An electric Volvo 240? It just had to be built… really, really well

Fifteen years ago there were very few electric cars in Australia. While Volvo had built electric vehicles for Swedish telecoms company Televerket as early as 1976, it didn’t begin mass producing EVs until 2019.

Engineers Greg Sievert and Wayne Bowers couldn’t wait that long.

So in 2010 they built their own, from a Volvo 240 wagon. It’s still going strong on the original batteries and Sievert says maintenance has been minimal. However for longer trips, and a little more comfort, not to mention a clutch, they tend to take their fully electric Volvo XC40.

Motown to Melbourne

Sievert had worked in the US auto industry before relocating from Detroit to Melbourne in late 1999. At General Motors’ advanced engineering department he’d had access to one of its early electric vehicles, the EV1. Even though that was a “pretty rudimentary EV” by modern standards, Sievert got the bug after taking it home one night. “I was like, ‘this is so amazing!’”

Sievert, a mechanical engineer, and Bowers, an electronics and computing engineer, had both the know-how and the desire to build their own EV. While partially motivated by clean motoring and environmental impact, above all, “it was an engineering challenge”.

Sievert, a self-confessed “Volvo tragic”, naturally had only one brand in mind for the project.

The two were also early solar PV adopters and were racking up surplus that could be used to power a car for free. Bowers was doing a master’s degree that could dovetail with the conversion project – and use its planning and design engineering aspects for submission – and Sievert’s commute into Holden’s Melbourne engineering HQ at the time was relatively short, so the car wouldn’t need massive range.

For $1,200 they picked up a 1993 Volvo 240 GLE, the last of the 240 wagons and “pretty much indestructible”, per Sievert. Then they got to work.

The build

Over the next few months they took out everything that was no longer required – the engine, transmission, the exhaust system and the back seats to make way for the home-made battery pack – while sourcing all the parts required for the conversion. (Sievert says they got a good price for the engine, which lived to fire another day, and effectively halved the cost of the donor car.)

They had meticulously planned what would be required for the system design while meeting the relevant safety standards (they would have the project signed off by a VicRoads-certified VASS engineer and legally registered as an EV in Victoria).

Then they started the build.

The short version is they did everything very, very thoroughly using top-spec components. (For those seeking technical details, there’s a long version here. As in 174 posts worth of long.)

The total cost of the project was circa $25,000 for a totally unique EV with a range of around 75kms that has no problem keeping up with traffic. The duo reckon top speed is north of 120km/h, though claim they haven’t tested it beyond the speed limit. But they have to charge it from home, as the set-up isn’t geared for public chargers, though that means all charges are from free solar energy that would otherwise be wasted.

Cool running

Fifteen years on, the original batteries are still performing well, says Sievert, and the car has covered about 50,000kms – the bulk in the first five years.

The two have since moved out of Melbourne, about a hundred kilometres north-west into the countryside near Daylesford. As such, the car’s getting a little less daily use – they use their other cars for longer journeys.

They have plenty to choose from: An all-electric XC40, a Volvo 1800ES, a Volvo 145 and another Volvo 240 wagon that Sievert converted to a turbo. Plus a supercharged Volvo 245, another Sievert special project.

He acknowledges the XC40 is somewhat more refined.

“The XC40 has been great. I really enjoy driving it – but it's like chalk and cheese. The 240 EV is what my old boss would call a ‘pain car’, because it's got no air conditioning, no power steering. The heater, ironically for a Volvo, is rubbish, very marginal, I would say. We converted it to an electric resistance heater, and in a normal Volvo 240 by the time you get halfway down your driveway, it’s starting to put out heat. In this thing you're lucky if you can defrost the windows. So we try not to drive it when it's frosty.”

Public reactions

“It’s funny, it’s got a black plastic panel where the grill used to be. If it didn’t have that, people wouldn’t have a clue,” says Sievert. But the registration plate (V EV 240) and a couple of EV stickers provide subtle hints. “If people ask, I open up the bonnet and they start taking pictures – ‘that’s so cool’. But we’ve taken it to a couple of car shows and also had people ask ‘why the hell would you convert an old 240?’ But the reaction is mostly positive.”

Any issues?

“We had a couple of issues early on with the motor to gearbox coupling. It happened when Wayne was driving the car, of course. Nothing ever happens when I’m driving the car…”

The upshot was they had to get towed – but that’s the only time it’s happened – and they re-engineered the motor to gearbox coupling. Since then, slim pickings for the Daylesford tow trucking industrial complex.

“We had a minor issue with the coolant pump – it uses a 12 volt cooler from a gaming PC to circulate coolant through a small radiator – and the controller for that failed once. But other than that, it’s been virtually maintenance-free,” says Sievert.

“It doesn’t have an exhaust, which has been great because 240s really go through exhaust systems.”

No engine also means no oil changes.

“I’ve changed the brake pads once and the rest has been things like flushing the brake fluid every couple of years. I’ve played around with different springs and wheels – in the winter I put on 15-inch wheels with higher profile tyres because there are more potholes. But in the summer I switch to the fancy 17-inch alloys. It looks a lot better with them on – I think that is what draws people’s attention.”

Though he admits it runs “a lot quieter and smoother” on 15-inchers.

“Wayne has done a few minor updates to it – he designed an LCD drivers display that has the trip computer and consumption and all that stuff, which is nice, and that replaces where the temperature gauge and the fuel gauge that was in the original car.

“But his background means he can diagnose any issues with the electronics or the battery management system or the contactors. Any mechanical issues I deal with. But thankfully, we haven’t really had any.”

15-year-old batteries

The batteries – first generation lithium iron phosphate cells shipped from China with handwritten labels – are now 15 years old. But Sievert says they are holding up remarkably well.

“It’s hard to say [how much they have degraded], because we never really take it further down than 50 per cent – we’re just doing short-runs into town and back and then charge it the next day [via free solar]. They’ve definitely lost some capacity – but the most noticeable aspect is more on the voltage side. It's a bit more sluggish when you take off now when it's cold,” he says.

“But unless you take them all the way down to zero, it’s hard to know for certain – and we don’t want to do that because it will damage the batteries. I’d say they’ve maybe lost 30 per cent of capacity, something like that.”

Either way, says Sievert, the e240’s power plant has plenty left in the tank – and may get a second life.

“If we ever decide we don’t need the car any more, we can use the battery pack as storage [for the house] – because it’s an 18.7kWh system, and even at 50 per cent capacity that would be more than enough to last us a couple of days as back-up power.”

But whether that eventuates is debatable.

“Every time I think about decommissioning it, I tell myself ‘but it’s such a unique car and such a unique project…”

Plus, it’s got a couple of dings – which means Sievert’s more inclined to take it to the supermarket than risk a scratch on one of his newer vehicles.

Hindsight lessons

With the wisdom of hindsight, what lessons would Sievert and Bowers heed? “I’m thinking seriously about converting my 1800ES … But if we were to do it again, and we went with a manual gearbox – which we probably wouldn’t – I’d put in a clutch so ‘normal’ people could drive it,” says Sievert.

“The second thing is, I'd probably put a reverse cycle heat pump in for better heating and air conditioning and power steering, so it's more comfortable.

“The way the car is now, it's fine for us, but it’s kind of 50 per cent car and 50 per cent science experiment, with quirks that the average person would probably not want to live with. If it’s cold and the windows are all fogged up, Wayne will say ‘we shouldn’t have brought this car to the restaurant. Never again!’

“So making it more comfortable, making it a bit easier to drive for the ordinary person, a bit more intuitive to change gears, that kind of thing. And with more modern batteries, I’d make it so you can charge at a public charging station.”

EV tips

As a very early adopter – technically an early adaptor – Sievert says he wouldn’t go back to an internal combustion engine, having bought an all-electric XC40 (now called an EX40) back in 2021. “We would never buy another petrol car again, and most people who have bought EVs say the same thing,” per Sievert.

“Would it be nice to have some more range? Yes. Do you need it? No. On road trips, we stop around every two hours for a coffee or lunch or whatever, and you charge at the same time for about 20 minutes – which is hardly enough time to get a coffee and go to the toilet. Then you go another two hours down the road and the charge is done before you’ve finished your lunch, sometimes before you’ve even got your lunch order,” he says.

“Or if you’re driving 350kms on a full charge and taking it down to 10 per cent, then it might take you 45 minutes to an hour to charge – and that is a different strategy. You can say ‘we’ll go flat chat until near empty and then stop for a leisurely lunch’. We don’t find it adds that much more time – and it’s actually nice to get out of the car instead of driving for seven hours straight.”

Plan, don’t stress

Planning journeys in that sense is required, given Australia’s vast size and adolescent public charging infrastructure, “but we’ve not really had a problem”, says Sievert.

Plus, public charging infrastructure is already far better than it was in 2021 when they first bought the car – but more would be nice, Sievert acknowledges. “If there were chargers everywhere you could drive it down to 10 per cent all the time and it would be no drama.”

Quietly confident

Despite the challenges – there is no clutch, which means timing gear changes, or ”rev matching” with the engine speed to downshift, and the lack of creature comforts – Sievert and Bowers’ homemade e240 is a remarkable feat of engineering, as attested by 15 years of near maintenance-free driving.

Whether it becomes a vehicle-to-home battery donor remains to be seen. For now, it’s still quietly rolling into “downtown” Daylesford (population 2,781), even when it might be a little chilly.

That quietness, says Sievert, is the first thing that struck him when he embarked upon the e240’s maiden voyage back in February 2011.

“I could hear the birds – and that was with the windows up.”