R32 GTR EV? The leaf of the Godzilla's!

[PranK]

https://www.dezeen.com/2025/01/06/nissan-electric-r32-skyline-gt-r-godzilla-sports-car/

 

I reckon this is pretty cool. Lots of other Resto mods have turned to ev power.

[GTSBoy]

You reckon?

I have to disagree. Notwithstanding that at some point we may all be forced to do this to our cars if we want to keep driving them, there is absolutely nothing about an electric-converted-previously-IC-car that is ever good. EVs that are built by OEMs on platforms that were originally IC already suck, let alone the shitty outcomes that result from doing it as a retro to something that was actually built as an IC car. This is because the platform really needs to be designed to house the battery in a useful place (ie, down as low as possible) and the motors are properly located relative to the wheels that they have to drive. Converted platforms already suck at this. But when you try to shove sufficient battery capacity into a previously IC car, you can't put it down on/in the floor, because that space doesn't exist. You can't find enough space where the fuel tank used to be (if it is an inboard fuel tank) and you don't want to hang it out behind the rear axle line if you had a rear fuel tank. And there's not enough space in the tunnel if you still want to use it for anything remotely like what it was originally used for. The engine bay is too big for a motor, and you'd really prefer that the motor for the rear wheels wasn't in the front engine bay anyway. And there's not enough room where the diff was for a proper man-sized E motor.

And then.... there is the complete lack of soul and emotion that is provided by EVs.

There are some cracking restomods out there. Like the Alfaholics GTA thingo. But it is petrol powered. Look at the alternative EV version of a GTA restomod by Totem. it is jaw droppingly beautiful. But by all reports is is objectively awful to drive, despite having 600 HP or something, simply because there is nothing there. It sounds like a sewing machine or a leaf blower. It should scream and wail and make the hairs on your neck stand up.

Oh, and it's 1500 bloody kg in a car that was <900kg when new. GTRs are heavy enough as it is without pushing them up to 2tonnes worth of pork.

[PranK]

Hahaha yep, point(s) taken.

I just like seeing different things and an EV in an R32 is pretty different.

I'm not on the EV band wagon, I'm waiting for synthetic fuels or hydrogen personally. 

[GTSBoy]

H2 (for cars) will never happen. It's not reasonable for any number of reasons. It's also not reasonable for almost all of the industrial uses that the fanbois say that it will be used for, again for a large number of reasons. There are some cases where it will be good. But, even those will be massively hampered by the economics. The only way that H2 can be economic is if we somehow manage to get from where we are to the other side of the economic-valley-of-death in which no-one can operate. You need there to be sufficient renewable generated electricity to be available so that it is effectively free. Once you are there, you can do whatever the hell you want and hang the efficiency. But until you get there, the ever diminishing value of electricity makes it harder and harder to encourage businesses to build the new generation capacity, and they will simply stop investing in generation projects. (I kinda think there needs to be just government money spent on building the required capacity in a non-commercial way, similar to how the first fossil fueled grids were built, as national-government owned utilities. And probably some nuclear in there to start. But this all should have started 10-15 years ago to avoid the chasm of death that we face right now).

Synth fuels will be much more likely, but will only occur is there is at least some renewable H2 production, because you need H2 to do it. And you need stacks of free (or at least extraordinarily cheap) energy because assembling molecules back into fuels is exactly the opposite process to burning the fuel, and the reason we burn fuels is because there is so much energy squeezed into each molecule. So you're somewhat subject to the same economic valley of death problem as above anyway. That is unless people are willing to pay the current equivalent of $5 or $6 per litre of petrol-ish liquid fuels. Can you imagine it? The squealing at $2 now is bad enough.

[PLYNX]

And at over $2 per litre I'm starting to consider setting up a corn mash still and converting over to alcohol and running mine on it ! 

Up side of that is it all doesn't have to go into the car !

Win win !

[Duncan]

3 hours ago, GTSBoy said:

....And then.... there is the complete lack of soul and emotion that is provided by EVs.....

I can't agree. If we hadn't all been brought up with the noise caused by the inefficiency of an ICE, no-one would actually ask for all that.

An EV is like any other car, it just goes better. 

[soviet_merlin]

I wonder where they got the donor car from and whether there are more. Looks clean at a glance.

Might be a good candidate for a RB26 swap  

[Ozdavroz]