While the decision to use Tesla’s powerful motor is fairly obvious, the choice of Volt battery may be surprising. And while not up to the levels of LS swaps or Pi mods, there’s a decent sized body of knowledge for powerful garage-built electric cars thanks to pioneers like and a budding industry catering to those who want to build their own. Tesla Model S and Chevrolet Volt have been produced in volume long enough for components to show up at salvage yards.

Things may not be quite as obvious in the electric world, but that’s changing. So if someone desired more power than is practical from a car’s original engine, the obvious next step is to swap it out for an LS. They are both compact, very powerful for the money, have a large body of existing projects to learn from, and an equally large ecosystem of accessories to help turn ideas into reality. The General Motors LS engine lineup is popular with petro heads for basically the same reasons Raspberry Pi are popular with the digital minded. Over the past few years, the world of electronics and automotive hacking started to converge in the form of electric car conversions, and proclaims the electric counterpart to “LS Swap” is to put a Telsa Model S motor and a Chevy Volt battery into a project car. For people who wrench on their cars, a similarly popular project is the “LS Swap”. A common project category on this site is “put a Raspberry Pi in it”.

Chevy volt 2020