Skip to main content

Watch: An Electric Thing Does a Donut

Patty and Selma Bouvier, your new chariot has arrived. Jonathan Ward of ICON built an electric Thing.

The thing is a weird vehicle, even by VW standards, so that they inspire fierce love in a few people isn’t surprising. As a result, it kind of makes sense that someone would spend thousands upon thousands of dollars getting the craftsmen over at ICON motors to build their perfect Thing kinda makes sense.

In this case, perfection involved removing the luftgekühlt (it’s not just a Porsche thing) flat four and replacing it with a 180 lb-ft of torque electric motor from Zelectric. As a result, this yellow oddity can do some pretty sweet donuts… which sounds safe.

To make the Thing a little less hazardous, ICON has put coilovers all around and added some sway bars, which according to Ward makes it a bunch of fun.

Charging the Thing does take 8 hours, and Ward doesn’t mention how far it’ll go, but it can at least be charged pretty much wherever. Whether you’re at home or at a Tesla charging station, you’ll be able to juice up.

The usual ICON attention to detail has been paid to this Thing, too. According to Ward, they spent 3,000 hours chasing rattles and squeaks, because without the VW engine crashing about back there, even more rattles emerged.

As lovable as the old air-cooled engine is, it’s hard not to be charmed by this electric Thing.

The post Watch: An Electric Thing Does a Donut appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex http://ift.tt/2q9c70j
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Watch: The Story of the Ads that Made VW Big in America

The ads for the original Beetle are almost as famous and well-loved as the Beetle itself. Looking back now it’s easy to forget, though, just how easily things could have wrong. A new short from Dial M Films tracks the history of those early Volkswagen ads that sold America on the people’s car. The story, of course, begins with the visionary agency that made the ads: Doyle Dane Bernach (DDB). As a popular agency for Jewish products, no agency was more aware of the implications of Volkswagen, and no one, it seems, was more skeptical of the brand than DDB. “Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads?” from Dial M Films on Vimeo . William Bernbach, though, was adament that the firm take the client, probably as a way of attracting other lucrative automotive clients. Saddled with a client that he didn’t want, art director Helmut Krone says in the film that he originally came up with ads that were all wrong. Krone tried to do what other manufacturers did and was intent on selling the Beetle ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Watch: The Stig Drives (nearly) Seven Generations of Golf GTI

With Volkswagen announcing “major” updates to the Golf, it seems an appropriate time to look back on what we’ve had so far. And who better to guide us through the rich history of the most popular European car ever made than Ben Collins, the former Stig? Some say he’s never met a GTI he doesn’t love, and that he can’t grow any of his own facial hair. All we know is … Ben Collins is actually a pretty solid presenter. Working his way through seven generations of the GTI (skipping over the Mk6) Collins tells us a little bit about each one and matches each mark to its corresponding facial hair craze. The Mk1 GTI for instance, is light and quick, but can lose traction under hard acceleration (in heavy rain). Despite that, Collins calls the Mk1 a “pure gem.” The Mk4, meanwhile, is a powerful return to form after the perhaps too sensible Mk3. Collins ends in the only way he could, with the Mk7, which accelerates faster than a Lamborghini Countach and is all kinds of wonderful. Watch, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Volkswagen Golf GTE Wins Top Honor at the 2015 Business Techies Awards

Golf GTE wins Green category in the 2015 BusinessCar Fleet Technology awards Judges praised the Golf GTE for its performance, ease of use and economy Golf GTE launched earlier this year with plug-in hybrid technology – priced from £33,755 204 PS performance combined with CO 2  emissions of just 39 g/km Volkswagen has added to its growing list of 2015 automotive industry accolades by winning the Green category in the annual BusinessCar Fleet Technology Awards – the Techies. The prestigious title was awarded to Volkswagen for the Golf GTE, an innovative plug-in hybrid that combines sporty dynamics with exceptional fuel economy and low CO 2  emissions. Now in their seventh year, the Techies are judged by both BusinessCar’s experienced editorial panel with help from TRL’s technology expert. The industry’s only technology-specific awards, the BusinessCar Techies reward the use of technology to make business car fleet operations easier, cheaper, cleaner, safer and more straig...
Post a Comment
Read more