Electric Vehicle Conversion

Mechanical Design / 2026

Electric Vehicle Conversion

There are millions of gasoline vehicles on the road today. Unfortunately, many end up with blown engines or minor damage and can be had for a very low price. It is possible to bring new life to these vehicles and keep them out of junkyards by installing electric motors in them.

For my undergraduate capstone experience, me and my team developed an engineering process to mount the electric motor from a Tesla Model 3 into an arbitrary gasoline vehicle. Afterward, I pursued the project to find out what else was necessary for a green, cost-effective electric vehicle conversion.

Final CAD Render
Final CAD render of the mounting structure, which holds a Tesla Model 3 motor a fixed distance away from a Subaru Impreza WRX transmission.
Internal Cutaway Render
Cutaway view of the mounting structure showing the m6 tapped holes holding the two sides together.
Mount Assembly Design
Complete mounting structure and motor installed in the vehicle.
FEA Setup
FEA (ANSYS) boundary conditions and load setup for a 10G frontal acceleration, used to simulate a head-on collision.
FEA Stress Analysis
FEA stress analysis results for a 10G frontal acceleration.
Edge Finder Alignment
A standard mill with an edge finder is used to reverse engineer the locations of motor mounting holes.
Prototype Coupling
3D printed prototype shaft coupling. It features ten M8 bolts to secure it to the Tesla motor shaft with 28 tons of clamping force.

Motor Mount

My undergraduate Mechanical Engineering capstone team worked for 8 months to develop an engineering process and example product to physically mount an electric vehicle motor into a 2008 Subaru WRX. We went through the entire engineering cycle countless times, documenting our choices for donor motor, mounting location, mounting strategy, reverse engineering strategy, failure mode analysis, and manufacturing method.

I made extensive use of ANSYS Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software to model the stresses we could expect in the mounting structure during acceleration, collisions, and hard landings. This helped us to quickly refine the design, keeping cost and complexity down while ensuring safe operation.

Battery Rack Fabrication
High voltage battery rack assembly I designed. It must hold 12 Tesla Model S battery modules weighing 700 lb total while withstanding high G maneuvers.
Battery Rack Mounted
Twelve battery modules installed in the battery rack.
Vehicle Control Unit Board
Custom Vehicle Control Unit (VCU) prototype board. I wrote a custom vehicle control unit firmware to safely control the vehicle's high voltage contactors.

Batteries and Electrical

Upon graduating Rose-Hulman, I continued the project. Alongside one of my capstone teammates, I installed the high voltage battery modules from a scrapped 2016 Tesla Model S into the Subaru. Along the way, I learned about high-voltage safety and switching logic and CAN bus communications, and gained experience with rapid prototyping and problem solving.