RabbitEV. Electrifying a 1983 VW Rabbit.

RabbitEV. Electrifying a 1983 VW Rabbit.

Hi there! We’re Zack and Matty and we’re converting a 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit convertible to electric!

About Us

To best understand us, it’s probably best to know what we’re not. We’re not professional engineers, We are not car mechanics, professional engineers, or magicians. We are very stubborn, though, and we’ve worked on a couple fun, long-term projects before. See our work on hacking the MBTA CharlieCard here and our underwater robotics work here. If you wannaa learn more about why we decided to take on a project like this, read this blog post.

Overview

TLDR: We’re replacing the internal combustion engine of our VW Rabbit with the all-electric drivetrain from an old Nissan Leaf.

There are basically three main phases of our project:

Phase 1

Buy a gas car (the VW Rabbit) and remove all the internal combustion components

Phase 2

Buy an electric donor car (the Nissan Leaf) and get the drivetrain components to run.