eBay Find of the Day: Electrified 1984 Honda Civic wagon
Click above for a gallery of the electric Honda Civic on eBay
Tired of waiting for a major automaker to offer an electric vehicle? We feel your pain. In the meantime, there are quite a few outlets that would be happy to build one for you using an existing vehicle as a platform to start with. Such is the case with this 1984 Honda Civic wagon. The car has been completely restored and it appears exactly as you'd expect a model of its vintage to look, on the outside at least. A quick glance under the hood, though, will reveal that it's got no engine. Instead of a gasoline-burning four cylinder powerplant, this Civic has been converted to electric drive using a 6.7" electric motor from Advanced DC, an 800 amp controller and 12 Energizer GC8 8-volt lead acid batteries.
According to the team that performed the conversion, this electrified Civic can safely travel over 40 miles under decent conditions. The transmission is still hooked up, though it's not really necessary to use all the gears. Judging from the images, everything looks like it's been done extremely well, and it's nice to see small shops like this jumping into the EV game.
[Source: eBay]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
paulwesterberg 2:57PM (2/06/2009)
You think a 6.7" of motor is good, yeah well my electric motor is a full 8"
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paulwesterberg 3:16PM (2/06/2009)
btw, the actual ebay post doesnt say anything about the motor being 6.7", the staff at autobloggreen is having trouble copying and pasting in articles today.
Jeremy Korzeniewski 3:55PM (2/06/2009)
Paul, what's with the hostility? The seller states what kind of motor is installed in the car in the questions section of the auction. We didn't make it up.
JK
paulwesterberg 5:27PM (2/06/2009)
Nobody cares what the diameter of the motor is! People care about how much power it puts out. They use 12 eight (8) volt batteries, so they are generating 96volts. The batteries add about 600lbs to the weight of the car, making for a total weight of 2600lbs.
The motor power at 96v:
13.6 HP continuous, 15 HP for one hour, 26.4 for 5 min., 62 HP peak
So the car can put out 62hp and weighs 2600lbs which means that it wont smoke the tires off the line, but it will smoke hydrogen motorcycles.
This seems like it might be an ok flatlander commuter car, but it might be underpowered for anyone living in a mountainous region where you need continuous peak power.
One interesting note is that if you feed the motor 120v it will produce 83hp peak so if they added a few more batteries or switched the 8v batteries for 12v they could improve peak power output.
note: I have no idea whether their motor controller could handle the extra juice.
John 6:34PM (2/09/2009)
If I'm not mistaken, 84s were the next generation of Civics with a more creased shape. I think this belongs to the 80-83 generation.
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spookiness 10:58AM (2/09/2009)
It's an 83.
IMO, the 2nd Generation Civic was the best ever. I had an 83 1300FE hatchback, and ever since I sold it I've regretted it.
84's were tall and boxy.
I like this, but the space where the batteries are located defeats the utility of having a wagon.
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Obie 12:03PM (5/19/2009)
I had a 1984 Civic Wagon and a 1988 Civic Wagon. They were similar to each other, in looks, but not to this one. This is an earlier model year.
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