You’ll Either Love Or Hate This EV-Swapped Honda Beat

The Honda Beat is an undeniable cult classic. One of a trio of sports cars built to Japan’s kei car rules in the 1990s along with the Suzuki Cappuccino and Autozam AZ-1, it’s arguably the purest driving machine of the three: mid-engined, naturally aspirated, and with teeny tiny little individual throttle bodies for each of its 656cc engine’s three cylinders. Also zebra-print seats. Not that they've got anything to do with how it drives, but they’re cool.

Anyway, despite having plenty of traits of a more serious performance machine, the Beat wasn’t exactly fast. Fun? Absolutely. But with kei car rules restricting engine output to 63bhp, the only thing you’d actually Beat in a straight line would be someone at a steady jog.

Obviously, there are plenty of ways of getting more power from these dinky engines, from good old-fashioned porting and polishing to swapping in Honda K-Series motors and even superbike engines.

US YouTuber Rich Rebuilds, though, went down a different route. He got hold of an imported Beat with a dead engine, and set about replacing it with something likely to rile up a few purists: electric motors.

More specifically, they’re from something called an Arcimoto, a strange tilting electric trike thing powered by two electric motors. They produce a total of 77bhp, and will propel the Arcimoto to a claimed 75mph which sounds terrifying, quite frankly.

They also drop quite neatly into the Beat, and give it a significant power boost. Granted, 77bhp still isn’t exactly going to pin you into your seat, but when we’re talking about such small power outputs to begin with, every little helps – especially with the instantaneous delivery of electric motors. It’s an impressively complete swap, even incorporating a switch to activate regenerative braking.

With the swap complete, Rich gets together with a friend, who happens to own a standard, functional Beat, for an – ahem – Beat Off. The whole thing’s well worth a watch, even if only to either reinforce your opinions about EV swaps, or have your mind opened to them.