Small, cheap electric pickups barely exist yet, so Michael Pick made one. He bought a 2017 BMW i3 REx with more than 100,000 miles on it from an online auction, sight unseen, cut away the back half of its cabin and turned it into a two-seat electric pickup with a real load bed. His target was a usable electric truck for under $10,000 in total, with more than 300 miles of combined range from the battery and the i3's petrol range extender. The build video passed 320,000 views in under four days.
Cutting a carbon-fibre car
The i3 is an unusual starting point. Its passenger cell is carbon-fibre reinforced plastic sitting on an aluminium chassis that carries the battery, motor and suspension. After a new 12 V battery and a clean-up, Pick stripped the interior, removed the hatch, planned the cut lines and removed the back half of the cabin. He then designed and reinforced a new rear wall for the cab and added a rear window.
The bed is plywood soaked in penetrating epoxy and finished with bedliner. He took extra care sealing the joint between the cab and the bed, because the car's main electronics sit in a compartment directly underneath. The original tail lights were too large to fit beside the new tailgate, so their electronics were moved into new housings, and several custom parts were 3D printed in resin.
The electronics upgrades
Beyond the bodywork, the project includes a 12.3-inch Apple CarPlay screen in place of the factory infotainment display and changes to how the range extender is controlled, plus repairs to parts the previous owner had neglected. He kept a running total of every dollar spent through the build.
Key details
- Donor car: 2017 BMW i3 REx (battery electric with a small petrol range extender), over 100,000 miles, bought at auction
- Bodywork: rear cabin removed, custom reinforced rear cab wall and window
- Bed: epoxy-sealed plywood with bedliner, sealed over the electronics bay
- Upgrades: 12.3-inch CarPlay screen, modified range-extender controls, 3D-printed parts
- Targets: under $10,000 total, over 300 miles of combined range
Our take
As an EV hack this is fun and very watchable, and it shows how much of a modern EV is just a skateboard chassis with a body on top. But it also needs a caution. Hackaday's readers were quick to point out that the i3's carbon body is part of how it handles a crash and a rollover, and that cutting behind the B-pillars changes that. In many countries a conversion like this also has to be re-inspected and re-registered before it is legal on the road. If you are tempted to copy it, plan for a roll bar and an inspection, not just a bed.
Image credit: Michael Pick, from the YouTube video thumbnail, cropped and resized.
About the author: Aswinth Raj is an electronics engineer and the editor of CircuitDigest, where he has published more than 150 hands-on projects and tutorials across Arduino, PIC, ESP32, Raspberry Pi and EV battery systems. He selects the stories on this page for what engineers and makers can actually learn or build from. Connect on LinkedIn
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