I looked into this a while ago— one of the barriers was finding suitable cars to use for the donor body. Ideally you want something with high mileage, so that the engine/transmission are basically worthless, but where the body is in good shape as far as rust, paint, etc. You also probably want RWD for ease of integration.

Finding an old car body is probably the least complex part of this though. There are thousands of decent bodies with junk motors in every state in the US. The barrier is batteries. Batteries are monumentally expensive, especially if you aren't buying them used from scrap vehicles.

I think it depends a lot what you're buying. If you want an 80kWh pack like a Tesla, then yeah, that's going to be $10k or whatever, but a lot of BEV conversion projects are looking more at an around-town car anyway, where a 50km range might be adequate, especially as a starting point while you get everything else working.

So yeah, if that's your target, then you can build a much smaller and cheaper pack out of prismatic cells, eg:

https://evsource.com/collections/calb-1/products/calb-100ah

So like, 20 of those is $2800 and would get you 6.4kWh (range of like 30-40km).

Renault Espace had (has?) a plastic body.

> if you have the time and skills to do so.

Or the cash?

Are there companies that will convert your favorite car to electric, or is that just too much of a liability minefield in the USA?

Certainly you can contact some of these companies to get quotes but it's so costly to convert classic vehicles that you might as well just go buy a recent electric car like a Bolt or Focus. It's mostly a cost thing. Also you need to consider the cost of the motor / type and especially (and this is the most important bit) the battery pack. If you're looking to install something like a Tesla battery pack you're probably looking at $10k at least for the pack alone. Could be wrong, but worth looking into local shops - there aren't many that have the expertise that I'm aware of outside evwest and electricgt. I'd be happy to hear of more

I will say that I've gotten a quote for an entire conversion kit that includes a Tesla Model S battery pack, motor, controllers, custom couplers for about $20k for my Jeep Wrangler. It's obviously not going to get good range since the Jeep is a giant box but all things considered I paid about 7500 for my old jeep to restore so $20k on top of that is basically a brand new Jeep (and quite a bit cheaper than brand new high end electric vehicles and hybrids). So, not completely out of the question

I'm sure it costs a fortune, but having a classic car that can still get around once all the gas pumps are gone would be a pretty cool thing even if it's only a rich-people thing:

https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/news/a3...

Kind of makes sense though? Teslas start at 30k, and you’re not paying them for the fancy bodywork.

My last car cost less than $10,000. I think this may be beyond my means.

Relative to car prices, converting them is not that expensive when done on a budget. Converted mini-cooper at 4k all in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRnFzklXi4o&list=RDCMUCfV0_w...

I have two door 89 Honda Accord I plan to get running again next year. For a while I thought it would be fun to add electric motors to the back wheels. Give a little boost off the line or maybe experiment with adding a little push around corners.

After seeing the prices for electric motors I'm probably just going to get it running instead.