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All-electric 818 kit car built with a Tesla drive unit and two Chevy Volt battery packs

electric 818

Tesla hacker Jason Hughes’ idea to build a car from two Tesla performance drive units, a few Tesla battery modules and two full Chevy Volt battery packs doesn’t seem so crazy now. It’s still crazy, just not “so crazy”. Ottawa-based car tuner and car shop, Eurodyne and Tapp Auto, just released a preview of a new race car using a similar setup, albeit not as powerful.

The Chevy Volt battery pack supports a higher discharge than Tesla’s battery, but Tesla’s drive unit is more powerful than the Volt’s, which makes combining the two an interesting idea for an all-electric drag racing car.

Tapp Auto installed the Tesla RWD drive unit and Volt packs in a Factory Five 818 kit car. Eurodyne built custom software to control the powertrain.

The result is an all-electric sports car with over 400 hp and weighing 2500 lbs.

In its initial tests, the vehicle completed the 1/4 mile in 11.5 seconds at a speed of 115 mph, which is fairly impressive for a new custom powertrain and it could likely get better with more tuning.

They released a video preview of the car:

https://youtu.be/2OITr1kTutQ

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