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One side of this that doesn't seem to get looked at much is how many ICE cars are on the roads that could be converted. Doing conversions at high volume would
by elihu 6y ago
One side of this that doesn't seem to get looked at much is how many ICE cars are on the roads that could be converted. Doing conversions at high volume would be very labor intensive, but it would give dealerships and mechanics something to do, and it would generate less waste than replacing whole cars.
Right now it's kind of on the edge of being practical, mostly because of the batteries. They're expensive and bulky and they need to be fitted to cars that weren't designed for them. 200+ mile ranges aren't really realistic either, because you'd be adding too much mass that the car wasn't designed for. Conversion kits now seem to be a custom thing made in low volume for a handful of vehicles and usually cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000 or so.
On the other hand, if a major manufacturer can buy batteries and motors and controllers at wholesale cost and engineer a conversion kit for their own cars, amortizing the engineering cost across thousands or hundreds of thousands of cars, then maybe you can get the cost down to something reasonable and have something where all the parts just bolt in perfectly and all the car systems work the way they're supposed to. Maybe it can be a simple as walking into a dealership and saying "I want my car to be converted to electric" and they say, "sure, just drop it off for a week and here's what it costs, etc..."
The other day I decided to change the oil in my Honda Element myself and crawled under the car. The gas tank is basically a big metal box stuck to the bottom, with a bar in front to keep it from getting scraped off by a rock. It looks a little ridiculous, like Honda designed a car and at the last moment realized "oh, we forgot about the gas tank; let's just stick it to the bottom." If gas cars are made this way, then maybe finding a spot for the batteries in a car that wasn't originally designed for them maybe isn't any worse.
- scruple 6y agoWho is in this space for consumer vehicles? I'm only aware of Hyliion for semi trucks.
- elihu 6y agoThere's EV West: https://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=40 https://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=40 These don't include batteries or battery boxes. The former are expensive and the latter are generally a huge hassle to make. CanEV makes motor-transmission adapter plates and couplers for a surprisingly wide range of cars. https://canev.com/motor-adapters/ https://canev.com/motor-adapters/ There's Zero-EV in the U.K. I only know about them because of a Youtube video series where they convert a Miata. Looks like they're selling a Porsche kit at the moment. https://zero-ev.co.uk/electric-vehicle-conversion-kits/ https://zero-ev.co.uk/electric-vehicle-conversion-kits/ There's probably some others I don't know about or have forgotten. I don't think anyone is doing this on a large scale.
- indeedmug 6y agoEven the cost of conversion kits goes down, you are ignoring the most expensive part and that's labor. You can't install these things easily. You have to take the engine out with all is associated parts and then put all the EV parts with all the wiring associated. Someone had to do this. If you want conversations for everyone and I doubt that it's going to be either cheap or scalable.
- elihu 6y agoSure, the labor would be a big part of the cost. You have to remove the engine, the gas tank, and exhaust system, and probably the transmission and swap in a motor, route battery cables, install some electronics, probably replace the engine ECU, and so on. Probably a several day project for someone who knows exactly what they're doing and has all the right tools and has done it many times before. I think that's okay. It employs mechanics, who are going to have less to do as low maintenance EVs replace high maintenance gas cars. It's scalable in the sense that someone just has to make a kit available and if someone wants it in their car they can hire their preferred mechanic to install it. Considering that we currently have a $7500 federal tax credit for new EVs and some states add a couple thousand more, if that were extended to conversions as well as new vehicles it could cover most of the cost. If batteries get significantly cheaper such a subsidy could cover the whole cost.