Converting Petrol Car to battery.

Unless you are doing this as some sort of project of passion, then it is a waste of time and money and it will break you.

You'd have to get a good scrapped EV and re-engineer all the parts to fit your jeep. That or have a company specialising in that do the conversion for you.

If you think buying an EV for 50k is too expensive, wait until you see the bill for a custom conversion. Anyway, most of the cost of an EV is the battery, and whatever the advertised range of whatever car the powertrain was orignially designed for, you can cut it in half for a heavy, unaerodynamic jeep body.

Throwing enough money into it, it could be done. But even at that you have a vehicle that is a custom build - it is largely unservicable and unwarrantyable since it will be a made up concoction of different parts from different manufacturers. It'll be worth next to nothing because there would be lettle or no market for it.

All the engineering aside, you'd really struggle to get insurance for it. I don't know if its even possible. They are very strict nowadays.

Even getting NCT might not be feasible.

An LPG conversion might be an option for you? Not sure if the infrastructure is there to cope but there’s two garages near me (UK) that are doing really good business converting diesels over.

How handy are you @donalh087 and what exactly is your Jeep ?

Here is a guy who converted his own old car to EV in his yard. Gives a good idea of what's involved for a simple older car

Also google "Damien Maguire", he's an Irish electronics engineer who has been converting his own cars for about 12-13 years and who reverse engineers available components like Toyota hybrid stuff and provides the info all open source and also gives courses in how to convert your own car

Yeah, but doing it DIY for those fellas it is almost a way of life for them. If the OP has a life to be getting on with, throwing into the very, very complex work of EV engineering is just not a realisitic proposition.

We're not dealing with a 1985 Ford Escort here where you could read a Haynes manual of a sunday evening and dig a socket set out of the shed and have a different engine in it the following sunday.

DIYing EVs would take literally years to learn. Look at yer man Ruch Rebuilds with his refurbishing and stuff with Teslas and bits of them. That fella is a genius, and wealthy from his social media activity on it, EVs are a way of life for him, and more often than not he is banging his head against a wall dealing with anything on a Tesla. Unservicable. Unrepairable. Even if you know what you are doing and have loads and loads of money to throw at it.

LMAO at that lad with the cement mixer motor in the Sierra. That is just backyard tinkering with is neither going to be drivable, insuraable nor NCTable.

For a commercial conversion which provides you with a converted EV that is drivable, has a usable range, can be insured, can be NCTed, and is reliable, you are probably going to have to pay well over the cost of the average EV purchase price.

You have to understand that a conversion like this is almost a bespoke bumper to bumper re-engineering of the car and very very labour intensive with educated, skilled technicians which means super duper expensive. That is why the services of such companies is largely the preserve of collectors and coportate customers who want show pieces and have plenty money.

LMAO at €6k for a conversion. You wouldn't by the average range battery pack for that money, let alone have a roadworthy car for it!!

But is it practical for daily driving?

Range?

Performance?

Charge time?

Reliability and robustness?

Insurance & NCT?

For €1000, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. At the end of the day if a conversion could be done for a few thousand quid sure everyone would be doing it.

Either way, even if you do pay the bumper bill for a full roadworthy and drivable conversion, do no be expecting the range, performance and charge time to be comparable to a that of the average commercially available EV. All facets of performance are likely to be substantially inferior than an EV bought off the forecourt. Unless you are willing to throw more money again into upgrading some of the components to a much higher spec to compete.

It would be a very expensive project to take on. And a conversion company is not going to take on a job unless they are confident that you have the ability to pay for it. As i said before, if you are telling them that you want to convert because buying a regulat EV is unaffordable, you'll be laughed out of the office.

Yep, can't argue with any of that @Girl Geraldine.

There is a company in Wales that have converted several Irish reg cars too, but even a basic low range, no fast charging conversion of a very simple car, like a FIAT 500, would likely cost GBP20-30k (they are quite shy about pricing). They do deliver top class results though. They have also started selling complete conversion kits to the trade for some suitable classic cars like the original Mini.

There are companies in France who offer conversions for about €7-8k for a few basic old small cars, the government adds a subsidy so the cost to the end user is in the order of €4-5k. We just need a lot more companies to do this sort of stuff for the pricing to come down.

Pretty much all those questions are answered in the first episode of the series he did on them. Yes, he put the car through the NCT and it passed, yes can be driven daily. Motor tax is €120 like any other EV. It can do motorway speed and it has a practical range of about 65km (no fast charging). I have it fully comp insured as a classic car directly with one of the biggest insurers in Ireland for just over €200. It's pretty robust and reliable but the charger died on me and no, you can't just ring Damien Maguire (or pretty much anyone else in the country) to come fix it, even if you paid them 😁

He got some parts cheaper than market value really and he left the relatively expensive charger in it, so €1000 didn't quite do it, but you get the picture. Also it was a car that was about to be scrapped 4 years ago. Now it is still driving around with zero emissions and almost exclusively charged from the sun.

I see. Not very practical for daily use. Much a curiosity and pet project.

I am just being realistic with you. You are not going to get a quality conversion suitable for day-in day-out driving with performance comparable with a regular EV for less than the price of a second hand leaf.

I am not trying to be insulting. I am just trying to show you that you are massively underestimating the complexity, specialist engineering and cost of what you are hoping to do.

I mean, if it was a genuine classic car of some note that you were doing up as a showpiece project, fair enough, but a 00 reg jeep just because you think it is too good to leave blocking a gap in the ditch, honestly, it just doesn't make sense.

I don't know the details, I obviously didn't do the conversion myself and I don't think those systems were addressed in particular in the series. The car did however pass the NCT, so I presume that everything that is supposed to be working, was working.

That article is from 2020. I believe they are not in Ireland any more. They never offered a service to the public. They will offer courses in Netherlands for mechanics and DIY. The price quoted was theoretical not real. There is no company offering turn key options in Ireland.

In practical terms unless you want a pet project it may only make financial sense for rare or classic cars. Prices seem to be 20k to 50k excluding donor car. For other cars it probably makes more sense to buy a real EV than try get a non EV to become EV.

If done right you can get NCT, cheap tax, but there may be insurance premium.

What range and charge time are you aiming to get?

Bear in mind that a Range Rover is far bigger, heavier and less aerodynamic than a Leaf, so the driving range will be significantly reduced.