The “LeafZX” is what San Francisco-based engineer, Battlebots veteran, and lifelong car-nut Derek Young calls his creation, an electric Nissan Leaf aided by a 170 HP, high-revving motorcycle engine powering the rear wheels. The vehicular madness was a result of Young’s desire to meld his love for creating things and his interest in owning an electrified car that sounds and feels like a race car. Here’s a close look at the machine, and the impressive CAD models, and custom-machined parts that made its creation possible.
This past weekend The Autopian’s three founders, Jason Torchinsky, Beau Boeckmann, and I joined Matt Hardigree and Beau’s team at Pebble Beach’s absurdly extravagant “Car Week.” The Quail show was nuts, featuring every car exec and plenty of celebrities, and the Concours — the main event — was even nuts-er. But between those two celebrations of automobile beauty and opulence was a celebration of jankiness: The Concours d’Lemons.
The show featured some truly absurd and rare old junkers like a French MinicComtesse and a Lincoln Continental turned into a horse. But among all that sat an example of engineering brilliance so absurd that I’m not sure any human mind other than Derek Young’s is equipped to fully grasp it. Gather yourself, slow down your breathing, and hold onto something well-anchored, because this rear motorcycle-engined 2013 Nissan Leaf designed using Computer Aided Design (CAD) software and built in a half-car garage in San Francisco might just scramble your mind into mush with its sheer audacity:
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I took a few photos of the plug-in hybrid “LeafZX” during the event; from the front driver’s side, it actually looks fairly normal.
But from any other angle it becomes clear that “normal” isn’t remotely the right descriptor. Inside you can see that the rear seatback has been replaced with a firewall of sorts.
You’ll also see what appears to be an intake and some sort of duct:
These two reach forward from the seatback-replacing firewall to this scoop in the passenger’s side second-row window opening:
By this point, it should be obvious that there’s clearly some kind of party in the back, and indeed, there is:
It’s a motorcycle engine powering the rear wheels independently from the electric motor-driven front wheels. Just to the left of the gas engine sits the stock motorcycle’s fuel tank, and ahead of it on the right side of the car is a radiator, which draws air through the second-row window duct via an electric fan and exhausts that air through extractor holes in the rear hatch (see below). (The orange intake tube in the back seat area feeds the engine; you can barely see it just behind the valve cover and to the left of the radiator in the photos above).
In the passenger-compartment, you’ll notice some red buttons on the dash, an extra pedal in the footwell, and a sequential shifter built into the center console:
And underneath I could clearly see a custom subframe, a suspension from some car that is not a Nissan Leaf, and a custom-built chain-drive housing bolted to that subframe.
Baffled by what I was looking at, I had a chat with the vehicle’s creator, Derek Young. He described the fascinating way that he engineered and built this fascinating creation.
Who is Derek Young And What Led Him To Undertake Such Sorcery?
He’s A Car-Nut
To understand this build, you need to understand the builder, a man named Derek Young, who grew up near Toronto in close proximity to a car-loving dad. In his household was a VW Scirocco, an old Audi, a Datsun 240Z, and — when Derek was 13 — a Caterham Super 7, which his dad took rallying at Targa Newfoundland. Young was the navigator for the rally, and, as he told me over the phone, ended up becoming rather traumatized by the event. “The car was breaking every day, and you’re working on it every night,” he remembered, saying he couldn’t stop thinking of that stress for a long time after that race ended.
After Derek got his license, he received a racing helmet for Christmas and began participating in track days and autocross events. Then he left for Vancouver to study systems engineering in college, and snagged a Datsun 510 — a vehicle that he remembered having seen racing at Road Atlanta. With fiberglass flares and a cheap suspension, the car was a bit of a beater, though his friend did a nice paint job over the rather tired body. Young also snagged a $500 Datsun 510 wagon while at his university; this was the vehicle that got him headed down the path he’s now on. “For my thesis project I built a semi-automatic gearbox,” Young told me. “I basically built a pneumatic actuation system to push an H-pattern shifter through the five gears…That was my first Frankenstein project.” After a failed engine swap, he sold the car, and it remains someone’s unfinished project to this day.
Since his smaller engineering school didn’t offer a Formula SAE car design/racing program, Young satiated his need to build things via a different avenue. “I ended up selling [the crappy 510 with a new paintjob] to fund the start of my Battlebots career,” he told me, saying he won the robot combat show’s LA competition in 1999.
By 2003, Young was out of college and cruising around in another 510; this one was worth keeping. He fuel injected the L18 four-cylinder engine, which used the block from his dad’s rally car. He was working in the Vancouver film industry building Sci-fi props, but in 2007 he used his Battlebots connections to get work in the San Fransisco bay area. There, he turned his four-door Datsun 510 into a real rally machine (see below) that, unlike his dad’s Caterham, actually performed well at the Targa Newfoundland race that had traumatized him three years prior.
Over the phone, Young told me in a non-joking manner that he sold his rally 510 because it was impractical for his growing family. His replacement: A tiny Honda S2000 two-door convertible. Clearly he’s a bit of a nut.
He Always Wanted A Motorcycle-Powered Car
Battlebots and his growing family, plus a house purchase, left a void; Young needed to build stuff. “I want it to be something that I can park on the street and that I don’t have to restore. I want to build something,” he told me. Last year he jumped into the deep end.
“I’ve always wanted this bike engine-powered car,” he said. “Mostly it’s the sound. I was raised watching Formula 1 in the ’80s and ’90s… The crazy revs — that’s what’s most exciting for me. It’s the noise… it’s kind of a silly thing to build a car around, but there are no street cars that rev to 13,000. The sequential gearbox… is such a racecar thing… if you wanna do that with a streetcar, it’s not even approachable money-wise.”
His initial thought was to buy some small 1980s car like a Subaru Justy or a Mazda 323 GTX, or maybe an older Honda Civic hatchback or wagon, since he was part of a Honda CRX-based Lemons racing team. In fact, this is a bit of an aside, but check out how he turned a Civic into the Andy Warhol BMW M1 art car:
Young’s plan was to throw a motorcycle engine in the back and convert the front to electric (since the bike engine would need a bit of assistance, since bikes tend to lack reverse gears, and they lack low-end torque). But in early 2021, when Nissan Leafs were cheap, he realized that it was perfect for the job since it would cut out the hassle of converting something to an EV. Without taking any measurements, and using only underbody photos that someone on a Leaf forum had posted after installing a trailer hitch, he pulled the trigger on it and a 2009 Kawasaki ZX10R, a bike that was far from ideal, but that was powerful and available.
“I’d never driven one before,” he told me about the Kawasaki. In hindsight, he realizes that the bike was a bit compromised — its gearing is super tall to prevent wheelie-ing on a bike, though this just makes for lackadaisical acceleration in a car. “First gear will almost get you to 60 mph, and in 6th gear you’re running 8000 highway.” Still, the end product is worth it. “It’s unlike anything else. It’s very much a racecar feel in a streetcar, and I don’t know how you could achieve it any other way without mega mega dollars,” he told me. We’ll talk more about the driving experience later in this article.
The Build Begins
“[The Leaf] is such a strange vehicle to do this in because the stock car is so docile and silent,” Young admitted.
The project began last June. The major components he bought in addition to the bike and car include an Ebay-sourced Lexus IS350 rear subframe — which he chose due to its track width and wheel bolt pattern, among other reasons — and a sealed Quaife ATD differential from Taylor-Race.com. Buying parts instead of fabricating them, and using a modern EV instead of an older EV conversion-candidate made the project possible for the family man. “I’m gonna try to do this in the most simple way possible where I’m on the couch designing things instead of grinding metal downstairs,” he told me.
To that end, he began importing his project into Solidworks, a Computer Aided Design software (CAD). “That was the real breakthrough,” he told me, saying the comments section of YouTuber and engineer Superfastmatt had inspired him to build a “Photogrammetry” rig to allow him to take photos of his parts so an open-source software could turn those photos into accurate geometry in the digital space. He used an old Olympus micro-4/3s camera with a polarizer setup to eliminate reflections. He then sprayed his parts with a cornstarch suspension in isopropyl alcohol; this gave the components visual “texture,” which allowed the software to better understand the geometry of the components. Here’s a look at the clean engine
:
And here’s a look at the engine after the cornstarch/alcohol treatment:
Here’s a peek at the engine in CAD, where it could be designed into the car first so that Young knew which parts needed to be made/modified to get the various mechanical systems to work together:
Here’s the clean rear subframe:
Here’s the treated rear subframe:
Notice the aforementioned visual “texture” that Young’s concoction gives the components:
Scanning these two components allowed Young to visualize their interface digitally:
“The rear subframe took three to four days [for] my CAD computer to figure out,” he told me before saying he also digitized the inside of the Leaf’s trunk and the underside of the floor. “[I] basically just pieced it together in CAD and started designing parts,” he said.
Here you can see how Young sprayed the rear cargo area interior and underside:
The result was a beautifully digitized packaging environment that allowed Young to understand which parts he had to design, which he had to buy, and which he had to modify.
While a judge for Battlebots, he’d watch a fight for three minutes, then sit for 20 — during the waiting period, he’d design his Leaf in CAD. By September, he started getting custom parts in the mail, including laser cut pieces he got from a company called “Sendcutsend,” who also does sheetmetal bending.
“It’s like an order of magnitude cheaper just because they have the process dialed so well,” he said, also mentioning another custom metal fab company named OSH Cut (see above). He told me he also used a laser tube cutting service for the shock towers — all of these custom bits, of course, were ones he’d designed in CAD.
“The subframe swap I did in a weekend,” Young told me, saying the car really never left the road for more than maybe a total of five days. He was working with a half-car garage, after all, since his wife had turned the single-car garage in San Francisco into a gym.
Having his parts custom-made, buying off-the-shelf bits, and reusing as much of the Leaf as he could were all key enablers in keeping the Leaf’s down-time to a minimum. On that last point, Young bought another Nissan Leaf twistbeam rear suspension, scanned it to get it into CAD (see purple above), and used that to create an attachment point that allowed him to easily bolt the Lexus’ subframe to the Nissan Leaf body. Here’s the subframe pre-modification:
And here it is after:
As for the rear of the subframe, Young cut the floor out of the Nissan leaf’s cargo area, and welded in some structure for the subframe to mount to:
A Look At Some More Hardware
The truth is that nobody other than Young can really do a writeup of this project justice, so I’m going to keep this all fairly high-level, pointing out the main components Young had to develop. You can see in the CAD images above that there’s some kind of transmission between that engine and the axle shafts powering the wheels down below that subframe. That transmission (or “drivetrain cradle” as Young calls it) houses a bunch of sprockets and a chain, which travels toward the front of the Leaf, then down, and then towards the rear, grabbing the sprocket in the rear differential, powering the axle shafts.
Here’s that drivetrain cradle made up of custom laser-cut parts:
Here is a packaging preview of how that cradle would sit relative to the engine when in-vehicle:
He even ran a Finite Element Analysis simulation to make sure the transmission could handle the engine loads:
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Here it is partly installed in the vehicle:
The axle shafts aren’t yet in, and really, they’re hard to see once everything is put together, though from underneath you can see them, but just barely:
Those axle shafts, by the way, are custom, using a Honda inner spline (the diff uses a Honda spline) and the stock Lexus IS350 outer hub spline. Young told me that making these custom axles was a massive pain in the ass.
There’s honestly so much more to talk about. Young sent me an album filled with at least 6.02*10^23 photos. I’m exhausted writing this article, because the album has so much gold in it that I want to mention it all. It’s glorious! But alas, that’s impractical. So here are just a few other cool images; check out Young’s shifter assembly design:
Behold his air intake duct, which he of course designed in CAD first:
Here’s a look at Young’s little electric actuator that taps into the Leaf’s pedal position sensor to pull the motorcycle’s throttle cable:
You’ll notice that it’s fed air by a big hose that hooks up to an air pump:
I was a little surprised that the throttle actuator needed its own cooling. Very interesting.
What’s It Like To Drive?
I haven’t had a chance to drive “LeafZX” quite yet, but per Young’s video showing the cabin during a highway onramp acceleration run, it looks like an utterly absurd good-time:
Here’s a clip of the car from the outside
Young’s had the car — which can be driven by either the electric motor or bike engine, or both — on the road for over six months, but has been tweaking it ever since. “I do take my kid to swimming lessons in it… he likes shifting,” Young told me. That’s just hilarious.
Young told me a bit about how the car drives, comparing it to the Chevy Bolt he’d owned and modified with a different sway bar and higher-performance tires.”I did one of my favorite routes…and [the Bolt is] lacking. It’s missing all of that excitement of my old 510 that I used to do all of these same roads in.”
“I didn’t know if [the LeafZX] was going to be good or not. I was very pleasantly surprised that it is fun to drive.”
“It’s fast. It’s a legitimately quick car. It doesn’t launch well… As you add throttle, because it’s an EV it wants to just drive away.” The motorcycle, though, hits peak torque way up high in its rev range, so the car tends to feel fastest between 30 MPH and 80 MPH. The vehicle’s zero to 60 mph time of 5.5 seconds, Young says, just doesn’t do it justice.
All images credited to Derek Young
Derek Young, the man behind Complete Control, is here at the Autopian? Hot damn!
I was in middle/high school for the TV heyday of Battlebots in the early aughts. Complete Control was my favorite middleweight, enough so that when my friends and I did “R/C Fight Club” (basically customizing our r/c cars and brawling in the school parking lot) I kitbashed a lifter bot together from my 1990s era Fast Traxx (that thing with the caterpillar treads) and a cheap Radio Shack tractor pull motor for the arm. It was jank as hell.
It’s been ages since then but I do think about getting back into robot combat. I’m crap with metalwork and even worse with CAD but hey, could be fun!
Are you still in the scene? Dragoncon is coming up soon and I think they still do their robot fights.
The old Kanagawa Waterfall; business in the front, party in the back. Love it.
The peculiar sounds emanating from this thing during acceleration are fantastic.
I may be a different kind of carfan. And I don’t want to take away from the engineering genius here. But I admire the guy who takes two dissimilar vehicles and using knowledge and math with a pencil and paper creates something unique and as good or better. Here it seems million dollar computer programs, computer designed custom parts and 2 vehicles too create a worse but truly unique experience.
Hey now, Solidworks is not a $1M computer program. It’s not cheap by any means ($1300/year or about $4k for a non-subscription, apparently), but it affordable to someone who is willing to put many $1000’s into a car build.
Also, Solidworks is actually pretty easy to learn. I remember running through some built-in tutorials and getting up to speed pretty fast (years ago). Knowing how to draw things in 3D in Solidworks, and knowing how to *design* something are two different skills, though.
As a machine shop foreman half-jokingly told me, “Solidworks makes it too easy for a non-mechanical engineer (like myself) to make mechanical parts”. He was pointing out that I did not follow proper conventions when dimensioning drawings…
Solidworks is a great program. I learned it after IDEAS, Unigraphics, and ProEngineer and Solidworks was far superior to all of them. However, for personal stuff I now use Fusion360 by Autocad, which is just about as good as Solidworks and free for hobbyist/personal use. It’s immensely powerful, easy to use (pretty similar to Solidworks), has tons of tutorials on YouTube, and did I mentions it’s free?
Perhaps there is a fundamental misunderstanding about what CAD software does, but the computer didn’t design these parts. Derek did. CAD is a substitute for having more time, space, and an entire engineering department to resolve a problem. It’s no different than pencil and paper except the software allows all the parts which were designed by a human to be assembled and revised in 3D before any resources go into fabrication.
I think it was conveyed in the article, but to restate, these “custom parts” just aren’t that exotic or expensive anymore. Online Instant quote metal laser cutting (via Sendcutsend and OSHCut) is a game changer and have brought these fabrication methods to the masses. The photogrammetry process is also newly accessible and runs on open source software. If I didn’t already have a SolidWorks seat through my job I’d be doing the design work in OnShape which is free and runs in the cloud from any computer (even a tablet!). Maybe you think computers helping robots make parts isn’t as romantic as hand-fab-and-fit, but this car was built in months, not years — all with fairly limited tools and very limited space.
As for it being worse than the original car (or bike?), of course that’s just like, your opinion, man.
Objectively, cargo capacity and NVH have suffered (the N is part of the fun of course), but it’s a step up in any other metric.
You are using the tools you have. Better than cut-and-fit. This is the modern take. Even Kindigit has a 3d printer guy. I just recently saw an episode where they had a fab guy mock up clay and their guy scanned it and printed it. A rear spoiler corner for a restomod Mustang. This is the future for fabbing parts.
This is what happens when the stock EV doesn’t have any range (:
I was going to say – 10-15 years from now, this might wind up the last 1st gen Leaf in the world capable of driving itself further than on/off a trailer
I am SO doing this to my daughter’s car – she’ll have the loudest EV in her high school!
Pretty cool and the only way to make a leaf useful really for all things since the batteries are junk and range is poor even when new. but I have to wonder if the CARB boys will come down on him since this is showing a license plate and would never pass a smog test.
I’m not sure how this would work in the state of California, but electric vehicles don’t get or need smog checks so as far as I can tell -no one involved in the government entities known as DMV or CARB ever has to know. He can register his car as an electric vehicle, pay his fees, and no one has to know how he modified it. It’s brilliant.
Back in the day they didn’t test diesels in my state, so you wanted to build a hot rod A body you got one of the Cutlass diesels through in a crazy “race” engine and never have to take it for the smog test.
This is fantastic. When watching it pull on that onramp, I did that smile and little giggle you do but can’t control when you witness something awesome happen (I feel like there should be a German word for that).
Who cares what the 0-60 is. I’m sure this thing would rip around a track where it can stay in that sweet spot and keep the revs high.
This is High Weirdness and I love it. I can imagine being on the Interstate when it goes by and looking everywhere for the sport bike I just heard…
Makes $440 to $500 per day Οnline work which I received 14,300 dollars in one month online performing from home. I’m a daily student and work just one to a strive of hours in my spare time. Everybody will do that and online raise extra cash by simply using this weblink.. https://googlecash99s.blogspot.com/
That whining diff.I love it! It compliments the engine perfectly ????
The sprayed starch hack is both hilarious and amazing.I’ll be sure to file that in a corner of my brain for future use.
Derek did you consider other engine locations? Was a more forward mounting ever in the hunt- which would have made the drive train a little easier?
-and yes the drawback would be using up a whole lot more space
Dang,those 4 question marks were supposed to be a smilie face!
This site has weird coding
I didn’t want to encroach on the HV battery which runs back to where the new fire wall is, so I arranged the engine vertically above the differential. One concept for an “evo” version would be to replace the large pack with a smaller PHEV pack that would not occupy this space and the motor could be moved forward and down, for better CoG and polar moment, as well as a more traditional simple chain line. My estimate is I could drop 300lbs this way too!
Ok,got it. It didnt occurr to me the battery was removed for the photos.Now i feel a bit dumb lol.
BTW the main image on your web site is awesome.I never would have thought the butt of a Leaf could look good
The battery is there, it’s just under the floor. I did what I could to not have to take it out. I too have grown to appreciate this car’s rear end — a bit Volvo C30, a bit Renault Megane/Clio V6. The 255 tires help!
This thing is amazing! It looks and sounds like so much fun. Awesome job!
This thing is glorious and the videos of it kinda broke my brain. The complete incongruence of THAT car with THAT noise is absolutely worth any and all justification. Well done.
Sendcutsend has its sponsor logo on about half the field in Battlboys. So they are either doing something right or they pay a lot o’ dosh.
Love the shifter! More cars should be like that.
Instant online quoting laser cutters sendcutsend and OSHCut are game changers. Very reasonable pricing on low volume parts. It has completely changed my professional engineering work flow by not having to wait for traditional quotes and the turn around times are amazing. For personal projects, the low minimums ($29!) and the part pricing finally make CNC metal parts within general reach. Fun fact, the founder/CEO also built a bonkers car — google Teslonda.
That’s batshit insane-love the Gasser look on that old Honda!
This is amazing (and I’m pleased to see I recognize a mole when I see it in scientific notation some 36 years after the last time I took chemistry). LS-swapping a Prius, that’s *basic*. This, this is artistry.
The world needs more madcap engineering
I would totally buy things from a company called “Madcap Engineering” whether I needed them or not.
Me too. It’s right in line with Big Ass Fans.
This is absolutely fantastic. Thank you for doing this. The car world needs more interesting builds like this! You took a boring electric car, with barely any useful range (or redeeming qualities) and turned it into a highly unique, fast, joyful work of art. Since there are no GIFs on this site -my hands are slowly, but firmly, clapping…
I can feel the firmness.
Ignore this comment if it doesn’t work, but… something like… *crosses fingers*… this?
Aww, since other html tags work, I had hoped the “img src” would, too, but alas…
Imagine the Price Is Right fail-horn instead… 🙁
Thanks for the great write up David! This car was so much fun to build, and I love that people are getting to know more about it and enjoy that it exists. I have a pretty simple website that has more info about the car if this (very thorough) article is just not enough. https://sites.google.com/view/leafzx/home
Can you do an oil change without having to take out the engine?
I’ll find out soon! I know I can see and touch the filter but I haven’t tried to take it off yet. It’s due.
I love it when the people mentioned in the article join the comments! Welcome to Autopian 🙂
What photogrammetry software did you use?
So if he added a supercharger to it, would that be a Leaf blower?
Sorry, couldn’t resist. That is a seriously cool build, and finished product.
This is why we keep you around.
Are you doing COTD here or nah?
Seems like the throttle/accelerator control for both motors is the same, right? Would make sense, as that would make it much simpler to implement given the EV never needs to “shift.”
My only concern, and this may be totally off base, but is there a risk of the rear drivetrain out-driving the front? I guess I’m thinking about at much higher speeds, could the rear wheels spin faster (on account of more power and gearing) than the front, leading to instability?
Also goes without saying that I love this.
One other thought, given the Leaf’s known weakness in the range department, did he trailer it down the coast, or drive it down primarily on the motorcycle drivetrain?
No instability but the EV stops providing torque to the front wheels at 85mph. Honestly I haven’t gotten much past this. It definitely is possible to over-rev the ICE if you leave it in first or second gear and keep your foot in it (redline of 3rd is about 90mph). It’s a weird hybrid version of a money-shift.
Thanks for the insight! Again, goes without saying, but this is really incredible. Super impressed!
Oh yeah? Well, I mow my lawn regularly.
I don’t know how he managed to do that first freeway on-ramp video without cracking a smile. I was grinning just watching. If I’d been driving, I probably would have been cackling like a madman.
Great stuff, DT, and great build, Mr. Young.
This is incredible stuff. I love the photogrammetry rig. What open-source software exactly is he using for that portion? I’ve been learning Reality Capture for work – it’s great, but does cost a little money when one wants to export 3d geom for their final project. Granted, not much – I would expect just a few dollars for something like this depending on how many photos were taken, and it can export from a particular photo set as many times as the user wants after the initial price is paid.
At any rate, awesome build!
Thanks! I used Meshroom, which is free but slow. I have since purchased Agisoft Metashape for $120(ish?) which is much quicker. The only caveat is you need a Nvidia CUDA enabled graphics card, which I happen to have on my work CAD machine.
Definitely – that thing looks like a blast to drive! Also, thanks for the software info. Meshroom at least sounds familiar, although I may be thinking of Meshlab. I’m completely unfamiliar with Metashape – that looks quite interesting for the price. I’m running a NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti, but I’ll have to ask our systems guy if it’s CUDA enabled. We’re always on the lookout for better/faster/easier photogrammetry processing.
Looks like you’re CUDA’d up: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/30-series/rtx-3080-3080ti/ Metashape has a 30 day free trial too definitely worth trying!
I use Meshlab as well, but just as an editing/scaling/mesh simplification tool. I posted my workflow in r/photogrammetry https://www.reddit.com/r/photogrammetry/comments/tc86gs/comment/i0dvd3h/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Metashape is really nice, especially when compared to the price of other professional photogrammetry software. I’ve used it in the context of aerial imagery and GIS/remote sensing work, but it works just as well for building 3D models of objects like engines or parts. You just need to do something like he did with the cornstarch to remove highlights from surfaces so reflections don’t cause it to get confused. That’s a problem for all photogrammetry software, but if you only care about the geometry and not the texture mapping, it will make your life a lot easier!
I feel like the water bottle in the engine compartment was just ignored.
Is the motorcycle tank temporary? Seems like it will need a fill up every 100 miles or something.
I didn’t want to shell out for a custom tank (and pump etc) if the car was going to suck, so I used as much of the stock stuff as possible. I can go about 120 miles on 5 gallons, so yeah lots of fill ups. Much better than the 35 miles of range the car had when I got it!
Do you have a way to regen the battery while running in pure gas mode?
It can actually charge sustain in hybrid mode. The Leaf has an “Eco” setting that makes the first portion of pedal travel produce no positive electric torque, so it remains in regen, while the ICE pushed the car along. When you want full power, just put your foot down, but at cruise it charges the battery.
I absolutely love the tank, please just weld a sump into it if you need more range..
The dichotomy of the CAD/CNC billet parts with he Kawi tank just planted in there and the water bottle (PCV catch can?) is actually just the right mix of practicality and engineering.