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Safety is a legitimate reason, unless they were doing the full-blown car certification, including crash-testing. I'm definitely in favor of giving green technol

Safety 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 ago
Safety 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 ago
  Agreed, 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 ago
    or, 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.
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    I don't need to get permission from Jeep to modify my car, I just need to get it inspected and approved. This is clearly a power move to protect their industry.
    - navigatesol 7y ago
      >I just need to get it inspected and approved By whom? >This is clearly a power move to protect their industry. You're arguing against a conspiracy for which not a shred of evidence has been provided. Obviously a power move? Do you, in fact, know that paperwork from the manufacturer is required for any modifications, and what the source and/or requirements of it are? Or have you dreamed up some conspiracy where permission from the manufacturer is required to modify your car because you read a random comment on HackerNews (despite the fact that there's a massive aftermarket modding community in the real world)? I also find it quaint that some posters here think we need to regulate mortgage loans because people aren't capable of calculating interest and what they owe, but the same people should be able to replace the fuel tank in their vehicle with 1000lbs of combustibles, in their garage, and then take it out onto the road. With no oversight.
    - rdtwo 7y ago
      You aren’t doing mass volume conversions adding fuel tanks in areas where they were not intended which is basically what happened when you add lithium batteries
      - hutzlibu 7y ago
        Yes, but it is still the state safety regulators responsibility to allow or disallow a car on the road and not the company.
        Haga 7y ago
        On the roads, yes, in the sky, no
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
It's gonna be very hard unintentionally build a deathtrap if you're starting with a modern car and not going out of your way to do dumb things that make it likely to go up in flames. Furthermore, in the case of an EV conversion you can basically just make sure the EV power-train does not occupy physical space that the ICE power-train did not and your crumple zones and airbags will work fine. Edit: Making batteries that don't catch on fire is a solved problem. Getting those electrons to the motor without starting a fire is a solved problem. You really only get fires when you're trying to push the performance envelope which is generally a low priority for commercial conversions. Cars are not hyper-complicated non-deterministic black boxes. It is possible to modify them without causing unforeseen consequences. Just because you may personally lack the expertise to understand how the systems interact does not mean that nobody can understand it. A qualified engineer with an automotive background should have no problem creating an EV conversion that is every bit as safe as the base vehicle though it will probably be slightly less efficient in terms of materials and labor usage than a conversion for the same vehicle designed by an OEM team for manufacture at scale. The OEMs don't have people that are magically smarter, or different laws of physics if anything they will have a harder time engineering an equivalently performing system because they have many more constraints to optimize for than a conversion company.
- JulianMorrison 7y ago
  If it was me, I'd be worrying about fire, from batteries and wiring.
  - rdtwo 7y ago
    Exactly it can easily turn into a ford pinto due to insufficient fire protection
- lallysingh 7y ago
  I don't know. Some parts could be heavier or lighter and thusly change behavior during a crash (apply more stress to a member) that changes properties.
- signaturefish 7y ago
VBprogrammer 7y ago
This is an interesting point. I'm totally on-board with people being able to do this in their own garage. I'm fine with a person doing that contracting an engineering firm to build components of their conversion. I think even if a company provided the bits in kit form I could live with that. It starts getting a bit iffy to me when you can turn up with a donor and drive away in an electric vehicle and certainly if you can turn up and ask for an electric [insert car] and they source all of the parts and do the conversion. A lot of this has parallels in the world of aviation. For example there are provisions for owner supplied parts on certified airframes. Experimental / homebuilt aircraft have to meet a standard of the amount of work completed by the original builder (usually 50%).
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  If an airplane has multiple, cascading failures, it can fall out of the sky. If an EV fails, it can pull over. Personally, I do think that this poses some risk- I might be hesitant to put my kids on a converted EV school bus, for instance- I think it's probably a better idea for a specialized contractor to outfit a fleet than it is for the fleet's mechanic to do so, especially if it's something that they've never done before.
  - neglectful 7y ago
    When it comes to the simple newtonian premise of a vehicular object in motion, you are very nearly 100% correct. But there are multiple factors to consider. Namely: electrical, chemical, and mechanical factors. The mechanical aspects do seem trivial at first sniff, but brakes are a really important component of the vehicle’s operation. With a total overhaul of the power train, many serious moving parts just go away, and you want to make sure essentials receive good attention. If there’s computer controlled braking related to anti-lock and cruise control systems, is a drastic power train modification going to affect the behavior of those systems? Do they go away too? Does the computer get replaced? Are there new inductive braking appliances installed? What’s providing power to the wheels? Is it the usual shaft or something else? Does the brake pedal apply the usual hydraulic brake lines, or are those gone, and a push button magnetic braking system replaces them? Chemical: those batteries are pretty serious slabs of chemical energy. Mostly, it’s an improvement when you think about gasoline, fires and explosions. Then again, batteries do burn vigorously and explode in their own ways, and these batteries are usually very big. Maybe ten times the size of the usual 12 volt car battery that cranks a conventional starter motor. When punctured or crushed in a collision, how bad is the result? What about junk yards? Can they dispose of these power sources? Electrical: how trivial is it for an individual to short out a live circuit on a modified vehicle. Are there breakers built in to trip and prevent electrocution and shocks? What about irregularities introduced by collisions? Is it possible that the breakers might become crushed in such a way that they fail to disconnect power? Would first responder risk grounding an energized power source when prying in to extract accident victims, and get fried during rescue operations? Could a collision discharge electricity at the moment of impact, killing passengers by electric shock? Granted, some of these problems are hypothetical concerns that electric trains have been exposed to for years, but homebrew mods mean you’ve got less disciplined randos trying their hand at hobbyist duct tape exercises. You can’t just trust everyone to do a great job.

Retric 7y ago

Safety 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 ago
Agreed, 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 ago
  or, 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.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  I don't need to get permission from Jeep to modify my car, I just need to get it inspected and approved. This is clearly a power move to protect their industry.
  - navigatesol 7y ago
    >I just need to get it inspected and approved By whom? >This is clearly a power move to protect their industry. You're arguing against a conspiracy for which not a shred of evidence has been provided. Obviously a power move? Do you, in fact, know that paperwork from the manufacturer is required for any modifications, and what the source and/or requirements of it are? Or have you dreamed up some conspiracy where permission from the manufacturer is required to modify your car because you read a random comment on HackerNews (despite the fact that there's a massive aftermarket modding community in the real world)? I also find it quaint that some posters here think we need to regulate mortgage loans because people aren't capable of calculating interest and what they owe, but the same people should be able to replace the fuel tank in their vehicle with 1000lbs of combustibles, in their garage, and then take it out onto the road. With no oversight.
  - rdtwo 7y ago
    You aren’t doing mass volume conversions adding fuel tanks in areas where they were not intended which is basically what happened when you add lithium batteries
    - hutzlibu 7y ago
      Yes, but it is still the state safety regulators responsibility to allow or disallow a car on the road and not the company.
      - Haga 7y ago
        On the roads, yes, in the sky, no

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

It's gonna be very hard unintentionally build a deathtrap if you're starting with a modern car and not going out of your way to do dumb things that make it likely to go up in flames. Furthermore, in the case of an EV conversion you can basically just make sure the EV power-train does not occupy physical space that the ICE power-train did not and your crumple zones and airbags will work fine. Edit: Making batteries that don't catch on fire is a solved problem. Getting those electrons to the motor without starting a fire is a solved problem. You really only get fires when you're trying to push the performance envelope which is generally a low priority for commercial conversions. Cars are not hyper-complicated non-deterministic black boxes. It is possible to modify them without causing unforeseen consequences. Just because you may personally lack the expertise to understand how the systems interact does not mean that nobody can understand it. A qualified engineer with an automotive background should have no problem creating an EV conversion that is every bit as safe as the base vehicle though it will probably be slightly less efficient in terms of materials and labor usage than a conversion for the same vehicle designed by an OEM team for manufacture at scale. The OEMs don't have people that are magically smarter, or different laws of physics if anything they will have a harder time engineering an equivalently performing system because they have many more constraints to optimize for than a conversion company.

JulianMorrison 7y ago
If it was me, I'd be worrying about fire, from batteries and wiring.
- rdtwo 7y ago
  Exactly it can easily turn into a ford pinto due to insufficient fire protection
lallysingh 7y ago
I don't know. Some parts could be heavier or lighter and thusly change behavior during a crash (apply more stress to a member) that changes properties.
signaturefish 7y ago

VBprogrammer 7y ago

This is an interesting point. I'm totally on-board with people being able to do this in their own garage. I'm fine with a person doing that contracting an engineering firm to build components of their conversion. I think even if a company provided the bits in kit form I could live with that. It starts getting a bit iffy to me when you can turn up with a donor and drive away in an electric vehicle and certainly if you can turn up and ask for an electric [insert car] and they source all of the parts and do the conversion. A lot of this has parallels in the world of aviation. For example there are provisions for owner supplied parts on certified airframes. Experimental / homebuilt aircraft have to meet a standard of the amount of work completed by the original builder (usually 50%).

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
If an airplane has multiple, cascading failures, it can fall out of the sky. If an EV fails, it can pull over. Personally, I do think that this poses some risk- I might be hesitant to put my kids on a converted EV school bus, for instance- I think it's probably a better idea for a specialized contractor to outfit a fleet than it is for the fleet's mechanic to do so, especially if it's something that they've never done before.
- neglectful 7y ago
  When it comes to the simple newtonian premise of a vehicular object in motion, you are very nearly 100% correct. But there are multiple factors to consider. Namely: electrical, chemical, and mechanical factors. The mechanical aspects do seem trivial at first sniff, but brakes are a really important component of the vehicle’s operation. With a total overhaul of the power train, many serious moving parts just go away, and you want to make sure essentials receive good attention. If there’s computer controlled braking related to anti-lock and cruise control systems, is a drastic power train modification going to affect the behavior of those systems? Do they go away too? Does the computer get replaced? Are there new inductive braking appliances installed? What’s providing power to the wheels? Is it the usual shaft or something else? Does the brake pedal apply the usual hydraulic brake lines, or are those gone, and a push button magnetic braking system replaces them? Chemical: those batteries are pretty serious slabs of chemical energy. Mostly, it’s an improvement when you think about gasoline, fires and explosions. Then again, batteries do burn vigorously and explode in their own ways, and these batteries are usually very big. Maybe ten times the size of the usual 12 volt car battery that cranks a conventional starter motor. When punctured or crushed in a collision, how bad is the result? What about junk yards? Can they dispose of these power sources? Electrical: how trivial is it for an individual to short out a live circuit on a modified vehicle. Are there breakers built in to trip and prevent electrocution and shocks? What about irregularities introduced by collisions? Is it possible that the breakers might become crushed in such a way that they fail to disconnect power? Would first responder risk grounding an energized power source when prying in to extract accident victims, and get fried during rescue operations? Could a collision discharge electricity at the moment of impact, killing passengers by electric shock? Granted, some of these problems are hypothetical concerns that electric trains have been exposed to for years, but homebrew mods mean you’ve got less disciplined randos trying their hand at hobbyist duct tape exercises. You can’t just trust everyone to do a great job.