Classic car electric conversion: Aston Martin DB6 Volante mk2 | Fully Charged 

A conversation has a much lower environmental impact than a brand new sports car. Especially if that sportscar gets low annual mileage and a big battery.

i'm thinking jonny should have been wearing a donkey jacket to go with his jumper...

I think he should leave out the fur collars.

@@JasonSmith-ti1wf It's unlikely to be real fur. Real fur on clothing is pretty rare these days. Then again he's sitting in a car with leather seats, and is probably wearing leather boots. Kinda absurd to argue about a bit of (probably fake) fur.

It still boggles my mind that companies haven't rolled out direct drop-in bolt-in replacements for ICE engines and transmissions. Considering how much easier it is to create an electric crate motor than a petrol one, I'm surprised they aren't widely available. I love older vehicles, they have so much personality and style compared to modern wind tunnel designed cars.

Absolutely right, when questioned whether the electric engine will resemble the ICE engine, he even responds with the same argument!

@sweinberger perhaps they could incorporate a child coughing...

@sweinberger Vibrations! That was my first thought. My second thought a good electric engine will still give POWER, but if you have fake sound then you could have a inferior engine while making sound good. No to fake sound.

Agreed. From an aesthetic perspective, a fake acceleration recording to mimic the real sound will always sound contrived. The only positive is that episode Robert did with the blind guy. He was driving around central London at about 25mph, and the blind guy was really struggling to hear that a car was there. When the majority of cars are EV's, granted they can detect the person, the blind are really going to struggle trying to navigate a major city.

In certain markets, like the US, EVs are required to make some kind of noise at low speeds for parking lots, so I could see a nice piston rumble being preferrable to some kind of obnoxious beeping. Although I would much prefer the Jetson's whirring space car noise.

VicMorrowsGhost people don’t drive these cars to sit in them while getting from A to B in a beautiful chassis. People buy them for the engine. And for the engine only

@@clausmadsen6754 Not really, speaking at car shows most people seem buy them for the looks.

David Knowles ok. Just me then. I even think it’s ugly and the least successful classic Aston design. To me these cars are ALL about that inline 6

@@clausmadsen6754 I think there's a few reasons people like classic cars, and the engine experience is definitely one of them. The reality of driving one of these though is like an egg and spoon race. You want to let rip but at the slightest bump something is going to break and it's going to be hecking expensive to fix. If you just love the style and want something you can drive more than once a month, this type of conversion makes a lot of sense.

VicMorrowsGhost For me classic cars are about technique, design and craftsmanship. Technique: for instance that inline 6 Design doesn’t need explaining Craftsmanship: the way the restoration is done.

What type of battery are you running in it? :)

@@NewmanAutomotive at present I have 60amphr CALB lithium ion phosphate batteries. (approx 22kwhr)

Do you have more info on that conversion? I have a 99 and want to do the same.

@@walterk8602 Nice, I want to do the same one day, I'd like to get up to 40-50kw/h though. Will cost a few bob so it'll be a good few years before I can afford to do it. The plan in the meantime is to retire the MX5 to be a weekend runabout and daily drive a leased EV :)

@@walterk8602 Does that all fit in the engine bay or did you need to place some batteries elsewhere? Did you need to make a lot of mods to the original frame/body?

turn it off then :) i'd much rather have an unbaffled generator to make the sound and make it hybrid.

Flaming: The present design is probably a hack and looks terrible, if you have seen some of the EV conversions done by others to look good you know a EV system can be made into a work of art too. Aston Martin does not want you to see under the hood until they have a design that make you go "Oh and Ah" as you trace power lines, battery cooling systems, etc. The final design should wow you if it is made right.

We saw it but were not able to publish the footage.

you could always slap a stereo and sound card and big speakers.

julesdingle To do it properly you’d need some very very beefy amplifiers and speakers. Luckily electric power won’t be a problem at all. ;) Budget won’t be much of a problem either so yes it should be feasible.

@@julesdingle not exactly

L6 or I6.. 🤔

L6 are my favorite engines next to a cammed v8...best sounds in the world

The ultimate in Sustainability indeed. And here in Africa this could really help transition to clean transportation by converting alot of the old cars around Africa

You don't buy a classic car to be reliable, you buy it because you love it's character, the way it looks, the way it sounds etc, breaking down is almost part of it. It almost wouldn't be fun without it. they're like art really, its a shame to see them being converted to electric in my opinion.

@@Olivergoodchild2 You might buy a classic car with those things in mind, not everyone. I like cars that work. I don't know about an Aston Martin - really not sure - but I'd convert something like a Citroen DS in heartbeat.

@Plazmatron I didn't say it would make it better.

@@johnknight9150 Classic cars are not necessarily unreliable. They can be but that's mainly because of aged components such as wires, connectors, hoses, etc. But, as you stated, they offer a new view on how to use classic cars, reusing the chassis and body etc and just put a motor and battery in it. :D

'The sound of dinosaurs screaming' has me screaming, good one!

Couldn't agree more.

Me too! But now that they pay Tesla to pool their respective vehicle fleets to meet EU emission requirements we might someday get an actual Fiat EV, not just that 125 (centoventicinque) concept.

That's pretty much done with what the latest electric Fiat 500e's look like. Modular, cute stuff, removable roof, etc..

Already available from a Dutch company shown on Fully charged a few months ago.

@@jimporter7418 Don't remember seeing that video, do you know the title or release date? Would love to learn more.

@@TonGi018 Difficult to find it on my phone but they did a lovely electric speed boat as well. They used to be associated with EVTV but they had a falling out about money and stuff.

But Robert wasn't in this episode ;)

This is like putting a jet engine in a Spitfire and just as ridiculous

Why would anyone convert it back though?

That is NOT preserving a classic. It is however destroying one for ever.

Go back through FC episodes and you'll find very varied content. Not just EV transport.

There's an episode coming later this week about solar trains, so yes, I agree with you, we have been a bit car heavy of late, but that's partly because there are now so many electric cars hitting the market. We are also doing electric ships, planes, bikes and an update on solar and powerwall developments in the next 2 months.

@@fullychargedshow thats great to hear. Thank you for the update, looking forward to it!

Exactly he wouldn't have felt the cold with a woolly hat on,most of the bodies heat is lost through the head.

Go to fully charged live. I bet it will be there.

I think it varies, and if I were an Aston fan I might care more about this, but it's a grand tourer - it was always meant to look nice and take you long distances in comfort and style, while showing everyone how rich you are. Cars like the Lamborghini Miura, with its classic NA V12, or the Lancia Delta S4 with its supercharged-turbocharged monster I4, those kinds of cars are iconic for their engines - they represent major engineering achievements, and they're also very much performance cars, and of course those iconic sounds represent that also. I think with cars like that it truly would be a waste for someone to replace the ICE. Of course, by the same token it's a shame to ban ICE cars, but it's a necessary step. Would be nice if they could grandfather in classics, though. If we're all going to be stuck with hideous electric SUVs (since those three characteristics seem to be the future of the automobile) it'd be nice to pass the odd (proper) Beetle or Triumph or 911 or whatever, like spotting a steam loco on a modern railway.

i doubt they will ever be illegal

No muffler, lots of noise.

I'd take one with bad range.

SuperFuzzmonkey My wife has been trying to find exactly what you’ve described for years, and she works for an major oil company in the US!

Jeremy, how does it make it more useable, particularly if you use it for its intended grand touring role?

@@iareid8255 Because it’ll be many times more reliable, and cheaper & cleaner to run, so you just don’t have as many reasons not to drive it. Charging is much more convenient than fueling, although it might not be for touring (depends if it can DC fast charge), but I doubt many people would choose to drive great distances in this car in the 21st century anyway.

@@Jer_Schmidt Not more reliable, I ran a 5 for about ten years. It probably is cheaper at current electricity cost but fuel revenue will have to be recouped in the not too distant future. It still is sacrilidge to spoil a nice motor car. If it were a building it would be listed where you cannot deviate from originality. Fine, if you want to run an electric car, just buy a new one but leave the classics alone.

I cannot agree, I just see no point at all. It cannot make the car any more desirable, it really is pointless.

@@iareid8255 Have you ever driven an EV? I’m guessing no, or I think you’d understand what makes it so desirable. My grandfather used to restore classic cars, and I always thought it was a shame that he put so much work into them and they still had to burn gas, and were too unreliable, underpowered and inefficient to really use. He only got them out of the garage about once a year. I’m absolutely not saying we should convert all the classics to EV; some of them need to be preserved as original. But it’s just ridiculous to let them rot in a garage because they’re too obsolete to use. Now that’s all just my opinion, and I am a twenty-something from the US so I’m sure others will have a significantly different opinion, and that’s fine. But someday if I have the money I’ll probably do my own EV conversion (reversible of course).

Ahh yes, this one. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-610Amyhpzzk.html

Easier said than done! Available original parts only getting smaller and smaller each year. EV conversion in a way can save many cars from a junkyard.

This is what classic car ownership is about, people actually want to keep all the oddities of the original, even if they made them horrid to drive.

I agree totally that conversions can save many classic cars. I wasn’t arguing that the conversion should not be done. Only that it should be honest. With such a valuable car such as this it should be viable to maintain spares and tooling.

@@8agpuss Indeed, keep the drive train stored away, and just let the electric wine enter your eardrums. Embrace it fully, or don't do it at all. Like the BMW I8, my god that sound is horrendous.

Geezer J Hold that thought

*punches air* YESSSSSSSSSS!!!! *Thinks about buying a suit for the test drive, then decides against it*

Degrees of improvement are possible. Many old cars can have later upgraded parts added without changing the structure, in particular suspension, brakes and electrics to make them an every day driver.

What if you plug headphones into the car, and listen to the fake engine sound that way? Or, its quietly played through the speaker in the cabin.

John Michael this is truly a ship (or car) of Theseus. If an old car has its brakes, suspension and engine upgraded is it really the old car or just a memory of it ? It’s not driving the same way, it might superficially look the same but the driver will not experience what the car was like when it was new.. All that really remains the same is the original passive safety or lack thereof.

Francesco Nicoletti True, but way safer to drive in modern traffic and better than keeping the old car in a museum or scrapping it