A 1965 Mustang Just Traded Its V8 for a Battery — Is an Electric Crate Motor Swap Actually Worth It?

A Michigan shop just pulled the V8 out of a 1965 Mustang and replaced it with a full electric drivetrain, and the internet cannot agree if that is brilliant or heresy. Here is what an EV crate motor conversion actually costs, and whether it makes sense for your classic.

A small shop called E-Muscle Cars just did something that would have gotten you laughed out of a Mustang club a decade ago: they pulled the V8 out of a 1965 Fastback and replaced it with an electric crate motor. No oil leaks. No exhaust note. No shifting. Just a wall of torque delivered the instant you touch the pedal, wrapped in a body that still looks every bit the classic muscle car it always was. The reaction from viewers has been split right down the middle — half calling it the smartest thing to happen to old Mustangs in years, half calling it a betrayal of everything the car was built to be. Whichever side you land on, electric crate motors are no longer a science project. They are a real option sitting on real order forms, with real price tags attached, and if you are weighing one for your own classic, here is what is actually involved.

The build comes from a collaboration between TwoGuysGarage and E-Muscle Cars, the shop founded in 2021 by Bill Schofield and Kevin Emr. Their pitch is straightforward: keep 100 percent of a classic’s interior, exterior, and road feel, but swap everything mechanical underneath for something that does not need a carburetor rebuild every few years. In the video, the team walks through the finished ’65 Mustang, describing a build that delivers what they call a “torque-packed, zero-maintenance EV conversion” without sacrificing the pro-touring stance and feel enthusiasts expect from a properly built classic.

What stands out is not a single spec-sheet number — the video keeps the technical details light — but the philosophy behind the build. E-Muscle Cars does not just bolt a motor into an engine bay and call it done. The company offers full custom conversions where it will either work with a customer’s existing car or source one to convert, and it also sells engineered component packages — chassis-specific mounts, battery modules, motors, inverters, and chargers — to independent builders and shops who want to run their own EV swap on a classic platform.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The Real Cost of Trading a V8 for a Battery

Electric crate motors sound simple in theory — pull one drivetrain, drop in another — but the price tag depends entirely on what you are buying. On the low end, Ford sells its Eluminator motor, the same unit found in the Mustang Mach-E GT, for about $3,900. That number is misleading on its own, though: it covers the motor alone, and a real conversion still needs a traction inverter, battery pack, battery management system, charging hardware, and custom mounts before the car turns a wheel. On the higher-performance end, motors like the Revolt Systems unit — rated around 600 horsepower and 900 lb-ft of torque — have been estimated at $25,000 to $35,000 for the motor alone. Shop-built conversion platforms sit higher still: Zero Labs, which builds full EV conversion platforms for classics, has listed an average price tag around $350,000 per car, and British builder Charge went even further with a limited run of 499 battery-powered 1967 Mustangs priced near $380,000 each, packing a 64-kWh battery, four motors, 469 horsepower, and a sub-four-second run to 60 mph.

In the comments on this build, one viewer put it bluntly: for the price of one high-end electric motor, they could restore several gas-powered muscle cars instead. That math is roughly right for anyone comparing an EV swap against a traditional restomod budget, and it is the single biggest reason the technology still splits enthusiasts down the middle.

From Hot Rodding to High Voltage: Where EV Swaps Fit in Muscle Car Culture

Swapping engines in a classic Mustang is nothing new — it is arguably the most American thing you can do to a car. Since the 1960s, owners have dropped bigger small-blocks, big-blocks, and eventually LS-series V8s into Mustangs, Camaros, and Novas chasing more power than the factory ever offered. One commenter on this video framed the EV swap in exactly those terms, calling it hot rodding in its purest form: pulling good parts out of one car and putting them into another, then going racing. By that logic, an electric motor is just the next item in the parts bin.

Ford itself has leaned into the idea. The Eluminator crate motor program launched in 2021 specifically to make EV conversions accessible to home builders and small shops, with Ford showing off its own converted 1978 F-100 pickup as a proof of concept. Since then, a small cluster of companies — E-Muscle Cars, Revolt Systems, Zero Labs, and Charge among them — have built entire businesses around converting classic Camaros, Broncos, Cobras, and Mustangs into electric drivers.

What is different about this moment is that the parts have gotten good enough, and cheap enough at the low end, that the conversation has shifted from whether you can do this to whether you should. That is the debate playing out in real time in the comments under this build.

Is an Electric Crate Motor Swap Actually Worth It?

For a daily-driven classic, the case for going electric is real: no more carburetor tuning, no timing chains, no oil changes, no risk of a cracked block from decades-old iron. E-Muscle Cars markets exactly that trade-off — modern reliability and instant torque wrapped in a body that still turns heads at a cruise night. For a numbers-matching original or a car being restored for concours judging, though, it is a much harder sell; pulling a factory-correct drivetrain out of a genuinely rare Mustang is the kind of decision that is difficult to undo and can hurt collector value.

Range and charging are also worth weighing before committing. EV crate motor builds are generally engineered for spirited weekend driving and show duty rather than long-distance touring, and because every conversion is a custom one-off, charging setup and range vary from build to build depending on the battery pack and components chosen. It is a different ownership experience than a traditional restomod, and it is worth discussing directly with whichever shop does the work.

The honest answer, based on where pricing sits today, is that an EV crate motor swap makes the most sense for a car that was never numbers-matching to begin with — a driver-quality classic you plan to actually use, where the goal is enjoying the shape and feel of the era without wrestling old mechanical systems every weekend. For that buyer, the technology has crossed from novelty into a legitimate option. For the purist chasing an original, unmolested Mustang, the V8 is not going anywhere.

Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.