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In the early 2000s there was an Italian company in Emilia Romagna doing these combustion → electric makeovers on an industrial scale. Their average customers wh
by gioele 7y ago
In the early 2000s there was an Italian company in Emilia Romagna doing these combustion → electric makeovers on an industrial scale. Their average customers where municipalities and large businesses (airports, for example) converting their existing fleet of ICE cars into electric vehicles.
They lost most of their businesses around 2012 when Italy passed a bill making all these converted cars not roadworthy without an explicit permit from the original manufacturer, permits that very rarely where granted. (That law got partially overturned in 2017, but the FUD and the chilling effect remain today.)
Source: a friend of mine being laid off by that firm in 2012 + http://mondoelettrico.blogspot.com/search?q=retrofit http://mondoelettrico.blogspot.com/search?q=retrofit
- nudpiedo 7y agoI don't often believe conspiracies, but I cannot understand these sort of things... what was the justification for such law? security? Industry protectionism?
- seniorivn 7y agoIt seams you forgot to list stupidity and as one of the reasons
- FrojoS 7y agoYou don’t have to believe in conspiracies. It‘s likely just lobbying and corruption.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoIsn't the conjoining of lobbying and corruption generally known as 'a conspiracy'?
- hanniabu 7y agoIt's known as US capitalism
- homonculus1 7y agoPithy, but we're talking about Italy.
- magduf 7y agoItaly is infamous for its corruption.
- emiliobumachar 7y agoSafety is a legitimate reason, unless they were doing the full-blown car certification, including crash-testing. I'm definitely in favor of giving green technology a pass to some extent, but it would be hard to figure out exactly to which extent. Unregulated cars were deathtraps.
- Retric 7y agoSafety and ‘explicit permit from the original manufacturer’ are unrelated. If they had required say crash test data that could have been a safety issue, but permissions from the manufacture is simple corruption.
- emiliobumachar 7y agoAgreed, if that's the whole story. I was thinking that permission from the manufacturer would be an alternative to doing tests which were infeasible at their scale.
- touristtam 7y ago> permissions from the manufacture is simple corruption Depending on interpretation that would open for liability of a modified vehicle by a third party for the manufacturer.
- cat199 7y agoor, depending on interpretation, it wouldn't.
- navigatesol 7y ago>Safety and ‘explicit permit from the original manufacturer’ are unrelated. Maybe. But your source is an anonymous poster on the forum. I'm not saying they made it up, but that there's likely more to the story. It isn't exactly far fetched to think there is strict regulation about how you can modify your car for the roads. The "explicit permit" might be to signify that everything is done to the highest standards.
- taneq 7y agoPublic safety, of course. Think of the children! That sort of thing always works for regulatory capture.
- asdfman123 7y agoDon't think of it as a conspiracy theory. Think of it as the golden rule: people with gold make the rules.
- BioMeditate 7y agoIf I make this car, I don't want you extending is useful lifetime. I want you to buy a new one to replace it instead. AKA. Why you can't repair most cell phones now.
- nudpiedo 7y agoEvery time a car is repaired and a piece replaced its lifetime is also extended. Maybe they have feared that it would also have an impact on yearly GDP since car sales are very often used as a metric.
- siruncledrew 7y agoFrom the outside, it’s a hypocritical show when there is an established market of dominant companies, and then a new company enters the scene capturing a new secondary market related to the established market; then suddenly those established companies are up in arms screaming, “Regulations! Regulations!”, ready to support the government to throw the book at the new companies for <reasons>, as long as no regulations impact the established companies and they can continue to selectively skirt around which regulations they don’t like. And once they establish business units to compete against the new company in the secondary market, suddenly the established companies aren’t so pressed about needing to enforce regulations anymore.
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoAn Italian friend of mine told me that Fiat group and Eni, the oil and gas company, lobbied hard against this and any other electrification efforts in the country. Could this be the reason? As a Fiat owner, I feel disgusted, but while they do make decent ICE cars, they have been worringly absent from the electric-car stage.
- touristtam 7y ago> Could this be the reason? Probably is seeing how VW/BMW/Mercedes, PSA/Renault and Fiat are important to their respective host countries (Germany, France and Italy). Those companies are always lobbying hard regulators at national and since the 90's at European level to gain advantages and protect their market. There is a very telling anecdote from the 80s/90s in Europe, where supermarket grew in size and were ready to take on all retail business including car resale. This was made an exception so European car manufacturer could keep their high profit margin (relatively) allowed by their approved resale points.
- jpm_sd 7y agoThe Fiat 500e has been in production since 2013 (by Chrysler, in Mexico), but due to weird regulatory incentives, is only for sale in California and Oregon.
- BurningFrog 7y agoI think they lose money on every car, but are required to sell a certain percentage of them to remain on those markets.
- mikeash 7y agoOften called a “compliance car.” Any electric car produced in low numbers and only sold in certain states is probably being sold at a loss to meet some efficiency, emissions, or electrification target in the law.
- rconti 7y agoI'm aware of at least 100 people that took advantage of a screaming good lease deal on them a few years back, that was ~$80/month with 0 down for 3 years. They were desperate to move them. The deal was absolutely insane, though. Given the cost savings on fuel, it was virtually a free car, and that's before you even factor in other kinds of savings.