Volvo prius conversion

Your challenges will be many, most will be considered insurmountable.
The Volvo is a front engined, rear wheel drive car with the engine front to back, while the Prius has front wheel drive, and and engine and inverter aimed side to side. So nothing will fit.

Volvo engine bay


Prius engine bay

The Prius has a large rectangular battery which must be Air Conditioned, this will wipe out your rear seat space.


Prius Battery. in silver

If you could make it all fit, you would still have to control it and brake it, the Prius has very odd brakes.
B under the D in the Drive gears? | PriusChat

 

I admire anyone up for a challenge. I like other cars, but I currently drive a Prius PIP for the fuel mileage. Effortless.

 

Maybe try something a little less ambitious for starters.

- Get a second hand Prius that runs.
- Swap over the Volvo badges to the Prius.
- Drive it really badly to complete the illusion.

 

I worry that you may think you would get Prius like mileage in a Prius powered Volvo.

The Prius body is very aerodynamic, the Volvo is a brick.
The Prius has special narrow Low Rolling Resistance tires, it is unlikely they will hold up the Volvo.
The Prius frequently regenerates electricity instead of using friction brakes, it is unlikely you will be able to safely disable the brakes on the Volvo only when needed.

You may get the world's first $100,000 1987 Volvo with 20% better mileage. and 450,000 miles on the body.

 

I wrote a long winded response to this.
But then cleared it.


I'm just going to say "Impossible".

 

Since the Prius is unibody and the hybrid system is very integrated into the entire car, it wouldn't be practical at all. The only thing that may be possible (but still not easy) is to graft portions of a 240 shell onto the Prius unibody. The result probably wouldn't be very nice at all, though. Talk about lack of fit & finish. If you're handy with sheetmetal, you could fabricate a 240-styled body to graft onto the totalled Pri.

How about doing an electric conversion on the 240? It's not the ideal candidate (it's anything but light or aerodynamic) but it would be much easier and you'd be more likely to end up with something usable. The totalled Pri could be parted out if you don't want to repair it or unload it.

How in-tact is the 2004? If the damage is to the back, you could adapt a cargo bed or turn it into a woodie wagon or similar and just drive it. This guy has done some interesting adaptations with salvaged Prii. Scroll down for the woodie versions: APRS Solar PHEV

 

I had a friend in high school who had a Volvo 240. That thing was a tank. Had about 400k miles on it, too. They never die.

 

You would be much better off starting with a front wheel drive car to put the Prius guts into. But even then, you would have to swap just about everything. Engine, tranny, battery (the obvious ones), brake system, electric AC system (if you want AC), inverter cooling system, all the computers (many many wires), and probably much more. The biggest thing I can think of that might not need swapped is the power steering, but that would still probably throw a code.

Basically, you take just about everything from the Prius and put it in another car. No one is going to guide you through the process. This is one of those things that if you want to do it, you have to do it for yourself or pay a shop a lot of money to do it for you.

 

just shoehorn the whole car inside the volvo cabin and pretend it's a volvo.

 

This is similar to my convertible project, but the Volvo is not well suited to it. If the body width, wheelbase and tread width are compatible (which does not appear to be the case) the entire underbody would need to be cut out and replaced by the Prius parts. This would be a very complicated process in this case since the differences in seating location and firewall location may be too great to overcome. Bottom line: The Volvo is too small to make this work.

I advise selling the Volvo.

Bill the Engineer.

p.s.: Send photo of the totaled Prius.

 

omg, the volvo weighs less than the prius,
Weight: 2,840 lb (1,290 kg) (1989 US spec 240, fully fueled, no driver

From wiki, might be misleading

Still, get a horse

 

Do yourself a favor, forget the Frankencar, get the new Volvo that's coming out with regenerative fly wheels, get all the benefit, none of the pain.

 

Maybe the OP should wait for Volvo to release this to general production. I think it would fit the OP's need and still be a Volvo.

Volvo XC60 Plug-in Hybrid Concept – 3 Modes: Electric, Hybrid or Gasoline – RoadandTrack.com - Road & Track

IMO, fitting the Prius drive line and all necessary items to make it run properly would be a very expensive project. There are a lot of items that are integrated within the unibody of the Prius that would make it difficult to fit properly within the confines of said Volvo the OP wishes to convert.

If the OP feels his "plan to put prius cradle under front of Volvo and all prius electricals inside" a valid and doable project, then in my opinion go right ahead. I have no doubt that folks here on Prius Chat would love to see how this project works out as well as how it looks in the end.

Prius have been converted to other vehicles such as short stretch versions similar to a limo fashion. However they have been done on the Prius platform, rather than conversion of another brand of vehicle.

Would it be practical? That depends on the OP's budget. Could it be done? Probably, but would the expense there of be worth the time, effort, and money spent?

 

But NOT aerodynamic, so highway gas mileage will be similar to what you get now, before you spend a LOT of money.

This is not true. In many instances, the electrical load replaces the friction brakes. I know of no easy way to use any part of the Volvo braking system and retain this feature. Without this city mileage will suffer.

 

i can't agree on volvo drivers, from my experience, they drive like the car is so safe, they are indestuctible.

 

It won’t after he gets through installing all the Prius parts.

 

Having stripped out a couple of gen2 Prii, I can tell you that it will NOT be impossible to do what you suggesting. However, it will certainly take you a long long time.

Someone once pointed out to me that it's a Hybrid SYNERGY Drive, meaning the whole thing is one big system that will all need to be transferred and hung onto the volvo shell-- wiring harness and all. You MIGHT be able to just plumb your volvo brakes into the Prius actuator system, but it may be simpler to go and try to use the stock prius brakes and suspension and graft them to the Volvo shell somehow.

You'll need to get REALLY good at wiring and reading wiring diagrams to strip out all of the unneeded stuff.

In the end, the Prius body is just a carrying case for everything else. It's all ben designed and packaged for mass-consumption and market appeal. If you don't have the need to sell what you've created nor do you have to satisfy any of the federal safety requirements, reliability, drivability and so forth, then you can certainly accomplish a complete re-carcassing of a Prius into a Volvo.

impossible? no
Impractical? yes. And I certainly believe you won't end up with the "performance" you are seeking. But if you are looking for a unique project car, I say go for it.

 

Ive always thought that if I were going to do a Prius transplant, a Matrix would make a good body to use. It would take awesome skill and lots of time to pull that off.