Chevrolet Performance eCrate package (400v/200hp)
chevrolet.com
chevrolet.com
This won't sell; people will just buy a crashed EV for 1/10th the cost and salvage the motor and battery. This is more of an insult than a product. It reeks of "you're not qualified to work on our premium electrons until you pay $10k and pass our one-day eCourse"
I'd rather that reality than the EV conversion hobby be plagued and slandered with "this guy bought official parts and his baby perished in the resulting home fire".
In so many markets manufacturers are antagonistic to repair and customization; project cars remains this wonderful little niche where DIY excellence is enabled and encouraged. That shouldn't end with ICEs.
We have hobbyist mechanics out here taking their engine blocks to the machinist, rebuilding hydraulic automatic transmissions on the workbench, not to mention safely handling literal buckets of combustibles. They'll be fine.
Most of this limitation from Ford and GM about their EV drivetrains is because they want control over deployment for monitoring, and so they can cover their asses legally if something like a manufacturing defect becomes widespread.
Meanwhile, Ford has been selling the Mach-E motor as a crate motor for years; but it's useless, because they sell nothing else for it. No battery pack, no controller, no regenerative brakes. Pretty much a PR sham. Why bother?
I have a Mustang with a half-disassembled engine that needs major work, so I thought hey this might be cool. Nope.
The motor package from a Leaf is about 90kg so probably in the same ballpark as the fuel tank, rear axle, and gearbox. You'd then need to get a lighter battery because a Leaf's battery is about 350kg, or twice the weight of an MX5's engine.
There would be a lot of surgery involved on the back end but since it's a subframe with the diff in the middle you're halfway there.
And for once, the project car's totally rotten boot floor won't be a problem because you're cutting all that away anyway!
Note in the eCrate link it's explicitly claimed to be legal when done correctly.
What I was recalling is the EPA's Engine Switching Fact Sheet from 1991.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/engswitch_...
I learned today that it was replaced in 2020 by the EPA Tampering Policy. This one doesn't seem to focus so much on engine swaps but on the emissions devices themselves.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-12/documents/ep...
I can honestly say I've never wondered that. It's so oddly specific lol.
(And when I say “nowhere”, I mean go look up Bunker Hill, IN as a go-to example. It’s a fine town as far as small towns go, but a long way from any major metro.)
Edit: and off road motors still have standards, just different standards.
We also had to bring over all the emission EVAP stuff, for the evap on the RSX tank (plastic irrc) we bought a new EG tank and welded all the necessary fittings to get it to work.
Very engaging car to drive.
I have done several EV conversions using parts as you describe and there is a healthy amount of reverse engineering, defeating or replicating functions you didnt think of until it doesnt work right with modules that are expecting other modules to exist on the bus that no longer exist, and a million other things.
That's fine for a personal hobby project, but that is a very, very, very small project. The target for this kind of product is conversion shops that want to be able to offer customers tight turnarounds on vanity EV conversions with warrantees. 10k is pretty minor on that kind of project, the lead time and integration complexity is way more important.
This level of conversion isn't exactly trivial but it also isn't rocket surgery for the kind of person who pulls an engine out for rebuild on a classic car project.
... so you're buying into a locked, digital control system, akin to what John Deere puts out.
This ranks right up there with BMW wanting to charge a monthly fee for heated seats - building in physical abilities, with digital lockouts. You know, you can buy a LS engine, and do whatever horsepower changes you want to it. For those more akin to computers than cars, this is called a "LS swap" and is common with restomods.
This is disappointing to hear and tarnishes a brand like Chevy. Fortunately, we're in a free market; I'll vote with my dollars.
If you saw the "quality" of electrical work otherwise very smart car enthusiasts do you might think otherwise.
What's the point of 800V with a battery this small? 400V already enables around 200 kW of charging, which is 3C with a pack this small. So charging is not limited by the voltage level, because the pack assuredly isn't reaching 3C. At 200hp the efficiency gains are marginal if they exist at all. So what would the benefit of 800V be, apart from higher costs?
They are doing this because they have a billion dollars of refurbished batteries sitting in warehouses that they need to dump.
(Not because it's a bad car in itself, but all of the electronics shit is falling apart.)
The repair techs couldn't find anything wrong with the cameras, and their diagnostic tool reported that they were apparently functioning. They ended up replacing the cameras and the cabling, but it didn't help at all; the new cameras just stopped working again within a couple of weeks. When I took it back in, they told me straight up that they didn't know what to do about it if replacing the cameras and cables didn't work, so there was nothing left to do.
The touch screen broke around the same time[†] as the cameras, and this is worse than not having cameras IMO. The Bolt is nice because it has a good amount of physical buttons to control things, but there are still some critical functions tied to the touch screen that you just can't do if it's not responding to touch. Examples: I can't look at the front or side cameras; I can't adjust the defrost at all in the winter (it's tied to the touchscreen unlike the rest of the climate controls); I can't select a destination or add stops in Maps without opening my phone; and I can't install or decline software updates for the vehicle, which nag with a very loud chime every time the car is parked.
The dealership offered to replace the touch screen, but only as a replacement for the entire head unit which was going to be $2500 or more. I couldn't justify the cost on a car that's only worth $15k now, especially after they couldn't fix the cameras.
[†] Makes me think the two things are related, but there's no practical way to debug it on my own.
I'm not sure about rodents. I keep the car in the garage at all times and have never seen any sign of rodents at our house, but it could be possible.
My family has a small fleet of bolts, and we could not be happier with them…
In fact, if cars get mixed up and I’m driving my wife’s much “nicer” Audi etron, I find that I always wish I were driving one of the bolts instead.
Buying motors and batteries from Aliexpress you can probably get under $15K-$10K even ( and that is probably BOM of Chinese car manufacturers for such the engine and batteries), yet having it as a US factory package $27K doesn't look that bad for me.
No amount of fanboy screeching is going to change the fact that it's only 200hp. Compared to a bone stock 70s/80s car that made 200-250hp from the factory this will 200hp EV will be a riot. But at $20k that's not what it's being compared against. The 500+HP LS crate motor and transmission combo (i.e. what this is being cross shopped against) are going to make more than that from ~2500rpm on up.
If you graph power available at a given output RPM with an electric motor you get a line. With an ICE you get an upward and then tapering off curve. When you add transmission gears to the ICE it's a series of essentially overlapping saw teeth except on the first gear where it goes all the way down to whatever power you make at 1500-2000rpm (so like a little under 100hp for a ~500hp engine, probably like 30hp for an ICE that makes ~200hp stock).
Basically even with a flat curve there comes a point where the taller curve is so much taller it still wins.
When comparing to cars of about the same horsepower the EVis gonna win every time, because flat curve. Even if comparing to a more powerful ICE car where the areas are approx. equal you don't have to pull back to shift (even CVTs "shift", it's for longevity reasons) and the ICE is probably not geared deep enough for best initial acceleration (though for "modern" power levels both cars have more than enough to roast the tires) the EV is still probably better.
And as an side I think it's dumb that they make you replace the transmission. There are tons and tons and tons of cars out there that either still have the original transmission or someone swapped an SBC into them in 19-whatever. Being able to just replace the engine would make the swap a ton more accessible because you don't have to also add transmission mounting, controls, driveshaft, etc. to the list. Most older transmissions can handle "muh EV torque" just fine. It's the shifting under torque they don't like.
Basically this is cool but I think it's too expensive for the specs it has.
Edit: Not calling you a stupid fanboy, just saying you've been mislead by them.
Out of curiosity I looked up the ratios for the mentioned 4L60 transmission: 1st is 3.059:1, 2nd is 1.625:1, 3rd is direct drive at 1.00:1 and 4th is overdrive at 0.696:1. Then you'll have the ratio in your rear differential, whatever that happens to be.
My high school car was a 1975 Impala with the 350 cubic inch small block V8. Because of the Malaise Era emissions laws, it only produced 145hp but still had decent torque at 250ft·lb. It had a huge amount of space under the hood so perhaps this could fit both the motor and battery in there? (F/R weight balance being ignored)
Your point about people comparing this against the LS crate motor is correct IMO. This will be an expensive low-volume kit until (if!) economies of scale kick in. Only bought by people who want something different to show off to their friends at the weekend car shows.
A 90HP Volkswagen will do that. Nobody needs 200HP to keep up with traffic.
No worries at all and I should have been clearer that I wasn't saying it was just as good, more that it wasn't "Oh well, 200hp" like a ICE engine. I also think raw horsepower is overrated in street driving. As a single data point, a couple of weeks ago I got to run three laps in a GTR "Godzilla" at Loudon on the interior track. It was a blast but after I'd come down off the high I realized that 585hp did not feel wildly different from the ~400hp in my Camaro. And I rarely get to use much of that (other than some of those lovely overly long onramps around here).
- GT-R (R35, 2009–2025) generally ranges between 3,700 lbs and 3,950 lbs (approx. 1,680–1,790 kg)
- 2010 Chevrolet Camaro curb weight ranges from approximately 3,719 to 3,913 pounds (1,687–1,775 kg)
I will say that must make Godzilla denser.
I was racing on a road circuit. We all had full safety kit in the race cars. But instructing in fast street cars is what effectively scared me off. I wasn’t required to instruct, but it did offset the expense some.
Insurance companies don't care what mods you do to your car, even EV swapping, except performance mods. If you tell them you've been doing performance mods, they'll drop you.
But for a restomod muscle car? Gimme that LS V8 goodness with the sweet sweet brumble brumble brumble noises and smoky burnouts (on private property only, obv).
Which is a bit wild to me because I looked into adding a supercharger to my 2010 Camaro last month and it was 7-9k DIY.
I've been looking for 200+ hp engine swaps for my 100 hp, 125 lb-ft of torque lifted 1986 Toyota pickup with 31" tires (like the one on Back to the Future but 1 year newer and not extended cab).
For comparison, my 2013 Nissan Leaf has 107 hp, about 200 lb-ft of torque, weighs the same 3300 lbs, and does 0-60 mph in about 7-10 seconds depending on the weather.
So even accounting for the 300-500 lb weight of the 22r engine and accessories vs 1000+ lbs of electric motor and batteries, doubling the hp would be ludicrous speed (0-60 mph under 6 seconds), by all but 2010s era EV times.
I just looked up the price of Nissan Leaf battery swaps:
24 kWh (refurbished): 84 miles of range, $3,500-$5,000
40 kWh (upgrade): 125 miles of range, $6,500-$8,000
62 kWh (advanced upgrade, requires reshaping): 195 miles of range, $12,000-$14,500
Labor: Approximately 5-7 hours of labor at $100-$150/hour, adding $500-$1,500 to the total.
https://electricmotors.com/200-horsepower-electric-motors.ht...
($23,579.99 + $19,657.99 + $20,611.99 + $22,267.99 + $27,199.99 + $27,199.99 + $13,383.99 + $13,029.99 + $15,159.99 + $10,989.99 + $10,819.99 + $13,469.99 + $13,469.99 + $13,851.99 + $13,851.99 + $14,259.99) / 16 =
$17,050 (200 hp average price)
$14,500 + $1500 + $17,050 =
$33,050 (200 hp full swap price not counting charger/inverter etc)
Also I feel that these numbers are inflated, due to the US's current 100% import tariff on Chinese EVs:
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/joe-biden-china-tariff-hike...
I'm part of the "radical center" politically (the opposite of centrist/moderate, popularized by Thom Hartmann and others), so this disappoints both sides of my sensibilities.
An electric motor is far easier to build than a gas engine, so should cost less than a crate engine (which are typically $2,000-7,000). Of course that's limited by copper and aluminum prices (not to mention lithium for batteries). Edit: wouldn't want to forget rare earths like neodymium either!
I believe that the decades-long delay in EV manufacturing (see Who Killed the Electric Car) was a supply chain problem, not a tech problem, since we've known how to do this since the 1980s and arguably for more like a century since the first cars were EV/biofuel powered and we've had nickel-iron and sodium-sulfur batteries forever that could have done the job, but I digress.
If/when the economy crashes in 2027/2028, and after voters demand better, I'd expect a cottage industry to open up again that builds EV parts for 1/2 price or less.
It took me a second to put it together that they’re the submitter.
And of course I submitted a junk test to see what it does today but there's no "delete" function for submissions. Le Sigh.
In fact, there are still complete, servicable engines _and chassis_ available. And the chassis are already registered with a VIN, so when built can be sold as a new 1984 model year vehicle.
Yeah, I thought of the first corvettes that had catalytic converters:
1974 models had the last true dual exhaust system that was dropped on the 1975 models with the introduction of catalytic converters requiring the use of no-lead fuel. Engine power decreased with the base ZQ3 engine producing 165 hp (123 kW; 167 PS), the optional L82's output 205 hp (153 kW; 208 PS), while the 454 big-block engine was discontinued.
My dad used to rebuild and flip old Daimlers and MGs back in the day on our suburban front lawn in Australia. For reasons of space, gentrification, economics, labour market changes, technological shifts, etc, that’s sadly far less common than it used to be. Such a loss.
[1] https://indd.adobe.com/view/a055533b-ed9a-4d56-84cb-5a416287...
Gearboxes in EV conversions are usually locked in the highest gear with clutch and lever removed.
I still think it's dumb and they should package it to replace the transmission and stuff all the batteries where the engine would go.
It would be "easy" to make the motor replace the bellhousing and midsection of a 4L80 and then simply provide the same output so you can stick whatever tailhousing you want on it. Put shifter on the side in the same spot, etc, etc. Could've packaged the batteries to fit in the same place as a SBC longblock.
I can't really come up with a "good" reason they did it the way they did. The problems the transmission solves are pretty trivial. Like either replace the engine so it can work with "any" transmission that can handle the torque (i.e. most of them) or replace the transmission too. Don't replace the engine and then mandate a particular trans. The only reason I can see to do that is if it's some sort of wink and nod deal where they know that it's easy to make it work with other transmissions but they're not touting it as compatible to cover their asses.
So if you mount just the electric motor from an EV (insofar as it exists as a separable part) to a manual gearbox and weld that into 2nd gear you have something which broadly matches the design envelope of that motor. You could reduce gearbox losses by also removing the now unneeded but still idling gears.
"The current eCrate kit requires a GM 4-speed automatic transmission with an external mode switch (e.g., 4L60, 4L65, 4L70, 4L75 Transmissions). This helps to make the eCrate conversion easier for vehicles that already have a conventional driveline, plus it provides extra torque in lower gears and extra speed with overdrive. We are working on bringing a direct drive variant option to our eCrate portfolio."
I asked him if we'd see an all electric Corvette in the C8 timeframe, or would have to wait until the C9?
He confirmed (to the group) there would not be an all electric C8.
GM has long done "crate" engines, where people swap their cars OE engine for one of GM's small block v8s (an "LS or LT swap") frequently found in Corvettes, Escalades, and probably Silverado/large trucks/SUVs.
Seeing an electric crate engine from GM shows me that they plan to do the same with an electrified power train. Cool.
Maybe you can make some kind of case in their defense, safety or whatever, but what makes it truly indefensible is that once the car is out of warranty, out of their liability, they're just gonna chuck the software keys in a pit and leave you with an eternally immutable half-baked design.
So unless this comes with a fully open source software package, or even no software at all and just documentation, it's a bad product and I wish the worst for it.
It's also only the front motor from the Mach-E and the concept truck Ford made with this crate motor at release includes the rear motor to make it functional, which they don't sell...
though GM seems to be the only american automaker that hasn't really given up on EVs
Rivian and Lucid are both American automakers, as is Tesla.
It won't take years for they to think that they can pry in private conversations in the car for whatever purpose they want
I don't really care if the package itself is cool or anything... I think people incentive too much this sort of anti consumer practices
Got OnStar? https://www.onstar.com/features/location-sharing
I thought the kids were calling it “unalived”.