I have actually converted an old diesel land rover to electric. NDA so I can’t disclose the company, but we replaced the transmission with an electric motor that had an adapter plate to the original transfer case. The engine was replaced with a large battery pack and some electric pumps, handfull of heat exchangers. As you said, converting is never as good. A big heavy pack where the motor was makes it more front heavy than with the diesel 4 cylinder, range was about 120 miles which is pretty piss poor compared to what it could do with the diesel powertrain. It was very cool in theory, but not a practical vehicle. Another company has done a different ev conversion on some of the LR’s and they used a Tesla drivetrain if I’m not mistaken, and had to split up the battery pack and spread it across 3 different locations in the vehicle. Purpose built evs are definatley the way for packaging, although repowering classics that only get tooled around here and there to get ice cream or go golfing on the weekend is a neat concept. The weight distribution of the components is just so different from an ice that it necessitates a ground up design. Electric motors are far lighter than ice engines, but they need FAR more weight in battery packs than a tank of fuel for comparable range so u cant exactly just replace the fuel tank with a battery pack and expect it to go far.