MCM goes Electric - Explained

The most famous Aussie couple in the car world just went electric in their last two episodes.
Why? Well, there are many reasons. Actually electric could be fun, as I explained in a very long post sometimes ago, mainly because of the torque madness.

Marty is a bit of a nerd also, and EV’s are becoming engineers and environmentally-friendly hipsters wet dream’s.

Lately their are focusing a lot on new technology, high power and high efficient builds (SuperGramps and Moog Mini) and even swaps and conversions. Something that 3-4 years ago they weren’t capable of doing because of their knowledge of both people and processes and because they weren’t so popular so they didn’t have so much money to spend.

Now with their followers cornering 1,7 Millions they could afford more expensive and more ambitious builds. An EV conversion could be the next big thing on their list and they probably decided it was convenient to start with something easy and cheap before getting deep in the matter. As they did with the turbo conversion (first MX-5 then SuperGramps) and with the E85 (first SuperGramps then Moog’s Mini).

Plus it’s JDM. In the last two years they completely forgot about euro/american/aussie cars to go hardcore on Japanese product (even Mini is sort of JDM). It’s even blue. And it’s the grandfather (or the father) of the Turd.

Starting with a repair they could basically know the car and its system in depth, and even get some ideas for future mods.

Speaking of more nerdy stuff, a brief explanation on what they did.

They got out their dead battery pack made of 12 old 12V 9 Ah lead acid technology UPS batteries (you can find datasheet of their technology up-to-date replacement here) in series which weighted roughly 20kg each (could be, the only reference it is what Marty comments during the video). This means a 144 V DC battery pack with a energy storage of 1,296 kWh and a total weight of 240 kg.

Their replacement was a 2-parallel-12-series (2 packs connected in parallel of 12 batteries each) battery pack made of newer batteries still lead acid but much lighter. Since they were 16 Ah each we are speaking of a total 144 V again with 32 Ah of capacity for a total weight of 168 kg (each one is 7 kg). And the energy storage is 4,608 kWh!
This means that even reducing by 30% the weight of the battery pack, because of the gigantic step made by the technlogy, they succeeded in gaining 3,5 times the original energy stored. That’s an increase in energy density of 407,9%!!!

Still, as it was a 0$ budget conversion (the batteries were sitting in a garage), as you can notice in the second episode the battery swap didn’t end succesfully. But Marty got angry and successfully transplanted a LiFePO battery pack just to give us some skid.

Improvements they could do? Many. 4 WD, AC motors, Regenerative Braking, a full Li-PO battery pack and much more. But they’re costly. And making these mods on a rotting 30-years old japanese kei-car is pointless. Marty knows that and has given us some hint they could actually do an harder conversion. Maybe starting from an ICE cars.
My suggestion? 1st gen Toyota Aygo, practical, modern and economical. A bit of euro and Mini-style in a japanese piece of engineering. Shame it’s a european marketed car mostly, so could be difficult to source for the Aussie’s blokes.
But the Aygo Crazy concept was tasty, very tasty. Imagine a 4WD Aygo e-Crazy…