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You Can Turn Anything Into an EV, Even a Lada Niva

The Lada Niva is a staple form of rough road transportation in Russia and the former Soviet satellites, but it has one major problem.
Lada Niva Electric 1 photo
Photo: Yuriy Logvin/YouTube
Power for the Niva comes from a weedy four-cylinder gasoline engine that really reminds you why the car’s name in Russian translates to “field.” Nobody who has ever reviewed a Niva has ever praised its power plant, even though other parts of the package are not as bad as you might think.

Sure, you could swap out the factory engine for a more powerful and less agricultural sounding unit, but really the best thing you could do is give up on internal combustion and just turn it into an EV. Just like with pretty much any vehicle designed around a gasoline- or diesel-burning engine, the Niva can be converted.

Want proof? Check out this video posted by Yuri Logvin on YouTube, dated way back in 2015, when EVs were just starting to gain traction. It’s literally the only video i could find on the entire platform that shows an all-electric converted Niva, at least the only one you’ll find if you don’t search using the Russian keywords in Cyrillic alphabet.

Its creator thankfully provided an English description next to the Russian-Ukrainian one below the video. He lists the car’s range as being 124 kilometers, its top speed 104 km/h and that it takes 7 hours to fully charge from flat. He also mentions that it comes with regenerative braking.

The battery pack is out of a first-gen Nissan Leaf, and in order to learn more about it you’re going to have to watch the video which thankfully has a good English subtitle.

The conversion itself is pretty well done and the workmanship is by no means bad. The range is not great, but then again, the first-gen Nissan Leaf has a laughable range by today’s standards. The only real downside to this conversion has to be the fact that it surely affects the Niva’s factory-certified of 60 centimeters (24 inches) wading depth.

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