[Tremelune]

I own a 2015 Smart Fortwo Electric drive and it is a fantastic city car. It gets 50-80miles to a charge, has heat, AC, and does 0-40mph in 4s. I paid under $6500 for it with 7500 miles on the chassis and batteries in good shape.

I'm casually in the market for an MGB, but I'm no longer interested in dealing with carbs or an ancient motor. My plan was to put a 90s GM V6 in it (mainly for the fuel injection), but I suddenly had a vision of an MGB or classic Mini with the drivetrain of a Smart ED. That would be an amazing runabout.

I don't see it mentioned much around here, so I'm wondering if there is an obvious non-starter I'm missing with these cars? Seems like a cheap way to get a lot of components in a package that could fit any car...

 

[Tremelune]

"Rare" and "hard-to-find" are distinct. If you have $5-7k to spend, you can pick up a Smart ED very easily in the States, and could probably recoup a grand from that, depending on your level of patience with selling the rest of the car.

I don't mean to trivialize the actual conversion costs, but how much is a Leaf or Tesla battery pack alone? Is a $5-8k Leaf just a better place to grab components?

The hardest part of installing an electric drive train is getting the motor to drive the wheels, right? Why would that be harder with a Smart motor than anything else? A lack of existing adapters?

The Smart has 120 ft-lb of torque at 0rpm. Not a powerhouse, but more than half the Miatas out there.

 

[Tremelune]

Yeah, it seems like the #1 reason is simply that Leaf stuff is similar money, and is a better platform for swaps. I hadn't realized they'd come down so much as well.