Electric Insight project

[tscheerer]

I'm about to embark on a project to build an Insight EV. Have agreed to purchase a gutted Insight shell, and hope to purchase an EV system in the next few days. If there is interest, will document the build in words and pictures. If anyone knows of others who have gone down this path, please refer me to them so that I may learn from their experiences.

[Frank Lee]

Insight should be a great starting point!

[Daox]

Sounds great, definitely keep us updated.

[srortega]

Take lots of pictures allong the way...

[gc-steve]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

Insight should be a great starting point!

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[Mesuge]

There have been number of hacks to stock Insight, mostly in relation to its hybrid drivetrain, however this effort produced number of gurus and usefull "insights" into the electronics etc. In terms of full EV conversions there might be a couple of them, the best bet is Otmar, invertor/founder of Zilla/Cafe, he is prototyping 3phase controller on this very car.

Insight - Start here with EV Album Search

Insight forums:
PHEV Insight - Insight Central: Honda Insight Forum
(Peter has got other valuable threads around the internets, BVS etc.)

"Peter Perkins" Insight PHEV guru and formely of "Solarvan fame":
Home

Tri-Zilla Insight:
Cafe Electric llc
Insight Conversion

PS consider yourself one lucky chap as LHD Insights are unobtanium in the rest of the world as they don't have proper legal papers to be imported from U.S. anyway, grr..
(and the rest of them in RHDs have been already bought all by Peter, hah)

[tscheerer]

Finally picked up the Insight this weekend. It's definately going to need a lot of work as it's basically a rolling chassis made from parts of two cars. Will get some pics up soon to show the starting point. Next planned step is to do a thorough inspection of the car to see what all I can find.

[bennelson]

Some of the guys at the FVEAA in the Chicago, Illinois area are talking about converting an Insight into a high performance REAR-WHEEL drive EV.

You might want to try to get in contact with them to pick their brains.

I think it was specifically one of the guys at Pioneer Conversions who was talking about it.

[tscheerer]

Here are some pics of the Insight as a beginning point for the project.
The front end is from another car, obviously, and like most of the car needs a lot of work. I will be getting a 8" ADC motor - Dual shaft (203-06-4001A), Curtis 400a controller, adapter and mid 90's GM manual trans as the driveline. One of the fun challenges will be mating the cv shafts from the GM trans to the hubs on the car. For power, the initial plan is to go with 72v and see how that does, can go up to 120v if space and weight allows. More to come...

[SVOboy]

Looks like a start! Did you happen to get this from a guy named Brent?