which donor to choose?

[justinpogge]

I am trying to figure out the direction to go to start my project. essentially we want a small truck mainly for hardware store runs, does not need a lot of range or speed. my first thought is a Kei truck or an older small Nissan, Toyota or Mitsubishi truck.
the other question is the donor vehicle. a friend has a running gen 2 Prius that they will part with for free. I also found a possible source for an inexpensive Nissan Leaf motor stack and battery or also a local guy has a Chevy Spark EV traction motor, inverter and charger pretty cheap. looks like no one has messed around with the Spark EV, so I would have to do my own reverse engineering. would the Prius or the Leaf be a better starting point?

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

I'd get a small trailer for the Prius and run it as is. It's just hardware store runs.

Any vehicle will be equivalent. Which one you choose should be the one you're most excited to work on.

Gen 2 Prius is okay, but a bit wimpy with the current setup and Johannes probably won't develop it further. It's fine, but if you've got a Leaf for cheap, that's a much more polished solution, and significantly more powerful.

There's probably 100x as many Leaf conversions as Prius ones. I.E. Hardly any Prius ones.

Parts support and crowd support is going to be a lot deeper on the Leaf as well. That's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy, whatever is popular stays popular, but, if the reverse was true and it was Priuses that had the foothold, you'd make some serious arguments in favor of the power and development maturity of the DIY scene on the LEAF. The only argument in favor of the Prius is cost and availability. In your case, literally free.

If you want a project, pick the truck that seems most fun and go with Leaf.

If you want a practical solution, a small trailer for the Prius is honestly the realistic scenario.

[justinpogge]

I'd get a small trailer for the Prius and run it as is. It's just hardware store runs.

Any vehicle will be equivalent. Which one you choose should be the one you're most excited to work on.

Gen 2 Prius is okay, but a bit wimpy with the current setup and Johannes probably won't develop it further. It's fine, but if you've got a Leaf for cheap, that's a much more polished solution, and significantly more powerful.

There's probably 100x as many Leaf conversions as Prius ones. I.E. Hardly any Prius ones.

Parts support and crowd support is going to be a lot deeper on the Leaf as well. That's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy, whatever is popular stays popular, but, if the reverse was true and it was Priuses that had the foothold, you'd make some serious arguments in favor of the power and development maturity of the DIY scene on the LEAF. The only argument in favor of the Prius is cost and availability. In your case, literally free.

If you want a project, pick the truck that seems most fun and go with Leaf.

If you want a practical solution, a small trailer for the Prius is honestly the realistic scenario.

thanks a lot for the help. I have been leaning toward the leaf. It is definitely a huge plus that there is a strong user base.
I was also considering the Lexus GS450. seems like its a great solution on rear wheel drive donor vehicles.

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

I'd say it depends where you are, what's available, and what sort of shape it's going to be in. There are a lot of options for adapting the Leaf motors to small trucks, whether solely from bratindustries or a combination of his parts and other sources. If this is your first conversion, I'd stick with adapting a Leaf stack to a manual transmission, rather than try to re-engineer the vehicle's suspension to support using a drive unit or transaxle.

The other thing to remember is that, even once converted to EV, these are still project cars/trucks. Stuff is going to fail or need service, so picking something or a combination of something with good parts availability is also wise. This goes back to what's available near you.