- This homemade electric race car is seriously quick around an autocross course.
- It weighs just 1,700 pounds.
- The Apex Cricket EV is powered by a Nissan Leaf motor and a Chrysler Pacifica battery.
Motorsport is crazy expensive, but it doesn’t need to be that way. If you have some basic mechanical skills, you could enjoy the thrill of racing on a budget. And that’s exactly what a father-son duo from Northern California did a few years ago, using readily available parts and a bit of elbow grease.
The Ariel Atom-like green machine in the video below is called the Apex Cricket EV, a battery-powered race car that came to life right when Covid hit. After less than a year of tinkering in the garage, it was ready to make a name for itself on the autocross course.
There’s a Gen3 Nissan Leaf motor at the rear that maxes out at 214 horsepower (160 kilowatts), which is plenty for a vehicle that weighs just 1,700 pounds (771 kilograms). The first iteration of the Cricket had the Leaf’s original one-speed transmission and open differential sending power to the rear wheels, but that was a problem. Because the whole car is so lightweight, the single motor would smoke one of the tires at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour. That’s fun, but also quite scary.
So the standard Leaf transmission was swapped for a six-speed gearbox with an integrated limited-slip differential lifted straight from a Nissan Maxima. A homemade adapter plate mates the electric motor to the transmission without a clutch in the way. The issue here is that the driver can’t shift gears while driving, but that’s not needed on short autocross runs. Instead, a single gear is used throughout the sprint.
The suspension, steering and brakes are from a C5 Chevrolet Corvette, while the battery pack is made from several 60-volt modules sourced from the Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivan. In total, the pack has 16 kilowatt-hours of energy, enough for roughly 100 miles of range on the street. And it can be driven anywhere, because it’s street legal.
Except for the tubular chassis, which was welded by a local shop, everything was done at home, in the garage. When it was all said and done, the final cost was around $20,000, which is considered cheap in the world of racing. What’s more, in the three years since the car was finished, it’s needed no maintenance except for changing tires and charging the batteries. At first, a few issues with the power delivery popped up occasionally, but they were eventually sorted out after fiddling with the custom motor controller.
So a cheap home-brew EV is possible. It just takes some work.
