1964 Volkswagen Beetle Electric Conversion

1964 VW Electric Beetle

This beautifully restored 1964 Beetle came to us here at Traction EV from a friend of ours, Nick Lake of Nickel Energy.

Nick purchased the Beetle with the full intention of converting it to electric right away. He got all of the big stuff done like pulling out the internal combustion parts as well as installing the AC-50 Motor, battery boxes and HV cables. We met Nick around this time in his conversion and he decided to commission us to complete the rest of the wiring and installation of the Batrium battery management system.

This conversion kit designed and produced by EV West is a breeze to install for anyone with basic mechanical and electrical know how. There are easy to follow wiring diagrams for this kit as well as phone and email technical support if you get stuck.

The ’64 electric Beetle with the 52 kW and 163 Nm AC-50 motor is a blast to drive! It accelerates like a modern car and has no problem keeping up with traffic or pulling onto the highway. This kit comes with a 22 kWh pack made up of 37, 180Ah cells from CALB good for around 150 km range. There is a 2.5 kW on board charger to keep you topped up anywhere you go and it can be plugged into either a standard 10amp, 15amp or J1772 outlet.

This kit is great! It retains the factory look from the inside, keeping the seating capacity and only changing the fuel gauge for a battery gauge. No other cutting to the body is required to maintain the originality of the classic Beetle. You could even revert back to the original engine if you wanted to, but we can’t see that happening!

We machined the flywheel down and completely removed the starter teeth. The clutch was brand new before the conversion so it wasn’t upgraded at this time. The Ac-50 Motor uses the factory clutch and flywheel mated to the original 4 speed VW trans-axle. So if you want, you can just leave it in 2nd and never use the gears and clutch, or you can roll through the gears and give yourself some amazing acceleration taking off in 1st gear!

This kit provides a major improvement in both performance and reliability over the original combustion engine. This electric Beetle has now been future-proofed and should see another 55 years of fun, reliable driving.

If you would like to find out more about converting your classic Beetle, Type2 Kombi, Type3 or classic Air-Cooled Porsche to electric get in touch with us here.

A massive thanks goes to Ben Alexander from The Charge Show! He produced this amazing video reviewing this ’64 electric Beetle. Have a look and come for ride to see and hear the beautiful beetle running.