Electric conversion: Project ForkenSwiift

[JanGeo]

Yup they are pricy but you can pay now or push your electric car later when you run out of energy . . . They are going to be really light if that is a factor plus they freewheel / spin pretty well with the controller turned off but it depends upon the controller driving it. Don't forget that they are brushless and have no cooling holes for air to carry dirt into the motor and the water cooling option could provide you with some cabin heat. It also makes a great generator so depending upon how you regulate the power to the motor input would determine power/loading. Typically the switching buck-boost stage driving the motor input has fets pulling up to the battery voltage and down to ground at some duty cycle determined by the throttle and current limiting. Now if you can get it to just pull up to the battery voltage you would have a "freewheel" drive effect and if you have it pull down you would have a braking/regen effect. Of course you could always just pop it into neutral. One thing you would want is a smart motor speed controller so that you could monitor the transmission input shaft speed and regulate the motor speed to match when shifting into gears - maybe a button on the top of the shifter that you press which would make the motor run at the speed that the transmission is in and allow you to pop it out of gear with no loading and then speed up or slow down to motor as you move it towards the next gear to allow it to shift right into gear without grinding and thus not require a clutch.