r/EVConversion

I know this is probably a stupid question but why cant you basically just remove the drive shaft off an axle and either bolt on an electric motor solid to the axle where the drive shaft input would normally be, or have a frame mounted motor with its own shaft that goes to the original existing mounting point for the drive shaft? Would you maybe need a step down gearing? I can clarify in the comments if I did not explain what I am asking properly.

I have my 3 main choices. Torque e-bikes. AMPX e-bikes and blazeebikes.com.

Are these good choices and are they trustworthy?

If not, what are some better alternatives?

I know its possible to run certain engines at lower voltage. Iirc the leaf can run at less than 200v with a zombieverter. At a loss of max rpm.

Question is, in that case wouldn't it be better off to mount to the transmission as the higher gears would allow a higher speed without needing 400v battery setup? I know there would ve some power loss and lack of regenerative breaking in automatic transmissions but is that even a factor?

I purchased a chassis from a never driven Lordestown Endurance EV truck. It has the VCU, battery management unit, motors, wheels and batteries and charging tech. No cab or heads up display or other electronics.

I am attempting to reverse engineer the software for the VCU and use for a custom VCU. The included VCU is a m560 from OpenECU. I attempted to obtain flashing software (NewEagle.net) to re-write the VCU, but was told they only sell $9K a year commercial license, no individual or hobby license and wasn't interested in helping.

I will be using either a custom VCU i will make using a Teensy 4.1 or buying a ZombieVerter VCU or similar. That is not the hard part. The part I am stuck at is the Power Control Unit interface. It comes with a E-Powertrain Technology Co, Ltd and is manufactured from LgMagma but they have no public info about their units as they usually make custom ones for EV manufacturers. This means the CAN Protocol and commands are likely proprietary and not easily found. It must follow some CAN specific commands for diganostics and such, but there is no info on the pinouts, or nothing. I have contacted LG, but you can guess where that will likely get me.

Lastly, I will need the CAN messages and commands to interface with the motors. They likely work through the PCU but may have a Motor Control Unit separate.

How would you go about finding the commands for the PCU to charge, sleep, etc. Motor commands, etc?

I’m currently repairing an Xpeng G9 where the curtain airbags in the roof have deployed after an accident.

This is my first time repairing a damaged Xpeng, so I’m trying to understand how the system works after airbag deployment.

On VW ID.3/ID.4 cars I’ve repaired before, the HV battery pyrofuse often blows during a crash and needs replacement before the car will drive again.

My questions are:

• Does the Xpeng G9 have a similar pyrofuse / battery safety fuse setup?
• Is there a crash disconnect inside the HV battery pack?
• Or is the vehicle mainly locked by the airbag control module (ACU/SRS module) after deployment?
• Can the airbag module simply be reset/reprogrammed?
• Has anyone here repaired a G9 after airbag deployment?
• Any common modules or components that fail after a crash?

The airbags deployed are mainly the roof curtain airbags.

Trying to understand the correct repair path before I start replacing unnecessary parts.

Any information, wiring diagrams, service manual info, or real-world experience would be greatly appreciated.

Im starting my first EV build. Currently there is no local company that can assist so im turning to red for advice. Obviously there is alot to consider so im asking for advice, hidden cost, mistakes anyone has made and things you didn’t consider. The plan is to build a commuter to work and back. Also high volt vs low volt recommendations. Any and all advice would be helpful.

hey folks

per the title, how would you go about adding electric drive to a rear diff in a live axle vehicle without losing the ability for the existing drivetrain to drive the rear diff?

I want to add hybrid drive to a 4x4. I've considered an electric transaxle of some sort but they all are pretty huge and wouldn't fit up front without sump clearance issues. I don't want to make it front-wheel-drive when running on fossil fuels or otherwise lose the ability to have true 4-wheel-drive with lockable diffs, either. The perfect solution would be electric drive added to the transfer case, either on the input or output (input would let me put the transfer in neutral and use the motor to charge the batteries while stationary... not needed but nice to have), that would both allow me to drive all 4 wheels, or just the rear if the transfer case is in 2wd, and use regenerative charging when braking or all the time while driving with the combustion engine to charge.

I'm hoping there's a fairly compact motor out there with an ideal shape for being placed in line with the existing drive shaft output on the back of the transfer case. It doesn't need to be enormously powerful but it would need to handle transmitting the force of both drive systems through it. I can work with a motor I'd need to have machined or modified, but I'm not up to designing and building a motor to suit from scratch, either skill- or cost-wise.

I'd also appreciate a heads up on what sort of controller I should look at for this sort of thing. I imagine I need it to support a couple of modes for regenerative charging and whatnot

Ta <3

Hear me out: you can electrify a gas vehicle, but if I were to get a cheap Nissan leaf with no range left, what stops me from replacing the battery and high voltage electronics as if it were a gas car, and keeping the motor and motor controller?

Is this a stupid idea?

What are the pros and cons of High Volt Vehicles vs Low volt system Vehicles.

Hi guys, I'm the proud owner of an electric MG previously posted here, and I've realized it's time for another one.

I'm going to be wholesale swapping an IONIQ 5 drivetrain, 77kWh RWD probably, into a 1991 F250. I've towed things with my ioniq 5 that it was never intended to tow, for long distances, so I am quite confident the propulsion and cooling systems in this car are up for powering a truck. I also own one that I can run experiments on and check things on, and am already broadly familiar with the systems in this car, so it's the obvious choice.

The track width is about bang on, so the plan is to fabricate a de dion for the back, re-use the original rear wheel hubs and half shafts.

Battery pack will be repackaged to fit between the frame rails under the cab and bed, with custom cooling plates to get the original thermal management solution of the IONIQ 5. I may do a split battery pack with some under the hood, tbd, have not done the full weight distribution math.

The big question is whether the front motor is also worth swapping to get AWD. It would be very complicated and while I am comfortable dealing with HV, sniffing/reverse engineering CAN and so on, fully fabricating a new front suspension is really outside my comfort zone. One idea I had was to swap the entire front subframe and suspension from an ioniq 5 with spacers to lift it and fabricate new strut mounts on the F250 frame, so at least all the fab is fixed/copying points over from the I5, but this seems not ideal from a ground clearance, ride height, suspension travel perspective. Another idea is to keep the TTB axle on the F250 and drive the diff with the front motor somehow, but the reduction gearing and diff in the ioniq 5 is too integrated into the front motor to make this possible.

Overall, probably RWD only is the way to go.

Regarding electrical integration: I've spent some hours going through the service manual. This car is not particularly highly integrated and has dedicated CANbusses for different systems. The plan would be to carry over basically everything: ICU, VCU, IBU, IEB charging hardware, etc. Obviously, leave ADAS behind (car doesn't care about this) and maybe braking and electric power steering depending on how integrated they are.

Some interesting points:

* From some spoofing experiments on my own car, the instrument cluster is purely a CANbus interpreter and could be relatively easily replaced with custom dash hardware to drive stock gauges and probably a couple of new gauges or small screens (this would be custom).

* The propulsion system has some PWM signals from the airbag controller that can easily be spoofed and the correct states are documented in the service manual. The car also drives without these, of course.

* The car drives without wheel speed sensors but you lose ABS and ESC and traction control. I would likely borrow the brake system from the IONIQ 5 as it has a fairly traditional clevis to the brake pedal that bolts through the firewall, just with an extra dual-channel pot on the brake pedal as well (plus a brake pedal switch). I also intend to run an experiment to see if my car broadly drives and behaves (regen??) with the IEB fuse pulled, in case I might go a more traditional route with the brakes.

* Also need to run a similar to experiment with the electric power steering fuse pulled. I do not want the highly integrated EPS from the ioniq 5 (it has a motor right on the rack). There's a dedicated module for this system that HOPEFULLY can be skipped.

* The thermal management system is quite complex but could broadly be dumped straight into the engine bay. I have already reverse engineered the compressor control scheme on my car and can spin the compressor on a bench (if anyone wants details, DM me - it's literally a can message at 100Hz 1 bit/RPM, and you can command it 600-6k RPM). I would probably repackage some of the HVAC bits under the F250 dash. Hopefully it works without all the blend door motors and pots connected.

* The push button start is "dumb" and is momentary buttons and an immobilizer antenna to a separate module. This could be repackaged into the key cylinder area easily enough with the momentary presses spoofed.

* Connector P/Ns are documented throughout and broadly are available on AliExpress and similar... HV ones slightly less than LV. Broadly, I'd do fresh LV harnessing and extended stock HV harnessing. Obviously, the biggest challenge of doing a conversion this way is the massive amounts of custom harnessing required, but I think it's quite doable: ultimately 4 or so CANbusses, a bunch of discretes to traditional systems, a few discretes between various ECUs for safety critical or security critical signals, and a bunch of power distribution.

* All the peripherals of the car are "dumb" (turn signals and so on). They're mostly driven by the ICU (smart fuse box, basically) which has access to all the CAN busses and drives signals appropriately from either discrete inputs or messages on the busses.

Overall, I feel the E-GMP platform has a lot going for conversions and just hasn't had anyone touch it yet. I've spent some time sniffing the busses and I think everything is unusually simple for such a new platform.

Poke holes in my plan please.