Car hacks / Mods Electric Jeep

Published on September 8th, 2011 | by Jo Borrás

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Recycled Hawtness: Electric Willys Jeep Proves Picard > Kirk

Mike Picard is cooler than me.  He’s also cooler than that snobby Shakespearean starship captain I referenced in the title.  I don’t know you, but odds are that Mike Picard is cooler than you, too.  That’s Mike up there, rocking along in a fully “restored” Willys Jeep … his better than new, military-grade, go-anywhere, home-built, plug-in, electric Willys overland Jeep.

Let that sink in for a minute while your pre-frontal lobe kicks into overdrive.

We’ve said it before (more than once) and we’ll probably say it again:  the greenest car is the one that’s already been built, and this particular Jeep was built a long time ago – long before (or long after, depending on your point of view) electric cars were en vogue.  What an electric car it is, though!

Picard’s Willys is powered by a TransWarp 11 DC electric motor (the same kind of TransWarp motor we used in the RENNtech GLK Spec.R hybrid rally racer back in 2008) mated to the original flywheel, transmission, and transfer case.  The electric motor draws power from a pair of “battery boxes”, holding 18 heavy-duty batteries.  The resulting “instant on” torque is far more than what the (nearly 70 year-old) original ICE engine would have put out, and this drivetrain isn’t (as) vulnerable to dramatic swings in the price of gas – like the one (again) in the summer of ’08 that inspired Mike to build this Jeep in the first place.

Take a look at some of the photos, below, to get an idea of just how neat this Jeep EV really is.  If we could get Chrysler to build these …

  • ev_jeep-5
  • ev_jeep-4
  • ev_jeep-3
  • ev_jeep-2
  • ev_jeep-1

Source and Photos:  EVTV Motor Verks, via Kaiser Willys.



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About the Author

I've been involved in motorsports and tuning since 1997, and write for a number of blogs in the Important Media network. You can find me on Twitter, Skype (jo.borras) or Google+.


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  • http://Web t_

    Hi Jo. Do you have some specs?

  • http://Web Hawaiian

    Way cool! I thought about doing that with my ’43 Willys, but decided to keep to “original”. I have a second donor Jeep that I planned to convert as a retirement project. Great job, I agree that the Jeep is a perfect EV.

    • http://importantmedia.org/members/joborras/ Jo Borras

      I’m sad to say I never considered it, but you’re right! PERFECT EV … I’m thinking one of the old mail jeeps would be super awesome.

  • Pingback: EVCONN 2011: Mike Picard’s Electric Willys Jeep Conversion – Gas 2.0()

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