{"id":8064,"date":"2022-09-30T14:06:02","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T13:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/?p=8064"},"modified":"2025-01-31T13:06:03","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T13:06:03","slug":"putting-the-ev-in-seven-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/index.php\/2022\/09\/30\/putting-the-ev-in-seven-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting the EV in sEVen – Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

And so it begins…<\/p>\n

We at the Purplemeanie HQ are quite into the whole eco-mentalist thing, with just about “electric everything” – solar PV, battery for solar, EV car, immersion heater solar overflow etc. So, a petrol Seven has sort of grated on my soul for a while. My 420R is something I’ve always wanted and I’ve loved having it, but I wonder if a Seven can be electric instead of petrol. Would it lose the essence of being a Seven?<\/p>\n

Now, our 420 gets used very little in comparison to our other transport and so until recently I’ve assuaged my guilt in knowing it wasn’t a big part of our carbon footprint. Along with that (in 2022)\u00a0we have a bit of a fossil fuels crisis: in terms of environmental issues, political issues and not forgetting the end-user cost of fossil fuels themselves.<\/p>\n

However, and it’s a big “HOWEVER”, having an electric Seven will also be cool… and a great engineering project. \ud83d\ude03<\/p>\n

I’ve been threatening to do a conversion of a Seven to electric ever since I built my 420R in 2017. It seemed like it would be the next big project. But then life got in the way. I’ve not talked about this on this blog before but I fell ill with the mysterious diagnosis-of-last-resort that is ME\/CFS, which scuppered everything, literally, for the past 4 years. At my worst I was almost catatonic and nobody knew what was going on. I had endless blood tests, hospital visits and even a trip to hospital in an ambulance after the emergency services didn’t like the look of me when my wife got so worried about me. The paramedics visiting after a 111 call got to be so routine that we stopped calling! It’s also why posts on this blog have been sporadic at best. But just as oddly as it arrived it seems to be getting better again and I’m much improved on where I was even 6 months ago. I won’t say I’m fixed until I’m sure of it, but I do feel a bit more like my old self again.<\/p>\n

So, now seemed like as good a time as any to put my money where my mouth is and get cracking on a sEVen – see what I did there… “putting the EV in sEVen”… sEVen! Get it? Well if you have to explain a joke then its not funny, right?<\/p>\n

Doing an EV conversion of a Seven is about all of the issues above, for sure… but it’s also about seeing if it’s viable. Are there too many compromises, or is it just too costly given the inevitable trade-offs?<\/p>\n

Well, in those times when I couldn’t do much else I’ve been doing my homework and, surprise, surprise, I think it is do-able. It think the engineering and the physics stack up. I’m not so sure about the finances stacking up, but we’ll get to that in a future post.<\/p>\n

Finally, as a parting thought for this article, I’ll leave you with what any good project needs and that’s to understand the objectives – what constitutes success, for me?<\/p>\n