electric vehicle

114 Articles

Quirky Electric Car Rides The Rails

April 19, 2026 by 22 Comments

We wouldn’t be surprised if you’d never seen the Spira before. The lightweight three-wheel vehicle is closer to a go-kart than a traditional car, and that’s before you even get to the foam body panels. But even the most niche of products enjoys a certain fandom, and [Matt Spears] certainly seems to love working on his Spira. His latest video documents the new modifications he’s made to the car in an effort to ride it on abandoned railroad tracks in the western United States.

His first attempt at riding the rails worked pretty well but he hit an obstruction at high speed which destroyed his front axle and damaged a few other parts on the vehicle, which gave him a perfect excuse to make some upgrades. He swapped the old rear axle out with one from a go-kart, complete with custom wheels and a new braking system. The drivetrain received an upgrade with a 5 kW electric motor, and although [Matt] planned on casting new wheels for the higher speeds, the chemicals he needed didn’t arrive in time. So, to test the new vehicle he repurposed some old wheels just to get the Spria back out on the tracks.

The test run went so well that [Matt] ended up pushing the vehicle farther than he had ever been on this abandoned rail, including over a questionable trestle and far out into the wilderness. Hopefully we’ll see more videos of [Matt] taking this car to explore even more remote places. In the meantime, take a look at some simpler, non-electric vehicles that are often used to explore abandoned rail lines in California.

Continue reading “Quirky Electric Car Rides The Rails” →

Electric Jeep With Modified Prius Hardware

February 20, 2026 by 13 Comments

On the list of cars widely regarded as the most reliable vehicles ever built, up there with the Toyota Land Cruiser, the Honda Civic, and the Mercedes W123 diesels, is the unassuming Toyota Prius. Although it adds a bit of complexity with its hybrid drivetrain, its design eliminates a number of common wear items and also tunes it for extreme efficiency, lengthening its life and causing minimal mechanical stress. The Prius has a number of other tricks up its sleeve as well, which is why parts of its hybrid systems are often used in EV conversions like [Jeremy]’s electric CJ-5 Jeep.

Inside the Prius inverter is a buck/boost converter used for stepping up the battery voltage to power the inverter and supply power to the electric motor. [Jeremy]’s battery is much higher voltage than the stock Prius battery pack, though, which means he can bypass the converter and supply energy from his battery directly to the inverter. Since the buck/boost converter isn’t being used, he can put it to work doing other things. In this case, he’s using it as a charger. Sending the AC from a standard EV charging cord through a rectifier and then to this converter allows the Prius hardware to charge the Jeep’s battery, without adding much in the way of extra expensive electronics.

There are some other modifications to the Prius equipment in this Jeep, though, namely that [Jeremy] is using an open-source controller as the brain of this conversion. Although this video only goes into detail on some of the quirks of the Prius hardware, he has a number of other videos documenting his journey to convert this antique Jeep over to a useful electric farm vehicle which are worth checking out as well. There are plenty of other useful things that equipment from hybrid and electric vehicles can do beyond EV conversions as well, like being used for DIY powerwalls.

Continue reading “Electric Jeep With Modified Prius Hardware” →

Finding A Way To Produce Powerful Motors Without Rare Earths

January 13, 2026 by 40 Comments

The electric vehicle revolution has created market forces to drive all sorts of innovations. Battery technology has progressed at a rapid pace, and engineers have developed ways to charge vehicles at ever more breakneck rates. Similarly, electric motors have become more powerful and more compact, delivering greater performance than ever before.

In the latter case, while modern EV motors are very capable things, they’re also reliant on materials that are increasingly hard to come by. Most specifically, it’s the rare earth materials that make their magnets so good. The vast majority of these minerals come from China, with trade woes and geopolitics making it difficult to get them at any sort of reasonable price. Thus has sprung up a new market force, pushing engineers to search for new ways to make their motors compact, efficient, and powerful.

Continue reading “Finding A Way To Produce Powerful Motors Without Rare Earths” →

A Heavily Modified Rivian Attempts The Cannonball Run

December 21, 2025 by 65 Comments

There are few things more American than driving a car really fast in a straight line. Occasionally, the cars will make a few left turns, but otherwise, this is the pinnacle of American motorsport. And there’s no longer, straighter line than that from New York to Los Angeles, a time trial of sorts called the Cannonball Run, where drivers compete (in an extra-legal fashion) to see who can drive the fastest between these two cities. Generally, the cars are heavily modified with huge fuel tanks and a large amount of electronics to alert the drivers to the presence of law enforcement, but until now, no one has tried this race with an EV specifically modified for this task.

The vehicle used for this trial was a Rivian electric truck, chosen for a number of reasons. Primarily, [Ryan], the project’s mastermind, needed something that could hold a significant amount of extra batteries. The truck also runs software that makes it much more accepting of and capable of using an extra battery pack than other models. The extra batteries are also from Rivians that were scrapped after crash tests. The team disassembled two of these packs to cobble together a custom pack that fits in the bed of the truck (with the tonneau closed), which more than doubles the energy-carrying capacity of the truck.

Of course, for a time trial like this, an EV’s main weakness is going to come from charging times. [Ryan] and his team figured out a way to charge the truck’s main battery at one charging stall while charging the battery in the bed at a second stall, which combines for about a half megawatt of power consumption when it’s all working properly and minimizes charging time while maximizing energy intake. The other major factor for fast charging the battery in the bed was cooling, and rather than try to tie this system in with the truck’s, the team realized that using an ice water bath during the charge cycle would work well enough as long as there was a lead support vehicle ready to go at each charging stop with bags of ice on hand.

Although the weather and a few issues with the double-charging system stopped the team from completing this run, they hope to make a second attempt and finish it very soon. They should be able to smash the EV record, currently held by an unmodified Porsche, thanks to these modifications. In the meantime, though, there are plenty of other uses for EV batteries from wrecked vehicles that go beyond simple transportation.

Continue reading “A Heavily Modified Rivian Attempts The Cannonball Run” →

What Has 5,000 Batteries And Floats?

November 8, 2025 by 72 Comments

While it sounds like the start of a joke, Australian shipmaker Incat Tasmania isn’t kidding around about electric ships. Hull 096 has started charging, although it has only 85% of the over 5,000 lithium-ion batteries it will have when complete. The ship has a 40 megawatt-hour storage system with 12 banks of batteries, each consisting of 418 modules for a total of 5,016 cells. [Vannessa Bates Ramierz] breaks it down in a recent post over on IEEE Spectrum. You can get an eyeful of the beast in the official launch video, below. The Incat Tasmania channel also has other videos about the ship.

The batteries use no racks to save weight. Good thing since they already weigh in at 250 tonnes. Of course, cooling is a problem, too. Each module has a fan, and special techniques prevent one hot cell from spreading. Charging in Australia comes from a grid running 100% renewable energy. When the ship enters service as a ferry between Argentina and Uruguay, a 40-minute charge will be different. Currently, Uruguay has about 92% of its power from renewable sources. Argentina still uses mostly natural gas, but 42% of its electricity is sourced from renewable generation.

The ship is 130 meters (426 feet) long, mostly aluminum, and has a reported capacity of 2,100 people and 225 vehicles per trip. Ferry service is perfect for electric ships — the distance is short, and it’s easy to schedule time to charge. Like all electric vehicles, though, the batteries won’t stay at full capacity for long. Typical ship design calls for a 20-year service life, and it’s not uncommon for a vessel to remain in service for 30 or even 40 years. But experts expect the batteries on the ferry will need to be replaced every 5 to 10 years.

While electric ferries may become common, we don’t expect to see electric cargo ships plying the ocean soon. Diesel is hard to beat for compact storage and high energy density. There are a few examples of cargo ships using electric, though. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t build your own electric watercraft.

Continue reading “What Has 5,000 Batteries And Floats?” →

Two images side by side. One shows a laptop opened to a map view with a vehicle model showing a vehicles location. A transparent overlay shows various blue-ish buttons for sending commands to the vehicle. The image on the right is of the interior of a Nissan Leaf. Visible are the very edge of the steering wheel, the center dash including the infotainment display, vents, and shifter, and part of the right side of the dash. Passenger and driver legs are just barely visible at the bottom of the image.

Hack Turns Nissan Leaf Into Giant RC Car

June 24, 2025 by 29 Comments

As cars increasingly become computers on wheels, the attack surface for digital malfeasance increases. The [PCAutomotive] group shared their exploit for turning the 2020 Nissan Leaf into 1600 kg RC car at Black Hat Asia 2025.

Starting with some scavenged infotainment systems and wiring harnesses, the group built test benches able to tear into vulnerabilities in the system. An exploit was found in the infotainment system’s Bluetooth implementation, and they used this to gain access to the rest of the system. By jamming the 2.4 GHz spectrum, the attacker can nudge the driver to open the Bluetooth connection menu on the vehicle to see why their phone isn’t connecting. If this menu is open, pairing can be completed without further user interaction.

Once the attacker gains access, they can control many vehicle functions, such as steering, braking, windshield wipers, and mirrors. It also allows remote monitoring of the vehicle through GPS and recording audio in the cabin. The vulnerabilities were all disclosed to Nissan before public release, so be sure to keep your infotainment system up-to-date!

If this feels familiar, we featured a similar hack on Tesla infotainment systems. If you’d like to hack your Leaf for the better, we’ve also covered how to fix some of the vehicle’s charging flaws, but we can’t help you with the loss of app support for early models.

Continue reading “Hack Turns Nissan Leaf Into Giant RC Car” →

A dark warehouse contains a number of large blocky objects. A Tesla Model 3 sedan sits in the center with flames underneath and curling up the side away from the camera. A firefighter on the left side attempts to put out the fire with a fire hose.

UL Investigates The Best Way To Fight EV Fires

February 26, 2025 by 51 Comments

While electric vehicles (EVs) are generally less likely to catch fire than their internal combustion counterparts, it does still happen, and firefighters need to be ready. Accordingly, the UL Research Institute is working with reverse engineering experts Munro & Associates to characterize EV fires and find the best way to fight them.

There is currently some debate in the firefighting community over whether it’s better to try to put an EV battery fire out with water or to just let it burn. Research like this means the decision doesn’t have to fall on only anecdotal evidence. Anyone who’s worked in a lab will recognize the mix of exceedingly expensive equipment next to the borderline sketchy rigged up hacks on display, in this case the super nice thermal imagers and a “turkey burner on steroids.” The video goes through some discussion of the previous results with a Chevy Bolt, Hyundai Kona, Ford Mustang Mach E, and then we get to see them light up a Tesla Model 3. This is definitely one you shouldn’t try at home!

While the massive battery banks in modern EVs can pose unique challenges in the event of an accident, that doesn’t mean they can’t be repurposed to backup your own home.

Continue reading “UL Investigates The Best Way To Fight EV Fires” →