Mark Walton: EV power for Mark’s Landie?
Ibought my Land Rover at the wrong time. Let’s call it ‘Peak Series 1’: it wasn’t long after JLR announced its Reborn programme: an as-new, restored classic for a whopping £80k. For a few months Series 1 prices went silly. Peak stupidity on my part.
Still, I console myself with the notion that when legislation eventually bans all petrol cars from the road, and I have to tell my wife that my ‘investment’ is not only redundant but also worth naff-all, at least the Series 1 will be ripe for an EV conversion. As an early 80-inch example, it’s a tiny, featherweight car, weighing just 1178kg (about the same as a Lotus Exige). If you took the 1.6-litre engine out, it’s basically a rolling ladder chassis trimmed with fresh air and alloy. A couple of Duracell batteries and an electric toothbrush motor ought to do it.
That’s why I sat up and took notice when Swindon Powertrains recently announced its EV ‘crate’ motor. You may know Swindon as the company that builds BTCC touring car race engines. Now it’s released the details of its High Density Power (HDP) motor, an off-the-shelf electric power unit. For £6400 plus VAT you get an 80kW (107bhp) motor with transmission, differential and a metre of cabling. The rest is up to you.
The announcement seems have tapped into the imaginations of car enthusiasts everywhere – company spokesman Nick Bailey told me they’ve been inundated since announcing the HDP. As well as ongoing talks with three manufacturers, they’ve also had enquiries from owners of everything from a Lotus Elise to an Austin Healey 3000 and even a canal boat. ‘Until now, DIY-ers have been trying to do EV conversions with parts scavenged from scrapped Nissan Leafs,’ Nick tells me, ‘but the packaging of the Leaf motor isn’t really suitable for a classic-car conversion. Our HDP motor is compact, it has multiple installation points and you can site the inverter and cooling packs separately, for maximum flexibility.’ Swindon can also design and supply a bespoke battery pack using Samsung cells.
Of course, this got my mind racing. There’s loads of room for a motor and battery in the Series 1! The Land Rover would be modernised! Cutting edge! Relevant again! Worth something!
I was just about to tell my wife that I’d solved our stupidly overpriced Series 1 problem (by spending a further 10 grand on it), when I drove the new Porsche Taycan Turbo. Oh dear.
Finished in Volcano Grey with 20-inch Sport Aero wheels, Porsche’s new electric saloon looked sensational. Inside, it had the super-modern, ‘leather free’ interior in grey fabric. The sports seats, the alcantara-wrapped steering wheel, the curved screen ahead of you, digital instruments – my God, this car is so zeitgeisty it makes Apple feel old-fashioned.
And it wasn’t the £131k price tag (with options) that shocked me; nor was it the brutal shove of the 616bhp all-wheel-drive powertrain (670bhp in Launch Control mode). Though that did make me want to vomit, after a few 0-62mph starts.
No, the mind-blowing thing about the Taycan is how unbelievably sophisticated it feels. This is a car that drips with profound engineering know-how. The ride is faultless: it feels light and agile, despite the 2.3-tonne kerb weight, a perfect blend of four-corner communication with surface-smoothing refinement. And it’s so quiet inside: no squeaks or rattles; every switch, knob and handle operating with achingly German precision. If the Taycan was a sock drawer, it would be a sock drawer that glides out silently when you touch it, stopping slowly and exactly without any kind of a judder or friction, and all the socks inside would be immaculately folded and made of organic grey cotton.
The Taycan is the best electric car I’ve ever driven – way better than a Tesla – and now I feel a bit miserable. It’s just highlighted the enormous gulf opening up between ‘regular’ cars and a new generation of fully digital, sci-fi-era EVs. On the way home, in my Subaru Forester diesel – built in 2012 – it felt like I was driving a Nokia 3210 phone from the ’90s.
Face it, even with an EV conversion, my Land Rover will feel like a clunky ’50s tractor. Give up, analogue DIY-ers, the software guys have won.