Repower with a telsa drive unit.

I don't think I'll ever buy an electric vehicle, but I have to admit, converting an old vehicle to electric would be fun. Would be nice on a trail rig, driving around the trails and hearing not much more than the tires on the ground. That would be pretty fun I think

Yeah that drive unit is not too costly but you need so much more than just the drive unit. Its not like you just plug it in and thats it. You obviously need the battery pack which is huge and a control unit with the software to make it go, plus any other power converters that need to be in the circuit. Software might be a hold up as I think tesla encrypted their software so thats a big nut to crack in itself. And any driveshaft or output shaft will have to be custom machined. Not too many parts on the shelf out there to put a yoke with a 1410 u joint on tesla drive unit.

Im not opposed to the idea of someone else doing it. It would be a huge job to get it to work. Better off buying a wrecked tesla and cut the fenders for some 44's

People are using Tesla and other drive units. The software and other peripherals are readily available.

There was a guy who posted on Pirate that built an electric Samurai that used Chevy Volt batteries, just search Google for "ZookEV". I think he had decent range and said it was at least as fast as the old 1.3L was. I think an electric crawler would be a pretty sweet build. Electric is definitely better than gas in the RC crawler world.

Here's some videos of the Sammy in action:




EDIT:

Found these videos of a converted JK while looking for the Sami videos:

Wouldn't instant max torque also mean instant broken parts when you get one tire in a bind?


In those videos, just the sound of it would make me go crazy.

Seems like a neat project, but I'd want nothing to do with it.

Have seen plenty of not so instant torque engines tear heck out of things when heavy throttle applied. and the sound ....