SEMA Electrified was a section of the SEMA Show that highlighted the development of electric vehicles. You can read about last year’s SEMA Electrified here: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2022/11/11/sema-electrified-2022/
This year Electrified had been rebranded to EV and Future Propulsion to better reflect the wide range of non-traditional and clean fuel sources that are coming into the market such as hydrogen and synthetic fuels.
(Fun fact: The Goodwood Revival will be run entirely on synthetic fuel in 2024. Synthetic fuels that simply replace unleaded petrol and diesel is a reality. We just have to seriously upscale production.)
This particular article is going to mostly focus on EVs: Both new cars from manufacturers and classic cars that have been converted to electric. However, there were a couple of builds that caught my eye outside of the EV sphere, such as this Pontiac with a hybridised Chevrolet LS.
The little cylindrical doohickys on the front fenders are actually sensors for autonomous driving. I’m interested to see how that develops in the coming years as an aftermarket application.
Hypercraft USA had a massive stand showing off a lot of their products. They create all the major components needed in a EV project including battery packs, motors and vehicle control units which can simply be purchased off the shelf for you to craft your project around.
Here’s a Corvette chassis they had on display. All the big black boxes are ‘HyperPack’ battery packs and then the motor was actually sat in the middle of the car where the transmission tunnel would originally be.
This particular build had a lot of battery packs as the owner of this car wants to use it for long drives. In a short race format you could obviously get away with using a lot less, and they produce the HyperPacks in three different sizes and shapes to suit your particular build.
Hypercraft also had this GR86 on the stand. Note the water tank in the back for cooling the battery cells.
Hypercraft also are able to work alongside manufacturers to produce drive trains for their cars. had this chassis with the battery packs mounted in the floor, which is a common construction style in manufacturer produced electric cars.
A little bit futher down I’m going to introduce you to SIERRA Cars who use Hypercraft components in their products.
To get a better range, this truck had a huge battery pack installed in the bed. You’re not going to be carrying huge loads with it any more, but if you put a bed cover over it there’s still plenty of space in there for your road trip luggage!
It’s always great to see some British metal at SEMA. I’m fairly sure I’ve seen a couple of companies offer electric conversions for both E-Types and Defenders on this side of the pond too.
Bisi Ezerioha/Bisimoto’s electric converted VW Bus. This was a featured car on the Monday Night Reveal which you can read about here: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2023/11/07/sema-monday-night-reveal/
Richard Rawlings of Gas Monkey Garage’s controversial Ferrari Testarossa. This Testarossa is now open topped, electric converted and features a central driving position. It’s so far removed from the original car that Ferrari have actually taken the chassis number off of the Testarossa database!
I actually like it! With the 80s futuristic styling it looks as though it could have been a concept car that Ferrari built for a motor show back in the day!
I’ve featured S-Klub LA on my write up of the Toyo Tires Treadpass, which you can read about here: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2023/11/11/sema-2023-toyo-tires-treadpass/
They also had this Tesla based 300SL replica on the EV and Future Propulsion display.
Teslas themselves seem to be really popular in the U.S. There were a few modified examples dotted about the show. Some were race cars. One particularly notable one was done as a low rider which you can find in this article: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2023/11/09/sema-2023-lowriders There were also a couple in this area.
The black car I believe to be a drag racing build by Bisimoto.
Just over the walkway from the EV and Future Propulsion stand, Ford had a stand with a few of their electric vehicles.
The SuperVan 4.2 which went up Pikes Peak this year piloted by Romain Dumas (who holds the overall world record for Pikes Peak with the 2018 VW I.D. R
The SuperVan took 1st in its class and had the second fastest time overall.
SIERRA Cars brought along one of their ECHO platforms which utilizes Hypercraft running gear. Lucy Block, Ken Block’s wife actually raced one of these up Pikes Peak. They actually are making 7 43i Block House Racing Editions which will be optimised for Pikes Peak. The starting price is $85,000 and a portion of the proceeds will be going to the 43 Institute, a charity set up in memory of Ken.
The base model, which if memory serves the pictured car is, is really interesting. It’s $39,000 and has a top speed of 80mph. It weighs 1400lbs (635KG) but I don’t think numbers really matter with it. It just looks like so much fun to charge about in! There’s a farmers field next to the street I live on and it would be perfect for tearing around it (just don’t tell the farmer!).
The last company I’d like to highlight at the EV and Future Propulsion stand is Mōdal.
Mōdal produce a number of EV driven technologies that you can read about on their website https://mod.al/
The product on their stand that really caught my eye though was the OneHitch.
OneHitch is designed to make coupling and uncoupling trailers much much easier. Kind of like a traditional hitch the vehicle has a ball on the back (which is mounted horizontally) and then you just back that into a socket on the trailer which clamps down around the ball. What’s really clever is even if you’re not quite lined up perfectly, the socket will pivot itself to grab onto the ball.
I’ll link you to their website page as they can probably explain it better. https://mod.al/onehitch/ It blew my mind though. Especially as I’m a one man organisation its one of those things that will make life doing anything with a trailer so much easier!
Thanks for reading!
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By Richard Francis
