There was some discussion on a post about gas to electric cars lemmy.world/post/5901284
Comment on New cars are great...
cyborganism@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
I really REALLY hope someone at some point starts a gasoline to electric car conversion company at some point.
I love my car because it has just the right amount of technology: Bluetooth connectivity for calls and music. That’s it. That’s all I need.
Acernum@lemmy.world 9 months ago
RagingNerdoholic@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
There are likely a lot of complexities here.
Battery tech will need to improve greatly and be minimalized. EV batteries are currently massive, heavy, and generally engineered as long, wide, flat modules to be installed beneath the floor so they keep the center of gravity low and the vehicle balanced. That’s not really possible in an ICE vehicle with all the frame molding around existing exhaust and drivetrain components, and you most likely can’t just have some sort of modular battery and motor unit that you just drop into the engine bay, as that would put a ton (literally) of additional weight and mess with the balance.
The draintrain components may need to be replaced or the motor outputs modulated to prevent the torque from ripping it apart.
Power steering and brakes will need to converted to electric assist. AC and heat would need to converted to electric.
Older cars (early 00’s and older) with cable throttles will need to be retrofitted with drive-by-wire, or use some sort of adapter module that connects the cable and converts it to digital inputs. Same with brakes.
All of the electronics (lights, wipers, windows, locks, radio, etc.) will need to be rewired since there’s no longer an alternator.
Probably will need upgraded suspension and brakes to handle the extra weight.
There’s probably a lot more I’m not thinking about or not even aware of. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to happen outside of rich enthusiast circles.
cyborganism@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Aaawwww Man. I hate to admit it but you’re absolutely right. It’s so much work it might not even be worth it.
kamenlady@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Spaßbremse!
/s
RagingNerdoholic@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Reality is often disappointing
kamenlady@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It is, depending on the expectation
BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee 9 months ago
the only tech i need in my car is an aux port. i will forever buy used cars from before 2010 but after around 2004ish?
atrielienz@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Depends on what kind of car you have. I know for a fact there is a company doing this with classic mini coopers.
Mothra@mander.xyz 9 months ago
I don’t even use BT in mine and don’t use the music system either. I stick to my phone. I just hope by the time I need to switch cars, I’ll be able to jailbreak it without bricking.
CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 9 months ago
I dont know the details, but Ive heard of companies that do this, or kits that can be used for it, existing, though I can only imagine that changing a car that one’s business has not manufactured and was never designed for such a conversion must take a lot of manual work, which would be expensive before even considering things like the cost of batteries.
IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
Power train conversion is reasonably simple. Just throw combustion engine and transmission box away, make brackets for electric motors and attach them directly to the wheels (with axles if necessary). Conversion of controls is (I assume) is also somewhat simple since existing brake system and power steering is quite straightforward to run with electric motors since you just need something which can run a belt drive and gas pedal is most likely already electric. For all the electronics you have plenty of space in where the engine used to be.
But. And there’s a pretty big but. Batteries are pretty big and pretty heavy. On any given combustion engine car there’s just no room for them (at least if you’re after a conversion with similar range/power than a readily built electric car). And even if you cut the floor panel off and modify it to accomodate battery pack (or whatever the route you choose might be) it’ll heavily affect weight distribution, frame stability and many other things, suspension included. Model S battery is apparently 540kg, so if you’ll do a conversion to your corolla you might save around 150kg of weight by removing old engine+transmission but you’d still have additional 300kg of mass to deal with.
For a van which is designed to haul heavy loads from the start it might be pretty simple to just raise floor of the cargo space a bit but for a common sedan that’s a whole another thing.
GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 9 months ago
I looked into this for my car. The conversion has a 50 mile range, essentially replaces the engine with an electric motor, locks the car in 3rd gear, and replaces the fuel tank with batteries.
It cost about £3500, which was a bit much for me considering the car only cost £3k, and I could just sell my car to buy a 100mile+ leaf for the same outlay.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 9 months ago
BEVs built from the ground up are much better at being BEVs.
IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
In our local craigslist for cars website someone has been selling a -84(or so) Nissan Sunny for ages with electric conversion. The seller did just that, took combustion engine out, attached a electric motor into transmission and the result is that you have 80’s car, with manual transmission and batteries so small that once you’re out of the driveway you’ve depleted 10% of the batteries (give or take, but that’s pretty much what you’ll get). And it had something like 15kW minus losses of the drive train.
But the parts are so expensive (at least for now) that listed price is almost 10k€. I can understand that seller wants their money back and it isn’t the most serious conversion out there, but the reality is that you’ll get a shitty 80’s car with a even shittier EV conversion (since the frame has it’s limits and high quality components are expensive) while you can sell a similar car with a combustion engine for 350€ on a good day and a tank full.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 9 months ago
Swapping an engine is relatively easy if you know what you’re doing… If these kits can connect the electric motor to the existing drive train it wouldn’t be too bad. Messing around with batteries big enough for an electric vehicle can be really dangerous though.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Yup. Unfortunately, since most people seem to prefer the dystopian futuretech, all auto manufacturers are going to employ it. Just like with cell phones. The last phone I know of with 16:9 aspect ratio and no blighted hole punch or notch was in 2018. There’s a market full of us luddites who prefer the old ways, but we’re invisible to manufacturers because it’s more profitable to make something that more people want to buy, and we’re forced to buy that garbage as well anyway.
krey@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Don’t worry. You know those car nuts who put 20 spoilers on their cars and mod the engine etc… There will be a point where most of them do it with the futuretech cars and it will be in their way, which means they will circumvent it and ordinary people will be able to hire them to do it to their cars too. It was the same wis “chip tuning”.
cyborganism@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
I hope so
cakemasterjedi@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s already started rich rebuild v8 swap a module s and is currently diseal swapping a module 3
cyborganism@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
You forgot about the programmed obsolescence.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Yeah, it goes further than just designing the hardware to only last a few years, all of these electronics ensure that the car is fucked as soon as the necessary online services go down. Meanwhile a well-maintained '93 Geo Metro, driven in the south where they don’t salt the roads every year, can last decades.
cyborganism@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
I’ve had my 2010 Mazda 3 for 13 years now and I’m taking every precaution to keep it as long as I can.
gullible@kbin.social 9 months ago
There are some positives and negatives to the desire for old form factors. Secondhand phones from 2018 cost much less than new ones but lack some of the new features like… I can’t think of any.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
New features, like the absolute gutting of Tasker’s capabilities