get "hooked up" with other enthusiasts on the Web, these problems may already have been solved, or at least good progress made. Once again, wishes for success.

I too would recommend the salvaged electric forklift parts DIY approach but should you go on to any of the EV forums watch out!

A lot of those guys are total off grid certifiable nut jobs and if you are not going to use what they use, live the way they live, and dam the practicality and expense of it all you might as well crawl back under the rock they think you came from. Also beware many of them don't take kindly to practical applied physics and electrical engineering principals either.

If yo don't mind doing a fair amount of shopping around for a decent EV forum you should eventually find a fair group to help you with your concepts and ideas although many of us here would love the chance to help out as well!

You should source as much of the forklift as possible, including the charger & controller

you can then fit a custom battery pack

You are most likely going have to retrofit most of the drive train from a front wheel drive car into your beetle to make it work. At that point you are just replacing the IC engine with an electric one. From there you just have to match the motor speed to the corresponding engine speed the car originally had.

I had a electric car for a few years and all that had was a stock forklift traction motor in place of the original gas engine and it could easily do 110+ KMH. Being that most forklift drive motors work in the same RPM ranges as small car engines they are a good fit.

Your over all speed, range, and power are all dependant on what size of motor and battery bank you have.

Thank You Sir for your answer,

But from your experience what is the range of specification of the electric motor and batteries shall I ask to? and what is the average period can the car work on the 80 km/hr speed?

You can roughly estimate that 3 hp electric is equivalent to 5 HP IC. So if your stock engine was 50 hp your electric would need to be around 30 hp.

Actual driving conditions and weight of the vehicle will determine how far you get on a charge.

My EV could do around 20 miles on a charge at 65 MPH on level ground and no wind or over 60 miles at 30 MPH or less.

With a beetle that has its stock engine you are going to have trouble fitting enough battery's into it to ever get much range out of it.

Here is a link to the more popular used and reliable electric motors for cars. This company also has a good product and some products that are the same as Sepex. Here's one more. Notice they ain't cheep and there is limited manufacturing, reliably any way. Batteries and controllers are also a major concern for matching and efficiency. Of course Google these resources and as Tcmtec has mentioned you do have to be careful in the forums for some of these enthusiasts. I've seen some really bad ideas trying to be implemented. Huge waste of time and money. Find reliable sources of information, take your time to research tried and true products and methods. It's a growing industry with the usual growing pains and companies falling by the way side. Just in looking for the old bookmarked links for you I found three no longer in business!

Batteries are a whole other issue and again, really do research as they have their own temperamental characteristics and there are many sizes and "types" to choose from as space, weight and range is always an issue. That's all I'm going to say about it as there are many pro's and cons to a conversion. I've helped a college student here make some conversions to where now it's a full time job for him. But he does his home work and does very well with his conversion projects, mostly Vdubs actually. Good luck with yours.

A lot of people have converted Beetles to electric (here is one), but this usually simply involves replacing the IC engine with an electric motor and adding a couple of batteries, and is pretty straightforward. What you are proposing is not straightforward.

You would have to virtually re-build the whole of the front-end and, as tcmtech says, fitting the drive-train from a front-wheel drive car might be the only way, but even this might not be easy. If you had the super beetle (with McPherson struts) it might be easier, but I think yours has the old torsion-bar arrangement, so it might be difficult to bolt a new drive-train/suspension in.

Furthermore, there is not a lot of room at the front of a beetle, as you probably know. I'm not sure where you would put a 30hp motor and batteries. It would also make an already heavy car even heavier.

It seems to me you are looking at an expensive and complicated conversion. What would be the benefits, and would they be worthwhile?

Dear Sir,

After reading a lot about this I think your mind is better and much easier to but elec motor insted than the IC engine and thank you for your answer.

I would rip out motor and turn completely electric. No need to waste space with gas engine when ur talking electric, electric engine run the car to good speed and better efficiency. Put motor in back and cells up front. Other than that ur running tight on space. But at least put european bumpers on it nice chrome accents and that would be really cool

At the speed of 60km, you would best be served using a 10-15HP 3 phase AC motor running at 48V DC with an inverter. DC motors are not as efficient as 3 Phase AC.

We started exploring AC tech on our electric boats before the business went under with the economic issues in the US. One of the engineers has kept pace with pursuing the AC way and has built several prototypes and I understand he is now selling a few units. As for your Bug, I see some major obstacles trying to drive the front wheels.

It may be much easier to go 100% electric and replace the ICE with the electric motor. Or get a front wheel car, keep that in tact and change the rear end, install a differential and depending on the gear ratios, you may be able to direct couple the electric motor to the yoke of the pumpkin. Put all components in the boot area. It will be an engineering feat to do, but is quite doable mechanically. As for controls, you can mount all the controls on the steering wheel to control the electric motor.

Depending on how much time/distance you want to cover will determine how many batteries in series/parallel combination you will need. If you are covering a short distance, you can use 4 4D batteries, if you want to cover many miles you can add 8 4D's. Also the weight of these batteries are 153 Lbs each which you also need to take into your computations for distance/time.

I wish you the best if you choose to take on this project and ask that you keep us informed on your progress.

Several years ago I wanted to take a FWD station wagon and convert the ICE to electric, and drop in a fully blown 454, 4 speed in the rear, with a Ford 9" rear end, 3:11 gears in pumpkin. I never got past the design stage when life got busy for me. Now, I am thinking of just doing 100% electric now with gas hitting $3.60/G and will not drop to what it once was.

Dear Sir,

for me to convert a car from IC engine to Elec engine for me is very practical and very good for the environment and it can be developed later even thou I don't have a serious problem for me in the Petrol the Gallon about 1$ but it's a Good step for me to made and to publish in my country which is extremely practise in my town.

But I want to ask about the batteries if i have for example 30 hp elec engine and speed 60 mile/hr and I want batteries for about 150 mile which kind is better and how many batteries is needed?

Do you have a budget? You're going to need a motor, a motor controller and up to 700 pounds of batteries to get somewhere around 40 mile range if you use lead acid batteries. If you use batteries like the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf or Tesla you're going to need 10-12K for JUST the battery. Even if you save money here and there your project will easily blow through 6K. 6K will buy a LOT of gas at a dollar a gallon.

Just curious, why do you want to chop up an old car and go through all the hassle? Is this a project for fun or do you think electric is a coming wave that you want to be a part of?

For me I think for my needs the elec Car is very practical and I chose an old VW because it's very cheap in my country comparing with the new cars and I think it's easier to change it more than the new cars with the new systems.

ya its a good idea, but may i know how will you transfer the drive to front wheel.and if you wiil be able to transmit the drive than is it possible to get the same speed and same torque on the all wheel in the same time.

try this organization, there was another one I saw a while back but cannot remember where I found it. these folks would be able to direct you.

http://www.electricauto.org/

if i were you then i would let the motor generait electric and connect the electric motor to the gearbox. If you let the gas motor run on constant 1800 rpm then you can get more out of it as a 3 ph generator. let the generator charge a battery pack, maybe have 2 sets of cells, you charge one and drive on the other.

i bought an old Cushman at an auction and my sons took the electric motor and put it in a Ford Pinto even applied an alternator to charge the batteries over the rear wheels.

going up hill uses the batteries and down hilll charges them

i think it is was 48 volt dc motor

You can use the motor for braking, and pump that energy back into the battery. Inverter and 3-phase 380V makes good sense. You need to set the inverter up for the V/Hz rating of the motor plus a percentage 'boost' at the low end (example 7.6V/Hz,+7.6V at 0.1Hz), Use a DC brake chopper when the DC bus voltage gets high, as Japanese trains do, to conserve energy. Good luck with your project. At least you don't have a VW Beetle with two rear windows and a screaming gearbox!

If you could send to me a cirucit for the control I will be very happy.

thanks