This New kit converts original Mazda MX-5 to electric power | Autocar just popped up.
They do not say how much it will be, but around £20000 would be the going rate. You can also get an NC and stick in a Honda engine for around £12000!
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I looked into a bespoke EV conversion a few years ago. It would have cost the same as buying a new electric Mini, so I kept my NA petrol powered and bought a mini.
I’m an EV convert and I’d love an NA with a Tesla drive unit where the rear diff usually sits. I’m not sure 160bhp is quite enough, despite all the torque. Give it another 10 years and there’ll be loads of stupidly over powered options.
No……just no. 
They picked the wrong model, as usual, to convert. NAs, and to an extent, NBs, are now rising in price. Spares support to keep them on the road is good for the foreseable future (dwindling fleet, and there are enough used parts, aftermarket parts to keep them going). Petrol will be available for the foreseable future.
NCs have yet to hit rock bottom, but what seems to end these cars is not rust (they don’t rust as much) but mechanics (that MZR engine, even harder to replace if you have the 1.8 variant, and don’t want the car put into a higher insurance rating). These companies should be looking instead to convert NCs and even NDs. NDs are getting on for 10 years old now.
But what happens is these companies develop on a shoestrong. They buy a cheap NB because itsn cheap, not because they have done their research to discover there is a huge market. And then spend years developing and finessing the kit into something that is sellable, contending with rapidly changing technologies, loss of suppliers and their own living hand to mouth.
The cheapest NDs are about £6000-7000. These are the sort of cars turned into 5 year development engineering hacks. What will be the value of a crusty 2015 MX5 in 2030? I suspect about £2000 in 2024 money. Perfect time to launch a well developed ND conversion. Which won’t happen, because these companies have spent their budget converting a NA which by 2030 will be a £15-20,000 car in 2024 money. And no one will be converting those; they will be easy to keep on the road (unlike the NCs, which never had as much of an aftermarket, and much less used parts availability, thanks to changing car recycling rules).
Nor are they so valuable to appear to some wanting a virtue-signalling classic, which I assume the electric E-type was aimed at. The owner of my company is worth a few bob, having purchased one of Michael Jackson’s houses to not live in, a rugby league team and a FA Cup winning team, and two boat yards, so he can save himself a few bob on his next yacht. During a work trip to India, while chatting, swigging £500 glasses of single malt (I caned about £2500 worth, he was paying), the subject of cars came up. He revealed he had a an EV converted 50s Bentley. “Terrific car, but the company that did it went bust”. I asked him what it drove like. He had no idea, it sat in the warehouse he called a garage. But he was convinced it was the future, converting classic cars. I told him he was wrong on this occasion, because the only argument to convert an old car is UEZ. I still have my job.
I think it was a Fabulous Freak Brother strip, set in the future where Free Wheelin’ Franklin had to fetch his forgotten 50s Chevy from parking. Thanks to inflation, the gargantuan parking fee was chump change. And he didn’t need petrol in the future. A pill dropped down the cars gave him 1000 hp to beat the grid locked traffic.
Run a MX5 on cheap Vodka;
These companies claim to be innovative, ahead of the curve, but in truth, they are always behind the curve. Bit like some MX5-based kitcars that had bold claims.
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Who’s going to spend £20k converting a £2k car to EV? People who buy these conversions have a lot of choice over what sort of car they’d like. They want an MX5 NA that’s been electrified. It’s still on my list, Despite loving my ND I wouldn’t pay £20k to convert it. In 10 years time there will be an electric equivalent of the ND, and even if NAs are by then worth £30k, there will be a market to convert them.