Kicking off an EV conversion of a 1961 VW Beetle using a Nissan Leaf drivetrain — and explaining where the name comes from.
The name Aphid comes from the small bug that lives among the leaves of plants. The Swedish name is bladlus, which translates to leaf louse — which sounds like the perfect name for when you combine the drivetrain from a Nissan Leaf with a VW Beetle, or a Bug.
I’ve learned from similar projects in the past that blogging about it is a great way to document the work for myself. As an added bonus, I hope to collect a lot of information around doing an EV conversion for anyone else who’s interested.
The timeline
History
When I was a kid, my dad restored an old VW Beetle that he used to drive to work. I remember riding in the back seat that didn’t have any seatbelts. I remember the smell inside the car on a warm summer day. Most of all I remember the very distinct sound of the air-cooled four cylinder boxer engine.
More or less since I graduated from university 15 years ago, I have been working with electric vehicles in some form. All this time I’ve had an idea that it would be really fun to make an EV conversion of an old VW Beetle. It would be such a mindf**k to glide around in one completely silent.
My younger brother is a much bigger car enthusiast than I am, especially when it comes to old VW cars. A few years ago he managed to buy the exact car we had when I was a child, even though he probably never rode in it. Since then it has been parked in his barn waiting for a purpose.
Today
I recently turned 40, and as a birthday gift my brother bought me a used Nissan EM57 motor with a very specific project in mind…
Future
This will likely take us many years before we have something that can be used to drive around on public streets, if we ever get there. My plan is at least to document this with as much detail as possible on this blog.
The plan
The plan is to restore the car to a nice condition. In addition to that, replace the internal combustion engine in the VW with the electric drive unit from a Nissan Leaf but keep the original gearbox locked in 2nd or 3rd gear. We want to do this in such a way that the car can be registered as a modified vehicle and be road-legal to drive in Sweden.
The donor components — see the Nissan Leaf EM57 motor and the Nissan Leaf traction inverter — come from a Gen 2 Nissan Leaf. The vehicle control side is custom; see VCM requirements for what that module needs to do.