General Motors unveiled a 700-horsepower drag race-ready Chevrolet Camaro at an event in Las Vegas Monday night. But this one has an electric motor bolted in to the same spot formerly occupied by a gasoline engine.
The eCOPO Camaro concept’s electric motor is installed under the hood of the car and is attached directly to the transmission housing, just as the gasoline engine was. The car’s automatic transmission and other components are unchanged.
GM is looking at selling electric motors that consumers can use to replace the gasoline engines as a potential new line of business. The company already has a substantial business selling so-called “crate engines,” engines not connected to cars and shipped in crates. These are often used by performance enthusiasts to replace lower-horsepower factory-installed engines. Ready-to-install electric motors could be sold the same way, presumably with battery packs, cables, electronic controls and other components needed to convert a car to electric drive.
The eCOPO Camaro’s name refers to the famous high-performance COPO Camaros produced in 1969. COPO stood for Central Office