Porsche 914 Electric Car

The famous German car maker Porsche is well known for the slick sports cars and the rear mounted boxer engines and is currently the world's largest race car manufacturer. The company has been successful in many branches of auto racing, scoring a total of more than 28,000 victories.

The words Porsche and electric car don't go together at all. But if the car maker doesn't envision producing an electric sports car, a team of scientists at MIT gave it a lot of thought and came to the conclusion that it is possible.

So, for the past six months a team of students has spent hundreds of hours, many late at night, converting a sleek Porsche 914 into an electric vehicle. The Porsche 914 was a sports car built and sold collaboratively by Volkswagen and Porsche from 1969 till 1976.

The project aims to prove that an advanced electric vehicle is basically viable, and to find out what research and development has yet to be done. The Porsche 9124 was a donation made by Professor Yang Shao-Horn of mechanical engineering, who together with her husband, Quinn Horn, bought it off eBay. They decided to give it to the students for the experiment.

Actually, this project is far more than a pimped-out ride, or a home improvement to an old model. It does not only provide the students with an unusual opportunity for hands-on learning, but it's also designed to produce information valuable for research on advanced batteries.

The two professors will be measuring the conditions that batteries have to endure inside an operating vehicle.

"In the laboratory we work on materials to make batteries safer, last longer and have higher energy," she said. "But we are also interested in gaining a good perspective on the system view. What's involved in building an electric vehicle, and what's required of the batteries?"

The actual conversion consists of replacing the original engine with an electric motor, 12 batteries and the battery-management system and they are eager to measure the acceleration and top speed and will see how far it will go on a single charge.

Although this kind of electric applications is unlikely to be produced on a large scale by the car maker itself, it's a good exercise and possibly a proof that even the fastest cars can become environmentally friendly.