A thought that’s occurred to just about every gearhead at some point or another: would it be possible to convert a gas-powered car to a hybrid? Whether you’re doing it to save money on gas or to get an extra boost on the track, it seems like adding an electric motor to your Ford Mustang or Lexus LS should be doable, right? So, how come there are so few finished examples of such conversions?
We’ve seen a V8 engine packed into a Tesla Model S, and you don’t have to look very far to find ICE vehicles converted to electric, but adding an electric motor to a gas-powered car must be borderline impossible based on how few instances we’ve been able to turn up. There are plenty of start-ups out there trying to make the dream a reality, but, so far, nobody’s been able to bring an affordable, one-size-fits-all hybrid converter kit to the mass market. So, what exactly is going on here?
The following is based on automotive news and other sources cited as necessary. Any opinions offered herein are those of the author unless otherwise attributed.
The Inventors And Innovators That (Hope To) Convert Your ICE To A Hybrid
We’ve come across more than a few companies, inventors, and startups working on getting a retrofit kit up and running, usually aiming to produce something that can convert a car in a matter of hours, and which won’t cost more than a few grand. The potential benefits of such a kit should be obvious, as you can enjoy better fuel economy and a little extra torque with a simple aftermarket modification.
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Solution F, a French subsidiary of Green Corp Konnection, has been plugging away at the Twin-E kit, which promises 31-miles of electric-only range for the typical driver. The project was showcased at the Paris Motor Show in 2024, according to Euro News, and the plan is to eventually hit the market with a price tag of anywhere from €4,000 to €8,500 (around $4,600 to $10,000 in USD), depending on whether the team can get the French government to subsidize the whole thing.
It’s Possible, But It Might Not Be Economically Viable
Electric and hybrid retrofits have been legal in France since 2020, sparking something of an arms race between brands like Solution F and several competitors. For instance, Renault Group has been working with Tolv, another French retrofitting outfit, hoping to convert Renault Master vans. And then you’ve got Rev Mobilities, specializing in retrofitting vintage cars, including the 1957 Fiat 500.
Outside of France, you’ve got startups like REVR, an Australian company founded by father and son Alexander and Craig Burton, promising “one-day” conversions with a targeted price tag of just $3,200 to convert your car to hybrid with an in-wheel motor. REVR’s aim is to convert “one million cars.” REVR boasts a Good Design Gold Award and a James Dyson Award, and the project seems promising enough, but we haven’t seen any updates since the team’s last X post late last year.
To be clear, aftermarket hybrid kits do exist, but these are specific to certain models, and typically very expensive, like the XL Fleet converters made for F-Series pickups, which you can find selling on eBay for around ten grand. But the promise of an affordable, one-size-fits-all solution that will convert almost any car on the market to a hybrid in a single afternoon? We’ll believe it when we see it.
Why Is It So Hard To Convert An ICE Car To A Hybrid?
Renault’s director of sustainable development, Cléa Martinent, says of hybrid conversions that “you can’t put a battery where there used to be a motor.” The challenge isn’t so much attaching an electric motor to an axle (though even that is easier said than done), it’s that even the smallest hybrid batteries are unwieldy, typically weighing at least one hundred pounds. PHEV batteries can easily weigh half a ton. An ICE car was built with ICE in mind, and you can’t just tuck the engine to one side to make room for the battery pack.
The one-size-fits-all solution might simply not be feasible. The Twin-E was developed for a Renault 1.5 engine, a common powerplant for French cars, and Solution-F says that the engine will fit into most Peugeots and Citroens, but fitting the kit to American and Japanese cars will take years of development and testing. Realistically, you’re more likely to see different kits for different vehicles than a single retrofitter that you can slap onto any make and model.
It Can Be Done, But…
One of the best examples we could find of a successful hybrid conversion would be a 1964 Honda S600 converted for the YouTube channel SuperfastMatt. The details of this project help to illustrate why you don’t see hybrid conversions all that often.
Matt bought the car without an engine. He started with a 1-liter motorcycle engine, which means that he has to get out of his car and push it when he wants to back up, since bike engines typically don’t have reverse. From there, he added a small electric motor and controller, and produced a car that could work in gas, electric, or hybrid mode.
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Unfortunately, the car turned out to be “painfully loud,” the electric motor had essentially no low-end torque whatsoever, meaning you practically had to push-start it every time you wanted to get it going, and the whole thing was prone to overheating, which would render the electric motor essentially useless.
Ultimately, SuperfastMatt’s homemade hybrid was a fun project, but not a practical one. What’s more, it’s debatable whether the car even counts as a “conversion,” seeing as he didn’t even use the original engine.
Full-Electric Conversions Seem To Be Much Easier To Build
While hybrid conversions are such a pain in the neck as to be effectively impossible for most of us, full-electric builds are a lot easier to find. In fact, it’s been fairly common throughout the history of the industry for automakers to start with an existing ICE vehicle when they want to build an experimental or limited-run EV, as Jeep did with their electric mail truck, and Ford with the battery-powered Model T.
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It doesn’t take a doctorate in engineering to see what makes a fully electric conversion so much easier than a hybrid conversion. When you’re going all-electric, you can simply gut the whole engine bay and drop in your battery pack and controllers and everything else you need to run a car on electricity. With a hybrid, you’re trying to retrofit a system that was never intended to run as a hybrid.
An EV Retrofit Can Be Achieved With A Simple Bolt-In Kit
We’ve seen plenty of home-built EV conversions like the Mini recharged, and electric Mini showcased by the Hazell Nutz YouTube channel, a surprisingly capable little EV that runs whisper quiet on an all-electric powertrain, converted with a simple bolt-in kit produced by Fellten. There’s even a whole subreddit for people building their own electric conversion projects.
The biggest difference between electric and hybrid converters, based on the videos we’ve seen? The EV converters are having a blast, and the hybrid converters are reporting one headache after another. At this point, it’s doubtful that hybrid retrofits will ever be something that makes more sense than simply buying a hybrid, let alone the kind of thing that you can treat as a simple, easy, and cheap weekend project.
Sources: Felten, REVR, Euro News, Hazell Nutz, SuperfastMatt, Reddit.
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