Craigslist find of the day: Electric Volvo
Not all electric conversions are small Geo Metros, Volkswagens or Porsches. For sale on the San Francisco Bay Area Craigslist, here, is an eVolvo. It's a converted 1995 Volvo 850 sedan. It's got new batteries and new low rolling resistance tires. The seller claims a range of about 40 miles with 15 kWh of lead acid batteries. Asking price is $14,000. Searching through the EVAlbum database, a useful resource with over 1,500 electric vehicles listed by their owners, one only finds three Volvo conversions in the U.S., including, I believe, this car listed by its previous owner in Seattle.
For Volvo fans awaiting the ReCharge plug-in hybrid, we've previously reported about, this could get you into an electron-driven Swede today.
[Source: Craigslist]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Lad 8:59PM (5/09/2008)
Other than the novelty of it all, these conversions don't make a lot of sense. These cars weigh about 3500 lbs before the conversion. I'll bet it easily exceeds two tons after conversion.
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marc 9:30PM (5/09/2008)
Lad, you are right, and you are wrong. As with many cars on our roads, the eVolvo weighs over two tons - 4300 lbs to be exact. And it may not make sense for you. But for the 85% of drivers who drive less than 40 miles a day, and may prefer to pay under $1 a gallon equivalent or not give Big Oil or Saudi Arabia their hard earned cash, it spells choice.
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Dave 10:18PM (5/09/2008)
An EV conversion of this type makes a lot of sense in at least one way:
It probably didnt require any suspension mods to accept the weight of the battery pack.
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jake 12:15AM (5/10/2008)
@Dave
I was going to mention that; an important consideration for lead acid EVs is the gross weight of the vehicle, so it can carry the heavy batteries safely, and I think the Volvo was selected for that. It will probably be slower and be less efficient, but it's safer to have a car you know you aren't overloading. The problem with lighter cars is that their gross weight also tend to be lower so they can't carry as much batteries.
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Lad 1:13AM (5/10/2008)
I drive a Volvo so I'm aware of the heavy duty suspensions and the beefed up bodies. However, from an engineering standpoint when you retrofit a car for efficiency, i.e., longer range and performance, you start with as lighter a chassis as will meet your specs for strength and just like a race car, as Colin Chaplin said: "you add lightness." If you're building a long range, performance car, take a page from Tesla's book.
As things stand currently, retrofitting old cars are mostly a hobby; however, with improvement in lead acid batteries, such as the Firefly products, retrofitted older production cars might someday cost less and have a practical use. As you know, essentially the BEV is a motor, control unit, chassis with components and batteries for fuel.
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Kevin Nugent 2:33AM (5/10/2008)
uuuhhhhhh i think not . But good effort !
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MetroMPG.com 7:47AM (5/10/2008)
@ Lad - "retrofitted older production cars might someday ... have a practical use."
You're still missing the point, and tarring all conversions with the same brush because they don't meet *your* needs.
I drive a conversion that gets about 15 miles between charges from its worn out lead acid pack. While that might be useless for you, it's practical for me as an urban runabout... because I live near the middle of a small city.
It's fine for getting around when the weather sucks and I don't want to ride my bike, or if I need to carry passengers or bulky stuff.
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mike 12:56PM (5/10/2008)
If gas goes to $5 or $6 dollars a gallon, these conversions are going to make more and more sense. Again, when a guy in his garage can make this change, what's holding up the oil, err, Auto Industry?
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mike 12:58PM (5/10/2008)
What brand of low rolling resistance tires did he use? Anyone got any good recommendations?
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Derek Jones 2:30PM (5/10/2008)
I actually think this vehicle is the ideal car for conversions to electric. For short distance commuting it's ideal. With the name alone it's ideal eVolvo - brilliant. And to top it all off the thing looks like a battery to begin with.
Recycling at it's best.
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s10 10:17PM (5/10/2008)
retrofitting an old car is just perfect. It makes total sense.. and I see a bright future in this business..
Which car has the best ecological footprint... a newly build Prius that replaces an older car or that same older car that has been retrofitted with a green hart?
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anthony94114 12:35PM (5/12/2008)
I like Mike's comment.. EXACTLY what is keeping real manufacturers (rather than shade tree mechanics) from making simple electric vehicles? I saw this Volvo on CL last week.. and it's so close to my house, I'm thinking of investigating it, as a replacement for our smart fortwo.
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porschedevotee 2:24PM (5/12/2008)
@anthony94114: Just out of curiosity, why do you need to replace your Smart already? Space, passenger capacity, the terrible transmission, fuel mileage? This thing would be a lot harder to park in San Francisco than the Smart...
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Mike 10:25PM (11/09/2008)
Hi, I'm converting a volvo to electric too, mine is a 1978 242. Pics and story at http://threerunjimmyjack.blogspot.com/
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