1996 Land Cruiser EV Conversion - EVJ80 Project (2 Viewers)

[67cruiser]

In California, there are no regs when it comes to converting any ICE to full electric - 2 thumbs way up - unlike converting to diesel which is a tricky dance unless you know exactly what you're doing....

I'd like to do to my OBD1 FZJ what you're doing - but with a 300+ range

 

[J1000]

In California, there are no regs when it comes to converting any ICE to full electric - 2 thumbs way up - unlike converting to diesel which is a tricky dance unless you know exactly what you're doing....

I'd like to do to my OBD1 FZJ what you're doing - but with a 300+ range

Yep same here in CO! That's a big part of what pushed me to get into EV conversions. I've had my fair share of modified and turbod cars. Nowadays it's pretty hard if not impossible to do that stuff around where I live. 300 miles would be epic. I think that may require battery tech to make a big jump forward in some way for that to be possible in an 80 series, however.

I got the new CO EV plates:

 

[67cruiser]

I don't know the logistics.. but I would have space where the tank is, space under the hood, and space where the spare tire used to be...

How much range could one realistically expect for the battery space?

Could solar panels trickle charge them as well?

 

[PIP]

Simple solution- Buy F-150 lightning chassis, set 80 series body on top.

 

[J1000]

I don't know the logistics.. but I would have space where the tank is, space under the hood, and space where the spare tire used to be...

How much range could one realistically expect for the battery space?

Could solar panels trickle charge them as well?

On my truck I have 30 KWH under the hood and I plan to add another 30 KWH in the gas tank location and probably will spill over into the exhaust location too. Currently driving at 45 MPH or lower I can go 50-60 miles. So with another battery I'll barely break 100 miles. So even if I doubled it again (120 KWH) it still won't get close to 300 miles. Maybe if I had a more efficient battery setup I could fit 40-50 KWH under the hood, at the maximum. Another 40-50 KWH in gas tank/exhaust location, and may be 30 KWH in the spare location. So 130 KWH in a perfect scenario. The mid level Rivian with 135 KWH gets 310 miles, but it's way more efficient than my truck especially at speeds over 45 MPH. So if you were able to fill every possible void with lithium cells in the perfect most compact way then maybe you can get 300 miles in theory...but probably not highway miles.

Also remember the biggest Rivian has a curb weight of 7600 lbs or something like that, so that's about 1000 lbs heavier than the GVWR of the 80 series so you're gonna have one heavy beast when it's all said and done. My 30 KWH battery weighs 600 lbs. Not that people don't already have massive beasts of 80s already

 

[sunrk]

Simple solution- Buy F-150 lightning chassis, set 80 series body on top.

And get the crappiest battery range going around. Try to tow anything with a F-150 lightning and your range drops 50+ percent. Here in Oz (where the f150 lightning is not sold) you'd be lucky to get 100 to 150 km towing a 3+ tonne caravan, then have to stop for 2+ hrs to fully recharge, then go again. A huge improvement in charge capacity requires a vastly different sort of battery tech (and probably not tiny individual cells but there's no 'bulk block' battery tech that is any way 'safe') that is non-existent commercially. And the weight penalty (of a big enough battery for 500 km *when towing*) would make the battery module itself bigger/heavier that the current tare weight of the f150 in it's entirety.

 

[J1000]

And get the crappiest battery range going around. Try to tow anything with a F-150 lightning and your range drops 50+ percent. Here in Oz (where the f150 lightning is not sold) you'd be lucky to get 100 to 150 km towing a 3+ tonne caravan, then have to stop for 2+ hrs to fully recharge, then go again. A huge improvement in charge capacity requires a vastly different sort of battery tech (and probably not tiny individual cells but there's no 'bulk block' battery tech that is any way 'safe') that is non-existent commercially. And the weight penalty (of a big enough battery for 500 km *when towing*) would make the battery module itself bigger/heavier that the current tare weight of the f150 in it's entirety.

Yes it will be interesting to see how the industry reacts to EV mandates. Especially trucks and heavy vehicles. Delivery drivers aren't going to give two licks about efficient driving they are just going to mash the pedal down. And then probably forget to plug it in back at the warehouse over night. And like you say towing with an EV is going to be the nail in the coffin. If you can't tow a simple trailer across town in your F150 then really what is the point?

 

[J1000]

Come check out ColoYota Expo and check out the EVSwap Land Cruiser! I will be there May 21st showing it off!

Home - ColoYota Expo

Third Annual ColoYota Expo Saturday, May 17, 2025 10AM - 2PM Jefferson County Fairgrounds REGISTER NOW ColoYota Expo is your home town, homegrown overland vendor expo, swap meet, car show, and meet & greet. It's open to all owners of any Toyota or Lexus 4x4. It costs $5 to

coloyotaexpo.com

 

[sunrk]

The biggest change with EV's, especially large vehicles like utes/4wds and trucks, will be total driver attitude as the entire way they are driven will need to be different. That includes everything from 'fuelling' to normal maintenance to all the 'big stuff' like brakes/suspension/wheels/tyres/motors/electronics/etc. and dealing with 'breakdowns' when the battery runs out of charge mid-drive, or the electronics breaks.

If you want to set up a new business, create one with a fleet of big diesel utes hauling around big diesel generators to 'rescue' EV's that have got 'batt flattery' nowhere near any easily reachable public charge point. All the road service mobs are probably already setting up to do this. But most people do not buy road service subscriptions and with EV's they will believe they're invincible as 'eco warriors' and never need roadside help.

Also what will people do when they plug in to charge, try to pay, and find they have no money to pay?

Unlike a service station where there is a 'process' around being unable to pay (or police get called as it's deemed a 'drive off' risk), at an EV charge point if you can't pay you're a dead duck and nobody is going to help you out. And your vehicle is then technically 'illegally parked' under new laws that make it an offence to park a non-EV in a designated EV parking spot or park an EV there that isn't being charged.

 

[PIP]

The biggest change with EV's, especially large vehicles like utes/4wds and trucks, will be total driver attitude as the entire way they are driven will need to be different. That includes everything from 'fuelling' to normal maintenance to all the 'big stuff' like brakes/suspension/wheels/tyres/motors/electronics/etc. and dealing with 'breakdowns' when the battery runs out of charge mid-drive, or the electronics breaks.

If you want to set up a new business, create one with a fleet of big diesel utes hauling around big diesel generators to 'rescue' EV's that have got 'batt flattery' nowhere near any easily reachable public charge point. All the road service mobs are probably already setting up to do this. But most people do not buy road service subscriptions and with EV's they will believe they're invincible as 'eco warriors' and never need roadside help.

Also what will people do when they plug in to charge, try to pay, and find they have no money to pay?

Unlike a service station where there is a 'process' around being unable to pay (or police get called as it's deemed a 'drive off' risk), at an EV charge point if you can't pay you're a dead duck and nobody is going to help you out. And your vehicle is then technically 'illegally parked' under new laws that make it an offence to park a non-EV in a designated EV parking spot or park an EV there that isn't being charged.

Have you actually witnessed people driving EV's running out of battery like you're talking about?

It just doesn't seem like something that would happen very often given how easy EV charging is.

I've driven my Tesla one way into nowhere arriving with around 20 miles of range left. I charged it to 100% running the cord through the window of the cabin we were staying at plugging into the outlet for the coffee pot over a 2 day period. Worked great.

 

[plink01]

The biggest change with EV's, especially large vehicles like utes/4wds and trucks, will be total driver attitude as the entire way they are driven will need to be different. That includes everything from 'fuelling' to normal maintenance to all the 'big stuff' like brakes/suspension/wheels/tyres/motors/electronics/etc. and dealing with 'breakdowns' when the battery runs out of charge mid-drive, or the electronics breaks.

If you want to set up a new business, create one with a fleet of big diesel utes hauling around big diesel generators to 'rescue' EV's that have got 'batt flattery' nowhere near any easily reachable public charge point. All the road service mobs are probably already setting up to do this. But most people do not buy road service subscriptions and with EV's they will believe they're invincible as 'eco warriors' and never need roadside help.

Also what will people do when they plug in to charge, try to pay, and find they have no money to pay?

Unlike a service station where there is a 'process' around being unable to pay (or police get called as it's deemed a 'drive off' risk), at an EV charge point if you can't pay you're a dead duck and nobody is going to help you out. And your vehicle is then technically 'illegally parked' under new laws that make it an offence to park a non-EV in a designated EV parking spot or park an EV there that isn't being charged.

Man you come up with some weird stuff when you talk about electric vehicles.

The vehicle can be driven exactly the same. You put the foot down when driving your v8, it sucks tons of juice. You plant the foot in your electric car, it sucks tons of electricity. Drive it slower and smoother, uses less fuel. Literally the exact same as right now.

Normal maintenance is pretty much exactly the same but there is now less fluids to change and things to maintain.

Dealing with breakedowns?? Pretty sure cars currently break down?? You will get it towed just like you do now.

Why are you going to run out of money when recharging it?? Pretty sure you can run out of money currently when you fuel up?? If anything you will run out of money less because it costs a million times less to re charge it then it costs to put 100l of diesel in it.
I can't say I've ever ran out of money when refueling.

You don't seem to be paying much attention but there are electric chargers popping up everywhere. I live rural Australia and there are chargers in every town and we have next to no electric vehicles yet. In metro areas they are everywhere.

Why would electric vehicle drivers think they're 'eco warriors' and will never run out of battery?? What a strange thing to say. Why wouldn't they plan to re charge before they run out?? I don't think I've ever ran out of fuel before, generally because I fill up before I run out. Why does driving an electric vehicle make you an 'eco warrior'?? When driving electric vehicles does all sense or remembering to re charge it go out the window??

Every one of your points were completely ridiculous. Batteries will improve, chargers will become more common. It's like you think the current range of electric vehicles is the end game and they will never improve. This is only the beginning.

 

[CharlieS]

I think I saw you on trail in Moab a couple of weeks ago? I was in my 200, but since it was cruise moab too, I was just one of many that gave you props. Sweet project!

 

[sunrk]

Have you actually witnessed people driving EV's running out of battery like you're talking about?

It just doesn't seem like something that would happen very often given how easy EV charging is.

I've driven my Tesla one way into nowhere arriving with around 20 miles of range left. I charged it to 100% running the cord through the window of the cabin we were staying at plugging into the outlet for the coffee pot over a 2 day period. Worked great.

It's not easy here in Australia at the moment. EV charging points are starting to pop up but uptake is still really slow because range is so poor and the only real advantage of EV's in commuting within a city or travelling between localities on highways less than 200 km apart. Only yesterday I saw for the first time a public EV charging point that's removed two parking spaces at a big shopping centre/mall from general use.

What you say about long charge times is the other point - you simply cannot dump a full 100 percent charge of energy into the battery module hyper-quickly like you can with a petrol or diesel vehicle. If you do, it only takes a single cell in the entire module to overheat to about 220 deg C or higher and catch fire during the fast-charging process and the vehicle is a gonner. Until an EV can be fully charged from 'flat' to 100 percent in the same 5 to 10 minute window that it takes to 'recharge' an almost empty petrol or diesel vehicle that'll continue to be a big inhibitor to uptake here.

It's good that your Tesla still lets you keep going until it's got a very miniscule amount of charge left. I wonder what the 'minimum' charge level is before an EV tells you that you can't drive any more? Does the screen in the car report battery module voltage and current draw as instantaneous readings and/or map that data over the course of normal use?

There are still (as yet) no EV utes or 4wd's for sale here outside of one or two companies making specific conversions on things like 79 series cruisers for underground mining. I don't know if the aftermarket retro-conversion of non-EV's has any traction here, given our population (and therefore potential interested market share) is 1/10th that of mainland USA in roughly the same land area as mainland USA. Also the cost to do it here would be very high so only people with access to the right materials and workshop setup could do it.

 

[J1000]

@sunrk does make a lot of good points. It really does matter if you drive 65 MPH vs. 75 MPH for instance. In a gas car your MPG might not even be noticeably different if you change your highway speed by 10 MPH but in an EV, especially a big truck EV, that could affect your range by a significant margin. It was mentioned that Hoovie's Garage had an F150 Lightning and he could barely tow a car trailer from Wichita to Newton and back on a single charge. He was driving 75 MPH on the highway and if he had driven at 65 MPH then he would have made it with plenty to spare. If you are a contractor driving around town or towing long distance, that could mean the difference between running out on the side of the road or making it to your destination.

The reason EVs are affected so much is because the electric motor is 95+% efficient. A gas engine is only 30% or less efficient. So differences in your driving habits cause a way bigger change in the total range. A gas engine is going to burn most of the fuel no matter how you drive whereas the EV is only going to use exactly as much as you tell it to use. 1 gallon of gas = 33 KWH. So my truck essentially runs on less than 1 gallon of gas per charge. A Rivian with a 180 KWH pack is using the equivalent of 5.5 gallons of gas.

As far as public charging. I hate it. Public chargers are the worst. I daily drove a Nissan LEAF and experienced it just the same as I do now with my EV LC. Literally 50% of public chargers in my experience just don't work, they are just broken somehow. A lot of times they will be blocked by plug-in hybrids just using it for virtue signaling. Really annoying when you have 10% left and it's rush hour. Many times they are just blocked by gas vehicles. Ran into this just last month in Moab I couldn't find anywhere with an open charger and I drove around and hit 3 different chargers that showed on the app they were open to the public but once I got there they were only for members of the golf club, customers of the motel, or one was for employees of the business only. On the map they are marked as open and publicly available. It's really annoying.

Then also of course you need a phone with internet connection and a credit card to charge your EV with a public charger. You can get gas just about anywhere with cash. Charging on 120v is fine if you have time to kill. 120v will not charge my LC overnight, takes 20 hours. I have a tiny battery. So yeah it'll work at the cottage for the weekend but not outside of that.

I think I saw you on trail in Moab a couple of weeks ago? I was in my 200, but since it was cruise moab too, I was just one of many that gave you props. Sweet project!

Well I'm guessing there weren't any other electric 80s out there on the trail Thanks I appreciate it!

 

[PIP]

It's not easy here in Australia at the moment. EV charging points are starting to pop up but uptake is still really slow because range is so poor and the only real advantage of EV's in commuting within a city or travelling between localities on highways less than 200 km apart. Only yesterday I saw for the first time a public EV charging point that's removed two parking spaces at a big shopping centre/mall from general use.

What you say about long charge times is the other point - you simply cannot dump a full 100 percent charge of energy into the battery module hyper-quickly like you can with a petrol or diesel vehicle. If you do, it only takes a single cell in the entire module to overheat to about 220 deg C or higher and catch fire during the fast-charging process and the vehicle is a gonner. Until an EV can be fully charged from 'flat' to 100 percent in the same 5 to 10 minute window that it takes to 'recharge' an almost empty petrol or diesel vehicle that'll continue to be a big inhibitor to uptake here.

It's good that your Tesla still lets you keep going until it's got a very miniscule amount of charge left. I wonder what the 'minimum' charge level is before an EV tells you that you can't drive any more? Does the screen in the car report battery module voltage and current draw as instantaneous readings and/or map that data over the course of normal use?

There are still (as yet) no EV utes or 4wd's for sale here outside of one or two companies making specific conversions on things like 79 series cruisers for underground mining. I don't know if the aftermarket retro-conversion of non-EV's has any traction here, given our population (and therefore potential interested market share) is 1/10th that of mainland USA in roughly the same land area as mainland USA. Also the cost to do it here would be very high so only people with access to the right materials and workshop setup could do it.

The range the Tesla gives you has a safety margin built in. My wife has run it 30 miles past zero and it didn't die. She had plenty of opportunities to charge, she chose not to.

In the winter time, the HVAC system is a huge battery load. I needed to do 220 miles of driving in one day in January and my tesla's max range is 240 miles. Below about 45 degrees the range seems to drop dramatically. I was curious about the HVAC load so I turned it off and did my driving with a coat on. I could have charged, it wasn't a big deal, I just wanted to see how much difference it would make with the HVAC off. I made it back home with battery to spare. It was kinda funny to me because even the Tesla onboard computer kept telling me I wasn't going to make it home and I had to charge. It gives you a calculated projection of how much battery life you'll have when you arrive at your next charging point/home and apparently they base that on having the HVAC running all the time.

And I have to say there's kind of a honeymoon period with an EV where everything is new and you push boundaries a little bit. Initially, I didn't realize how cheap the Tesla fast chargers were so I would avoid them. Two+ years and 50K miles into owners I'm very comfortable with it's usefulness, range and find it easy to decide if I'm taking the Tesla or another vehicle (80 series or Superduty) on a trip.

When I bought the Tesla I bought it because we needed a car to replace our basic family commuter Kia that was falling apart. The Tesla literally checked all the boxes for us and electric wasn't something we were considering. My wife and I discussed the possibility since most of the car driving we did was a perfect fit for an EV. I was skeptical until the test drive. Tesla lets you take a car for a day or two and see how it goes. So that's what we did. We took one Friday night and brought it back Sunday. We loaded up the kids and took off for the beach for the weekend. I drove it like a teenager. The wife and 3 kids fit comfortably. Everyone liked the gadgets and gizmos. I liked the performance and the nerd side of it where it gives you whatever information you want down to calculating out your exact cost of electricity to drive it.

One of the main reasons why I was OK with the Tesla even though I wasn't looking at an EV was that a product business that I'm a partner in was developing a touchscreen GUI at the time and we really wanted to see how in the hell Tesla was able to pack most of the controls and all driver information into a screen in the center of the dash. I like that Tesla thinks outside the box. Most things they do differently are ingenious. A couple things I'm not the biggest fan of like linking your phone to the car or tapping a card on the B pillar to unlock it when in the pouring rain. Everything else, including how it's made from gigantic aluminum die casting is pretty darn smart IMO.

And then there's advantages to an EV that never even occurred to me like how you can go further than the range says you can if you're going uphill. We have several tall mountains around us and we can drive a couple hours to get there without charging, ski all day or go hiking and then even with a very small calculated range left we can coast down the mountain the regen from going down actually charges the battery. It's not like you get a full battery back, but you gain enough to drive back to civilization.

 

[sunrk]

I am into classic Saab cars as well and I don't see my 80 or any older Toyota is a feasible EV convert here for Australian conditions but the Saab's might be. Some people have EV converted some saab classic 900's (the original non-GMified ones) like the ones I have.

It's really interesting that an 80 has been converted since it shows it's possible with existing componentry made for other vehicles to create a working solution.

One wonders if Toyota will release a full-electric only '400' or '500' series landcruiser within the next 10 years and try to ditch diesel altogether because of the virtue signalling and eco-warrioring that car makers are jumping on the bandwagon for at present.

The options with retro-fitting a big vehicle to become an EV are quite wide but you need to be a really savvy person to pick/choose what suits best.

Since there is an Aussie mob taking 79's and turning them into EV's for the mines, that presents a solution tailored to a landcruiser of other model series, and theoretically then is also releasing v8 diesel motors, etc. back into circulation as well.

My personal take is that I would prefer to keep all the existing driveline, replace the existing motor with one single big electric motor (since it preserves the weight balance), and adapt to the existing gearbox but mine is a manual and manual boxes might hate the full-torque-at-zero-rpm aspect of electric motors. The other issue I see is that it's probably not feasible to come up with a single large battery module to replace the dual fuel tanks because of how they are positioned in the chassis relative to the body and rear driveline.

However another take would be to get rid of the gearbox as well and not have any, providing the electronic control for the drive motor has plenty of safety features built in.

Has anyone considered just how much torque an 80 series driveline can take without breaking as that sets the theoretical limits on what sort of power can be fed in from the drive motor(s).

if I was a silicon valley tech-head with unlimited finances I'm sure it'd be easy to design and create an almost off-the-shelf solution to EV an 80 or 105 series.

 

[PIP]

I am into classic Saab cars as well and I don't see my 80 or any older Toyota is a feasible EV convert here for Australian conditions but the Saab's might be. Some people have EV converted some saab classic 900's (the original non-GMified ones) like the ones I have.

It's really interesting that an 80 has been converted since it shows it's possible with existing componentry made for other vehicles to create a working solution.

One wonders if Toyota will release a full-electric only '400' or '500' series landcruiser within the next 10 years and try to ditch diesel altogether because of the virtue signalling and eco-warrioring that car makers are jumping on the bandwagon for at present.

The options with retro-fitting a big vehicle to become an EV are quite wide but you need to be a really savvy person to pick/choose what suits best.

Since there is an Aussie mob taking 79's and turning them into EV's for the mines, that presents a solution tailored to a landcruiser of other model series, and theoretically then is also releasing v8 diesel motors, etc. back into circulation as well.

My personal take is that I would prefer to keep all the existing driveline, replace the existing motor with one single big electric motor (since it preserves the weight balance), and adapt to the existing gearbox but mine is a manual and manual boxes might hate the full-torque-at-zero-rpm aspect of electric motors. The other issue I see is that it's probably not feasible to come up with a single large battery module to replace the dual fuel tanks because of how they are positioned in the chassis relative to the body and rear driveline.

However another take would be to get rid of the gearbox as well and not have any, providing the electronic control for the drive motor has plenty of safety features built in.

Has anyone considered just how much torque an 80 series driveline can take without breaking as that sets the theoretical limits on what sort of power can be fed in from the drive motor(s).

if I was a silicon valley tech-head with unlimited finances I'm sure it'd be easy to design and create an almost off-the-shelf solution to EV an 80 or 105 series.

Like J1000 explained above, you really need all the efficiency you can get for an EV because any drivetrain loss is a direct hit to range unlike a 30% efficient engine.

Ideally, you'd put the motors in the axles. That way you have all the area between the frame rails for batteries.

Myself, I would really like to see if any of the tesla motors could be reconfigured into a new housing that would replace the dropout center in a Ford 9 inch or Toyota axle housing. It might require adding an extra gear into the transmission to space the motor far enough from the housing to clear. Most vehicles don't have anything right in front of the differential. The front axle is a different story though.

 

[PIP]

Oh, and EV owner pro tip- If you're planning a trip where there are no charging stations just take your tent and book an RV spot at a campground with hookups. They all have 220 30 amp power so you can fully charge an EV in a few hours.

 

[DivByZero]

I'm getting quite interested in the idea of a conversion to a hydrogen combustion engine when they become generally available. I think there's a lot of potential to retrofit older vehicles, including classic cars, with a hydrogen combustion engine, while preserving the existing transmission and drivetrain. Maybe we’ll see a HVJ80 project in the future?

 

[J1000]

I'm getting quite interested in the idea of a conversion to a hydrogen combustion engine when they become generally available. I think there's a lot of potential to retrofit older vehicles, including classic cars, with a hydrogen combustion engine, while preserving the existing transmission and drivetrain. Maybe we’ll see a HVJ80 project in the future?

Hydrogen is a dead end IMO.

Takes massive amounts of electricity and needs to be stored at very high pressure and you need a crazy volume of it to get any appreciable range. Like you need a massive carbon fiber weave tank at thousands of PSI that takes up all the storage space in your car for 100 miles range.

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are just EVs that you can't charge at home.

Hydrogen is probably not going to take off but synthetic/biofuels are the future, can use them in regular internal combustion engines.