I don’t think anyone on here has done it yet, but I would think it would be pretty straightforward. Compared to a car, the T5/6 has a great deal of space for batteries and could be driven from the front or rear (or both, but that might be overkill).

If you put the battery pack under the floor where the fuel tank is and the motor/drive in the front, you wouldn’t have to sacrifice any space in the cabin. Biggest challenge (for me anyway) would be sorting out the electrics. I would also think it would be easier to electrify a van that hadn’t yet been converted - then you could just strip everything out and work on a blank canvass.

 

The great but expensive way, Tesla drivetrain to replace the whole engine/gearbox. Tesla battery mounted where your exhaust and fuel tank sits - plenty of examples of this type of swap (none in T5 yet but T5 would be very easy) both by DIY'ers and small companies.

The perfectly adequate and quite cheap (easily under 5K) Hacked Prius/Higlander or Ampera drivetrain and Ampera or other batteries - http://www.evbmw.com/ (see his youtube). A hacked mk2 prius drivetrain puts out more power than a base model T5, anything newer or Ampera/volt has more power. His Cheapest DIY electric car was sub €1000 all in (Motor/Battery/Controller/Charger) and managed 70mph + and 50 mile range!

So it can be done easily and if you put the effort in , cheaply.

Unfortunately I live in France where such noble modifications are not yet legal!

 

Zef Eisenburg Did a series on performance freaks and did an electric car, an old Mercedes diesel....

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv-programme/e/jkdqkn/speed-freaks--series-1-episode-3/

 

We have built several EV conversions at work and are now actively developing modular powertrains to harness the benefits of hybrid technology at a lower price point.

Fitting a motor is very simple by comparison to the battery and power electronics. Once you've calculated the gear ratio(s) and have a suitable transmission then it's a matter of mounting, bellhousing machining and getting driveshafts to suit.

Your problem will be the battery.

Firstly, you wont be able to bolt any old EV donor battery under the floor of a T5. It just isn't designed to have a battery fitted under there. You'll either have to buy bespoke modules and offer them off on a subframe or rip out your camper interior and drop them in the back on the load bay floor. Any car battery small enough to package under the chassis just wont be large enough for a sensible range.

Once you have your battery mounted safely you need to work out how to cool it. In a lightweight aerodynamic car the road load is much lower than your 3 ton brick.
The battery will be depleted very quickly and overheat. Not only is this dangerous but it absolutely hammers to batteries life span. You will need to fit a chilled coolant loop to maintain the battery cells below about 40deg and you'll need a battery management system to control it. Realistically this means your choice of donor cars comes down to a big Audi E Tron or a Tesla. The BMW I3 has a battery which is chilled by AC refrigerant , this would be too complex to retrofit so stick to a battery with water cooled plates instead. Even cars with air cooled batteries struggle (read user reviews of the newer Leafs!!). The biggest test for the cooling system is rapid charging. Lets face it, a camper which cant rapid charge is going to be as much use as ....

The interesting thing about EVs is that no one thinks about how rubbish they are. There's about enough natural material in the world to cater for about 5% of the UK car market (ignore the rest of the world eh?) and much of that material is buried in loverly jungles. Them, once you've got it out, shipped, processed, shipped, built cells, shipped, assembled modules, shipped to OEM and built into a car... the amount of invested CO2 in the whole EV car is many times higher than a normal car. Then you consider the CO2 produced in making electricity (equiv to 30-40 g/km driven) and you realise that the EV actually produces more CO2 up to its 7th birthday at which time the fuel consumption of the ICE vehicle overtakes...... but.... after 7 years.... the EV needs a new battery.... massive injection of CO2 again....

I reckon you should just fit low rolling resistance tyres, keep the pressures up and take off all the spoiler and bikes racks on your van and drive carefully. Then buy a bike and pedal about as much as possible.

The internal combustion engine is very far from the end of its life. It will adapt to encompass new E fuels, massive in rush of hybrid technology (hybrids with very small batteries) and your old camper will soldier on to the end of its natural life drinking fuel with more and more bio content.

 

The interesting thing about EVs is that no one thinks about how rubbish they are. There's about enough natural material in the world to cater for about 5% of the UK car market (ignore the rest of the world eh?) and much of that material is buried in loverly jungles. Them, once you've got it out, shipped, processed, shipped, built cells, shipped, assembled modules, shipped to OEM and built into a car... the amount of invested CO2 in the whole EV car is many times higher than a normal car. Then you consider the CO2 produced in making electricity (equiv to 30-40 g/km driven) and you realise that the EV actually produces more CO2 up to its 7th birthday at which time the fuel consumption of the ICE vehicle overtakes...... but.... after 7 years.... the EV needs a new battery.... massive injection of CO2 again....

I've thought about this for some time & you never ever hear anything similar from the "EV/environmental" brigade.
To anyone with even a basic knowledge of science it's quite clear - just why are so many people hoodwinked by the hype ?

I'm not against EV's for many applications, but I am against the "must be zero emission" principle. If we reduce our emissions at the current rate with more EV's, more euro6 vehicles of all types (which will happen naturally as the big fleets are replaced) we will soon get to the point where nature itself cleans what little there is left up.
Thus, we will save all the expense of HMG forcing us to replace perfectly serviceable vehicles with the resultant expense.

 

(BTW I'm off work with man flu but the stuff I wrote above vaguely follows the gist of a paper I gave at the IMechE in June)

 

Interesting read! Thanks for posting and get well soon!

 

I'll tell you what would be good though! Hybridize your T5!! Fit a 4Motion rear axle, connect a 48V motor to that (there's a lot of nasty safety regs if you go higher) and a small 48V air cooled battery pack. Use the electric motor to recover energy under deceleration and than redeploy when you press the accelerator (like an F1 Kers system). You could use a small controller to pic up CANbus signals from the VW engine management so the hybrid part would know when to give and when to take? If it starts to get too hot then it would reduce it's power level (probably rare occasions). You wouldn't need any charger etc. You'd barely know it was there?

 

I remember reading somewhere that an Audi A6 driven for 150000 miles had the same carbon footprint as a Tesla Model S driven the same, and whilst the Model S had a much smaller driver footprint, assembly foot print was much larger, so the two cars balanced out. Which got me to thinking, driving someone is obviously a transfer of energy, and are we constrained by the laws of nature/physics etc that transportation will have the same impact regardless of what method we use...

 

Bobley, you drive (or did) and R8. I see the irony. All that you have said makes sense to everyone except the stupid and politicians. Since politician can bamboosal the stupid then you realise EV is about votes. The real solution to co2 is to become a vegi but like EV is an impossible dream. I drive a 3.0 and eat meat

 

I dont drive the R8 much, I just appreciate it. If I hold it captive and dont drive it then I stop someone racking up the miles on it?!

I ride my bike to work twice a week, eat meat as a privilege not an everyday necessity, and I'll go get a vasectomy so that there wont me more than 2 people after me...

Meanwhile, Denmark pulled their EV subsidy (EV car sales collapsed), China has removed all money from EV and is ploughing it into alt fuels instead (advanced IC engines can run on ammonia). Tesla still haven't made any money, BMW are backing out of pure EV and Dyson pulled the plug on their new EV last week.

 

Car manufacturers are not talking about where the lithium comes from that goes in the batteries.

No one in manufacturing is, as far as I know. Its mining is environmentally very damaging.

Theres very little coverage of how China has marched into Tibet and opened 100 + mines. Unfortunately for Tibet there is a large reserve there and no army to protect it or its citizens. https://www.freetibet.org/lithium-tibet

Local fishermen and farmers who protested at the loss of fishing/farming areas due to lithium and cobalt poisoning in the water and on the land were visited by Chinese riot police. Google it. Newspapers barely covered it.

There are batteries under development that use iron and other safer materials, Elektor magazine looks into it as shown in their newsletters. But until these are ready electric cars don't make sense.

Maybe one day old Lithium batteries will be treated with the same fear as asbestos has become to be treated now.

 

I used to fly model aircraft a good while ago when the development of lithium batteries made flying electric models very practical if not a little expensive.
I was once at a meeting and in the car park outside an RAF base (waiting for our hosts to escort us in) one guy had just turned up in a high top LWB van full of electric planes and gear and by the time he had parked and walked 50 yards to us to say hello there was black smoke issuing from his van. One of us went straight to the guardhouse to request a fire appliance the rest of us ran to the van opened the rear doors to find a good 4 foot blaze going on where his batteries had been charging.
Two extinguishers were emptied on it to no avail and by the time the base fire service arrived (3 mins max) the entire contents of the van were lost. The firemen doused it in foam which cooled everything but the batteries continued to burn. They eventually hooked the batteries out onto the floor (still burning) and moved the van away with the front end up a bank so they could wash out the smouldering materials onto the floor. The batteries eventually burnt out.
About £10,000 pounds worth of damage to the contents alone plus the heat damage to the van.

That's why the batteries in electric cars scare the life out of me. There's so much energy stored in them, albeit well protected, but once these things burn you literally can't put them out they are self fuelling and self oxidising.

My preferred method of alternative propulsion for my van would be electric drive train with smallish battery pack and smallish engine for generation only, added to plug in charging and energy recovery system from braking I reckon you could get some pretty good MPG figures?

 

An electric race bike caught fire in the pit lane at Silverstone a few years ago, it took over half an hour to put it out and race circuits are obviously equipped for that sort thing.

 

I think Hydrogen is the way forward

 

Yep I think so too,at least you can fill up and drive off,electric cars are just a gimmick for the next 10-15 years I:

 

its a crazy idea, can you imagine all those rows of terraced houses, with charging leads trailing across the pavement?

No, nor can I.

 

there are some hydrogen cars already on the market, with the government investing in more filling stations in the UK

 

Anyone seen this?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...eight-invents-electric-car-battery-drivers-1-500-miles-without-charging-it.html


Forgive me.... I'm not a daily mail reader LOL:

 

That aluminium air system has been doing the rounds for some time. Fingers crossed he makes it work.

 

More on the Al-Air battery technology here

Aluminium–air battery - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Hmm.... Don't think it's going to be a solution for my beloved and trusty T4 anytime soon...

 

We all have some build we wouldn't part with easily, and increasingly strict polution norms make us consider alternatives.
I myself thought of converting the van to an electric version should a kit be available in the future.

Right now we have two options to move the wheels:

• combustion engine - problem: poluting
• electric motor - problem: storing the needed energy (and some say equally polluting if considering the actual energy-storing devices)

We (users and industry) all want a great fuel cell that can tick most of these boxes:

• hold enough energy (easy if we have no other restrictions)
• lightweight (engine + battery at most the same weight as current solutions)
• safe (no surprise heating/fires, or during an accident)
• fast to charge
• long-lasting (no need to replace it after a low number of charding cycles)
• eco-friendly (to produce and less poluting than burning oil)
• performant (nobody wants an electric car if you can only drive speeds up to 30km/h)

(...)

Either one of us has other priorities, so not all the above criteria applies to all of us.
And I think there are many solutions already developed but in need of better refinement.
Funny as it may sound, the solution may actually come from the phone manufacturers.

My personal choice at the moment: portable mini-nuclear reactors.
There were some talks about the Thorium-reactors (Atomic Car Revisited: Thorium Could Power A Vehicle for 100 Years?)
-Only because I can't get an electric conversion-kit for the van. One that has undercarriage batteries already divided to fit in the existing space.
-Hydrogen is good, but difficult to store/trasnport/refuel, and dangerous in larger quantities.

my2cents. Eurocents

 

Just a random idea but has any one thought of hooking up a 4 motion/syncro back axle to an electric power plant. Batteries could fit behind it in a T2 type rear 'engine' bay. As soon as you hit 40mph (out of town) the stock front diesel kicks in.
Could even have an over ride button to give you a diesel/electric 4x4 option😃,

 

We did it in a Golf ( 2 mins 56s in here )

We used in wheel motors rather than an E axle but yes, it s the same idea. You use the electric rear axle to work with the ICE so that the back axle drags a bit, loads up the ICE (making it more efficienct) and then you use to boost you out of roundabouts without troubling the engine. If you have a car with an electronic throttle its doable. just not cheap! Again, time to find a smackered Tesla...

 

Check out transporter Hq on YouTube, they are doing a Tesla engine in a 6.1

 

Hopefully i will be in the ground before this becomes law!!

 

You've got 8 years 3 months!!

 

I have done it.
Have a look at my instagram-
tesla_transporter

 

Bloomin eck.

 

So it can be done easily and if you put the effort in , cheaply.

 

Did you go look at Insta?? I think the answer is no and no, even if you do it yourself.

 

Wow! Seriously impressive stuff. How much space / how many battery packs have you got? I'm assuming with the Transporter there's bags of room to add more.