Trucks are handy, especially if you’ve got messy or dirty loads, but there aren’t a lot of options if you want a small electric pickup yet. [Michael Pick] decided to convert a BMW i3 into a utility vehicle.
After getting a new 12 V battery and cleaning the car up, [Pick] proceeded to disassemble the interior and remove the hatch from the car. Once he could look at the bones, he planned out the best places for the cut lines and removed the back half of the cabin.
The bed is built from plywood coated in penetrating epoxy and bedliner for weatherproofing, and special care was taken to seal the interface between the cabin and bed as the main electronics for the vehicle are housed in a compartment directly below. The taillight electronics were rehoused as the OEM lenses were too large to fit next to the tailgate opening.
The i3 has graced these pages before with a battery upgrade, and we’d be remiss not to remind you of the most famous EV to truck conversion, Truckla.
what’s the point? just use the car as it is
You’re on the wrong site for using ____ as it is.
Get that toxic nonsense out of here. Either you’re missing the entire point, or you’re trolling. Either way, there is no place for a comment like this here.
Wow, I wouldn’t have thought that was possible on a carbon fiber unibody.
it isn’t. that thing will snap like a twig on impact.
I was cringing the whole time he was cutting on it. At least he was wearing a respirator?
I suspect it is heavily compromised now as the shell was designed as a whole piece, especially since he didn’t weld into the aluminum frame. If it’s only light loads, might be OK?
Technically it’s a carbon fiber body on an aluminum frame/sled – more tightly integrated than a normal body-on-frame, but still not really a unibody.
.. which is good, because if it wasn’t, he’d need to do major reinforcement of the back.
I’m still a little bit concerned about how much his crash safety is compromised, but heck, it’s still probably safer than any small truck from the 1990s or earlier…
Also, on the bright side, It looks like BMW designed the carbon fiber body in broadly the same way as they’d build it in steel, with thin panels spanning thicker beams and pillars in the usual places. So in a very broad sense the consequences of chopping it up should be similar. Since he’s cutting behind the B pillars, the cab stays mostly intact, and it should still retain a fair amount of rollover protection. Personally I’d feel a lot better with a roll bar or other cab reinforcement rather than just a plywood back, though.
Should paint it a really goofy color, may as well go all-in