Electric Porsche

A team of MIT engineering students hacked a 1976 Porsche 914 to be fully electric. So far, they've only tested it in parking lots but they estimate that the car should be able to hit 100 mph and run 130 miles before needing a recharge. Now that the car runs, they're working to optimize its efficiency. From the MIT News Office:

Said mechanical engineering graduate student Craig Wildman, "Now we get to take data while we're driving. We can record everything that happens on a laptop, come back and change parameters, and test drive it again." With the Porsche as a test platform, the students can monitor conditions in the car while looking for ways to increase efficiency, performance and range, and to bring down costs...

What's next for the electric Porsche? One idea is to modify how the batteries are wired together. "We should be able to change our range and performance characteristics very easily," said Josh Siegel, a freshman who has been restoring cars in imaginative ways since he was 14. The students are also thinking about developing conversion guidelines that will enable others to do what they've done--without the fuss.

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David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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nexialist

…they “hacked” it? interesting use of the word…without wanting to start an in-depth semantic discussion here…
Adam Weiss

@22:

Sure, but it won’t scale. The electricity generation and distribution system cannot currently support a massive migration to electric vehicles.

Maybe you’re thinking about just a solution for yourself. That’s great… I’m thinking more in terms as a solution for society. It doesn’t do you a scrap of good if you have a car that runs off electricity but the bottom has fallen out of an economy that is firmly entrenched in oil… It also doesn’t help if you have an electric car, but the earth gets pissed off and our habitat starts turning hostile.

As far as the “tacking MIT on to a story” argument. It is very interesting what their name brand does. I often wonder how different a school like MIT really is from a school like Berkeley (excluding the cushy private stuff, like attention from counselors and small classes). But who knows, I have a fairly pessimistic view these days towards so-called prestigious higher education.

That said, to be able to handle a full engineering courseload in any rigorous program and still find time to complete any real outside projects is pretty impressive in my book.
David Carroll

I am surprised that the best MIT students could do is make an electric car. Granted it seems to be a state-of-the-art car, and it is a Porsche. I would have expected an electric car with a fission based fuel source. Wouldn’t it be nice to buy a car that never needs any fuel for it’s lifetime?

O.K. I realize that fission reactors in cars wouldn’t fly for a few dozen reasons. But if we discount the public outcry, government freak-out, environmental concerns and terrorist buy up a bunch of cars and make a dirty bomb theories for a second, could it be practically and safely done?
Ixty

Probably killing the horse, but our extremely skilled and beloved friend Richard Rau has built a beauty and has a business as well.

http://www.nwelectricvehicles.com/
Ben

There IS no substitute.
Takuan

su-weet!
secretagent214

Electric cars are great in my opinion, and the 914 is an excellent choice for an electric car. It is small, lightweight, and has a convenient mid-engine design which puts the engine next to the wheels. I’m glad the spotlight is on this project.

This isn’t the first of it’s kind though. Here are a couple of other links for electric Porsches and other electric converted sports cars.

http://www.coolgreencar.net/
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1331

I came across a high mileage Boxster for sale at an amazingly low price (half the blue book value) a couple of years ago and bought it. It’s still going strong, but if the engine ever dies, I’m seriously thinking about making it electric.
KeithIrwin

Bah. It’s been done. That’s nothing. That’s not even news. One of the local high schools did an electric conversion on a Ferrari Spider ten years ago. Some insane rich guy owned one and wanted it converted to all electric. They even built him a matching trailer which would add 150 miles to the range. So, by comparison, an electric conversion of a Porsche ten years later: not even noteworthy.
digitalrhino

Not sure this is really news, there has been an all electric Porsche parking in the parking lot where i live for at least a year now.
error404

Pointless really as without carbon fibre bodies this tech is not going to mean anything to people.

The problem with cars is that les than 6% of the power is used to move you, the rst is heat and hauling a HUGE bloody car about.
neurolux

They had to pick the ugliest Porsche ever made?
lava

Here are two blogs tracking 914 electric conversions. Great details on all the work involved for those interested:

http://volt914.blogspot.com/
http://914ev.blogspot.com/

The owner of that second one has moved on to developing a kit for electric conversions to late model civics – should be interesting:

http://civic-ev.blogspot.com/
Adam Weiss

Bah. Electric vehicles are interesting, but they don’t really solve anything. It only moves the dirty process from the point of consumption to the plant. I’m not excited about anything electric until I see a clean production technology that is economically viable with backing from some people who can make it happen within my lifetime.

That said, these guys put out a press release a few weeks ago claiming that they got their 91 octane algae fuel ASTM certified:

http://www.sapphireenergy.com/press_release/1

Whether or not they’re being fully forthcoming as to how close to being production ready this is, I really do think that algae fuel (or some other genetically tweaked microorganism) is going to be the bridge technology that gets us through this rough patch.
Patrick Austin

@#15: Screw you, you ignorant ass. THIS is the ugliest Porsche ever made.

Seriously, I love the 914′s design. Total 70′s awesomeness. It looks 10 times better than the frickin’ Cayenne.
things

yeah, not new at all. You can buy them at http://www.worldclassexotics.com

That said, I still want one. A lot.
error404

I dunno about the argument that electric cars only centralise the problem. Isn’t theat a good thing?

It is the millions of crappy little polluters that are difficult to regulate. If you had a coal fired plant you could heat exchange and get more electricity ouyt of it, and use the CO2 off pour ro provide the CO2 neeeded for algae biofuel plants.

Just a thought.

But basically all of this pivots on getting weight right down on cars.

Carbon fibre everythings
Purly

Now they need to engineer a way to mod existing cars to make them electric. Otherwise there are going to be a lot of dead cars in landfills within the next two years.
saltima

is it really that original these days?

http://www.reddit.com/info/6kv90/comments/
bcsizemo

I agree with everyone else, what is this special? This is MIT for crying out loud, I’d expect more, a lot more. If they said they we able to keep 80% of the original performance and a distance better than 200 miles per charge, that would be news worthy. Anyone with a good sense of mechanical ability, electrical know how, and a junker lying can do this. It’s not really even that expensive (at least not in terms of developing something “high tech”). Electric cars are easy, building better components to make them viable, now that’s the challenge.
MIT next year maybe you can get the EE’s to team up with the Chem E’s and build you better batteries.

Sounds like the guys that built the battle bot at my college. All I kept thinking was, “Have you actually watch the show??! This thing is going to get slaughtered. Fools.” :-)
SamSam

@23:

It’s true that the electrical grid cannot currently handle a sudden, massive migration to electric vehicles. However, I don’t think anyone would ever project a sudden, massive migration.

If and when electric cars start to become commercially viable for the consumer (which, with the joules per dollar for electricity rapidly becoming much higher than the joules per dollar for gasoline, is not far off, if not already here), it will still take at least a decade for the number of electric cars on the road to outnumber gas cars.

In that time, the demand for electricity will continue to rise, and so the supply will rise to match it, as it will be commercially profitable to create electrical plants. Further, in that time many cities may well start to create distributed power generation, such as the rent-your-roof plans that are already being started.

The reality is that we can’t just sit and hope that some magic technology comes along and solves our energy needs tomorrow. Instead we improve what we have, and as we do that technologies such as electric cars become economically viable and the infrastructure for them continues to grow.
ployntabs

As a former Porsche wrench I’m glad to see this car being used for something. They were mechanical nightmares when they were around. My first (shit) job as a Porsche mechanic was to replace all of the hoses and fuel lines because the 914s tended to catch on fire quite regularly. I thought they looked cool though. The only thing that ever came close in style was the Lotus Europa. Another cranky ride.
MaximusNYC

A team of MIT engineering students hacked a 1976 Porsche 914 to be fully electric. So far, they’ve only tested it in parking lots….

“What’s next for the electric Porsche? One idea is to modify how the batteries are wired together.”

Another idea is to take it out of the parking lot.
lloyd alter

You covered the same car a year ago.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/09/electric-porsche.html
c1josh

Why is this here?

Because MIT students did it.

Let’s not mention that commercially available kits to convert this exact car to electric have been around for YEARS. High school kids are doing this.

It just goes to show ‘ya… Tacking “MIT” on to a story will buy you some extra attention.

Sic Transit Mundis.
SamSam

Wait, it’s taken them nearly two years to build this thing? When there are already plenty of converted electric cars? Hmmmm…..

Anyway, as for the “it just moves the dirty process from the point of consumption to the plant” argument: If your car is running on gasoline, it’s running on gasoline, period. If your car is running on electricity, it can run off of electricity that is however green you want it to be. For example, if I had an electric car and could plug it into the socket in my garage, my car would be running off of 50% wind energy, because that is what I buy from my electricity grid. You could also hook it up to a bank of solar panels or your own wind turbine. Both these options are currently available to you, so, a fortiori, are available in your lifetime.