The electric GMC fully imagined -

[Richard RV]

Some bad idea's never seem to die. This facinates me. I frequent many automotive formus and in all of them there are few re-occuring aspirational topics that resurface now and then and quickly go no-where. They all start this way with a declaritive, enthuiastic, pie in the sky post from a new memeber, then the encouragement from the faithful and then radio silence, with the OP never to be heard from again.

Let's get to the reality of the situation. There will never be a vialbe Vintage electric GMC motorhome.
Anyone with the knowledge, skills and abilities to pull this off would also understand it's idiotic and a fools errand.

Let me expain it to you by real world example. A Tesla cyber truck with every modern technical advantage, designed from the ground up to be an efficient EV has a real world effective range of 115 miles towing a basic camper flat. Head up to a mountainous area, it would be considerably less. As a DIY retro-fit project you would likely need double the battery capacity to get 1/2 the range. That's where the weight spiral sets in. With the A/C on in the summer you'd be lucky to get 60 miles before neededing a lengthy break at a high capacity charger. Hopefull there will be one large enough, just waiting for you at the exact spot you need it along your route. Spoiler alert... Not gonna happen.

Did you even do any back of the envelop calulations? The amount Lifpo battteies and copper wiring alone will cost well over 200$ per Kwh. Multiply that by 200 Kwh and you quickly get to $40,000 for about 60 to 80 miles of range as a DIY project. With conservitive public charging at $0.30 per KWh you looking at 60$ to go maybe 80 miles if you're lucky. Even at CA gas prices that still buys you 10 gallons of gasolene and will allow you to travel about 60 to 80 miles in a well tuned as-built GMC motorhome . None of this accounts for the cost of the controllers, electric motors, fabication, junction blocks, fuses, safery equiptment, systems integration, cooling, heating and many other costly issues that will also need to be accounted for.

The Tesla LDU has a peak torque of 332/ft lbs. That's far less then the Olds 455 and would be like swapping in a Olds 350. Major down grade. Using the LDU at or near it's torque capacity for long periods of time will casue it to fail quickly.

So you want to camp fully electric?

Option 1 - Get a used Cyber truck and a 2nd hand light weight travel trailer and stay close and hope it all works out, It might, it could, and you can be in you favorite near-by camping spot in 30 days or less for about 65k. If it doesnt work out, you'll likely be able to resell both and re-coupe most of your money. Trying to DIY a fully electric vintage GMC, never gonna happen and you'll waste 50 thousand dollars and years of your life trying with nothing to show for it.

Option 2. Get a Chevy Brightdrop (50k) and convert it to a camper. Still will only get 150 miles of range and budget 10K for the camper retrofit. Chevy already killed the platform so good luck getting parts and service a few years from now and few dealers will even touch a highly modified vehicle, so you're entirely on your own with this option. But... it's possbile... and might be worth 1/2 the sum of it parts IF executed well.

I appreciate your confidence in your ability to predict the future.

 

[dsmithy]

How easy it is to look at a problem with no current solution and say that there will never be one.
They used to say that man will never travel faster than 25mph because all the air will be sucked out of their lungs. Sigh.

 

[Keith V]

How easy it is to look at a problem with no current solution and say that there will never be one.
They used to say that man will never travel faster than 25mph because all the air will be sucked out of their lungs. Sigh.

There are solutions, diesel / electric is one, huge battery back with reinforced or upgraded frame is another.
Of course it can be done.
But doing it is an expensive and time consuming vanity project. it's never going to pay off, and will always be a concept car that no one else will want

Even a diesel engine conversion is only maybe worth it is you drive a LOT

 

[icsamerica]

I appreciate your confidence in your ability to predict the future.

It not an ability to predict the future. It's math. Do you know what 200KW of Lifpo batteries weighs in at? 4800 Lbs. So I presume we are going to remove an 800 lbs engine and transmission and replace it with 6000Lbs of batteries, copper wiring, electric drive unit and supporting electronics and just hope and pray that an 18,000 Lbs 50 year old overweight by 6000Lbs (50%) GMC motor home will just be fine. Laughable. At $50,000 in parts just to get stared, there's no mention of the need to upgrade the entire suspension and frame to cope with the additional 6000 Lbs.

 

[icsamerica]

There are solutions, diesel / electric is one, huge battery back with reinforced or upgraded frame is another.
Of course it can be done.
But doing it is an expensive and time consuming vanity project. it's never going to pay off, and will always be a concept car that no one else will want

Even a diesel engine conversion is only maybe worth it is you drive a LOT

deleted

 

[icsamerica]

How easy it is to look at a problem with no current solution and say that there will never be one.
They used to say that man will never travel faster than 25mph because all the air will be sucked out of their lungs. Sigh.

Not easy for me at all, I actually expended some effort. I've done the calulations, ran the numbers and offered 2 alternative and much more viable solutions. Save your critism for the time wasting, pie in the sky and clueless dreamers and scammers.

 

[icsamerica]

There is a dark side to these aspirations. It's not unheard of for someone like the OP to be getting taken advantage of. An unscruplous workshop will promise something they can't and never will deliver, while taking deposits, progress payments and requesting frequent small payments for parts. All for a project that will never come to fruition and never get done. Often the shop will delay, the customer will loose interest as time lines extend or the shop fails and disappears with the money.

This is why no-one should encourage these pie in the sky aspirations with out the proper technical perspective and understanding. Doing so gives false hope to the person and their dreams and effectively encourages and enables someone like the prospect being taken advantage of and loosing all their time and money along the way . The scam could be a comprehensive con from a shop that promises a completed turn-key result that will never come to fruition or disconnected as series of smaller steps (cons) along the way that manifesting as a collection of parts desctibes as doing what they can only do under perfect / idea conditions from website and suppliers who dont connect the dots and dont offer a complete story. They reply on ignorance.

If anyone here encourages these imposibilies with-out doing the science and calulations, they are complicit in the scam.

 

[Richard RV]

There is a dark side to these aspirations. It's not unheard of for someone like the OP to be getting taken advantage of. An unscruplous workshop will promise something they can't and never will deliver, while taking deposits, progress payments and requesting frequent small payments for parts. All for a project that will never come to fruition and never get done. Often the shop will delay, the customer will loose interest as time lines extend or the shop fails and disappears with the money.

This is why no-one should encourage these pie in the sky aspirations with out the proper technical perspective and understanding. Doing so gives false hope to the person and their dreams and effectively encourages and enables someone like the prospect being taken advantage of and loosing all their time and money along the way . The scam could be a comprehensive con from a shop that promises a completed turn-key result that will never come to fruition or disconnected as series of smaller steps (cons) along the way that manifesting as a collection of parts desctibes as doing what they can only do under perfect / idea conditions from website and suppliers who dont connect the dots and dont offer a complete story. They reply on ignorance.

If anyone here encourages these imposibilies with-out doing the science and calulations, they are complicit in the scam.

The other person's glass is always totally empty. Got it.

 

[mike foster]

I think the answer to this one is time, money, and effort. Starting from scratch vs. starting with a rolling frame and light (fiberglass) body are very, very different starting points. And if the body is already relatively aerodynamic and "cool..." why would one want to change it? There was a lot of engineering that went into the body and systems of the GMC that still work very well and would be major time/cost savers in building an EVMH.

I'm 77 and one of the reasons I like old stuff...1977 XLCH Sportster (no EMF starter, SS ignition, F/I etc) and you only need 6 volts on the battery to start it, 1977 GMC, Crown DC-300A Series-2, SL-2, Crown 800 Series tape decks, Empire 598 and Rabco ST-8 turntables.....turn them on...they work...no menu to step through, no software incompatibilities....they just work.....same reason I like the 240/300 Mercedes diesels...

 

[mike foster]

Drive-by-Wire, Brake-by-Wire, Steer-by-Wire systems have been integrated into military, commercial, racing, and premium vehicles since 1983 where they have proven to reliably provide the highest degree of command control input sensitivity and response under the harshest conditions, with the important capability of being fine-tuned to the individual drivers characteristics and environmental conditions. These systems have been under constant research, development, and are more fault-tolerant, with a higher safety and reliability record than the analog systems they replaced.

So despite persistent repetition of these worn, threadbare urban myths and legends about digital technology being less responsive or failing, advances in hardware, firmware, software means that by every objective standard the haptics, speed of response, sensing and precision of these systems exceeded the capacity of human perception more than two decades ago.

Even old timers like Sandy Munro understand and are confident in the technology I'm referring to, so if you "feel" uncomfortable, just say so. Only don't pretend your apprehension is based on facts or that your comments are meant to be helpful.

At what expense?

 

[mike foster]

Unless you are adamant about doing it with Diesel...you could do a conversion for $60K in about three months.

Happy to elaborate on how this is done. An outfit called "Electric Yacht" (right in your back yard) can help with the design. Let's talk...I've been involved with a number of hybrid designs for boats, I'd LOVE to tackle an RV conversion!

$60,000 buys 20,000 gallons at $3.00 and that gets you 160,000 miles at 8mpg.....now lets talk about the lost earnings on that $60,000 over 10 years....maybe 20 years....or more....not even cost effective....do you work for the government?

 

[Richard RV]

$60,000 buys 20,000 gallons at $3.00 and that gets you 160,000 miles at 8mpg.....now lets talk about the lost earnings on that $60,000 over 10 years....maybe 20 years....or more....not even cost effective....do you work for the government?

They could just spend $180K on a Sprinter van, but where's the fun in that?

Where are you that gas is $3/gallon?