Retro-electrification, converting ‘retro’ BMW’s to Electric.

The world of electric vehicle ‘retro’ conversions has been active for a good few years. It has remained largely confined either to geeky types who are plugging away in their home garages and labs doing some really clever things adapting parts from crashed EV’s and putting them into slightly retro internal combustion cars, or larger commercial workshops who are fitting kits of bits provided by others into more expensive classics cars.

One particular pioneering type, Damien Maguire, an engineer from Southern Ireland, who we’ve followed for the past five years, has converted several ‘retro rides. His particular thing (well one of his ‘things’) is the EV upcycling of old BMW’s, using a variety of electrification componentry. These conversions don’t necessarily cost £1000’s, in fact he has a series of videos which focuses on low cost conversion (an EV conversion for 1000 euros).

Mr Maguire’s skill set goes way beyond the mechanical aspects of bolting car bits from crashed EV’s into broken internal combustion engined vehicles. His background as an electronics engineer means that he has geek level knowledge and skills when it comes to reverse engineering CAN signals, reverse engineering hardware (such as inverters and their controller function) and developing (or co-developing) an open source motor controllers.

If you have an inkling that you’d like to get into EV, and perhaps convert one of your own project vehicles to electric power, head over to Damien’s Youtube channel – it will be time very well spent, and will give you a detailed lowdown on how to make this happen.

Check out his channel…… Link to Damien’s Youtube channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/Evbmw/videos