Hybrid sports cars are a great idea. It doesn’t take much to convince someone that a Lamborghini Revuelto, for example, is an excellent vehicle. Unfortunately, most of these high-end hybrid performance cars are unattainable to you and me; The Revuelto costs $604,000.
So how do you get into a hybrid sports car without a second mortgage? The solution is simple: Build one yourself. At least, that’s what you do if you’re Derek Young, who turned a Nissan Leaf into a 13,000 rpm all-wheel-drive monster.
For Young, it started with the desire for a motorcycle-powered sports car. But how to do it? After a lot of research, Young found himself at a crossroads. The first option was to find or build a very light car that a motorcycle engine could pull around. That meant intensive engineering work or restoring a vintage automobile. Young didn’t want to do either of these things (although he is certainly capable).
Then, it occurred to him.
“Why don’t I start with something newer and bigger and then make it a hybrid?”
That led to the idea of adding a motorcycle engine to an existing EV. This would not only be an interesting solution, but it would solve most problems associated with having to build a motorcycle-powered car from the ground up.
Since the donor EV is getting a new combustion engine in this case, its battery doesn’t have to be in good shape. Young landed on a 2013 Nissan Leaf which, thanks to being perpetually plugged in, had only half its battery capacity left. As a result, he got the Leaf for a great price—and the car was still fully functional, despite its pack’s poor state of health.
Having no garage wasn’t a problem for Young. The Leaf remained driveable throughout most of the work, since he didn’t meddle with its electric drivetrain. It could be parked anywhere and driven to a workspace when it was time to make some progress.
Choosing the engine was straightforward. He was sure he wanted to use a bike engine “Because of the revs, because of the sequential gearbox. The motors are just so cool,” he told Motor1. EV drivetrains with high torque at low RPMS also complement motorcycle engines nicely.
Soon, he trailered home a Kawasaki ZX-10R, yanked out the 1.0-liter, 174-horsepower engine, and started to figure out how to graft it into the back of his Leaf.
Starting with an existing electric platform made things much easier. Young, who used to design electric drivetrains professionally, knew he didn’t want to do it for this project.
"Starting with a front wheel drive electric car just seemed like the right move."
Several options appealed to him, like the first-generation Chevrolet Bolt. But used Leafs were much cheaper at the time. The rear end of the Leaf also had little in the way to hold up hybridization.
“It turns out the [Nissan Leaf] basically has nothing in the back… at least the 2013-or-newer models.” Some electric cars, for reference, still have batteries or other power electronics under the trunk, even if they’re front-wheel drive.
From there, it became a matter of getting the motorcycle engine’s power to the rear wheels. The company Quaife makes differentials with sprockets that allow chain-driven bikes to transfer power to conventional automotive axles. That made his work a lot easier. The Leaf was never designed to drive the rear wheels, though.
After some research, Young purchased a Lexus IS350 subframe from a junkyard and installed it beneath the Nissan. Several key measurements were just right, and he grafted the Leaf’s subframe mounting points onto the IS350’s, allowing for easy servicing and positioning.
For the sake of brevity, we won’t go into the mountain of other work Young did to get the build functional. There was a huge amount of custom fabrication, electronics fiddling, and a tremendous effort to get the chain from the engine tensioned properly and snaked down to the differential. It wasn’t perfect (this is foreshadowing), but months after starting the build, the bike engine was finally driving the rear wheels.
It was for Young to drive the world’s first hybrid motorcycle-engined Leaf.
"The very first drive ended in failure about five minutes in," he said. "My original chain tensioner failed.” Despite the short first spin, though, Young knew the project was a winner. "The obvious primary attribute of the car was the sound," he recalled. “I was now riding in a car that also houses a running motorcycle—an undeniably visceral experience."
But, the concept of the motorcycle-engined hybrid was the real deal. Now it just had to be fine-tuned.
Young spent the next few months troubleshooting. There were a lot of little things to address now that the car was on the road, and fixing all of them were steps on the road to reliability.
Finally, though, in the Spring of 2022, it all came together. The drive back from a car meet on some of Young’s favorite roads sealed the deal. “At this point, I knew the car was worthy of additional development,” he told me. He committed to improving other aspects of it like brakes, suspension, and getting the drivetrain more reliable. Young put more than 5,000 miles on this first iteration of the car.
And it sounds bonkers:
Since I started writing this piece, Young began building the second iteration of his Leaf, completely redesigning how the motorcycle engine routes power to the wheels. His original setup, as it turns out, put a lot of stress on the motorcycle’s transmission. Enough to warrant replacing the entire thing with an identical unit. Pulling the old motor allowed several other enhancements to take place too.
Currently, the car is off the road as the aforementioned upgrades are completed. He hopes to have it back in action by February.
An important aspect of this build worth focusing on is that it’s a hybrid just for fun, not chasing objective performance. "It is not a rocketship," Young told me. It may have a respectable 324 combined horsepower on paper, but the Leaf is a relatively heavy car, even without a bike engine in the back. Sprints to 60 take around 5.0 seconds, and it laps the Streets of Willow in about a minute and a half; Similar to a Subaru BRZ.
The BRZ, however, doesn’t rev to 13,000 rpm.
"The all-wheel-drive pull out of low-speed corners is amazing with the instant front-wheel-drive EV torque and the swelling surge of noise and power from the rear is legitimately thrilling," Young said.
Clearly, what he’s designed is something special, and the big-picture implications are interesting. Despite having a tiny 1.0-liter engine and an electric motor, Young’s project still provides the best thrills internal combustion can offer. Cars like his could offer a bright future to us, filled with sports cars that pair 13,000-rpm screams with the grunt, economy, and practicality of an EV.
The hybrid Leaf may have been built in a garage in California, but bigger players should take note. We hope this unique machine is back on the road soon, and that others like it follow.
Gallery: Motorcycle-Powered Nissan Leaf Project
