> California State Senator, Anthony Portantino, has introduced a bill which offers incentives of up to $2,000 if vehicle owners convert their ICE-powered cars to EVs.
So, one legislator has proposed this. It is not law. It very well may pass, but if you do what the headline says today, California will not give you $2000.
Millions of cars exist in the roads and they have 90% of what an electric car needs. There is absolutely no point of sending them to the garbage pile and remanufacture then add electrics, all for the good of the environment.
This bill appears to be backed by Specialty Equipment Market Association, an industry group that represents the automotive aftermarket, so I guess they're attempting to do what you suggest - support more companies that aim to do such conversions.
https://sd25.senate.ca.gov/news/2023-02-02/senator-portantin...
Even saran wrapping your car in PPF costs $2000 nowadays, you expect an engine conversion?
Yeah, one of the biggest issues in switchover to EVs isn't taking over the new car sales, it's that there will be two decades of ICEs going through the various used car price tiers.
If you jack the gas price with a carbon tax, it becomes very regressive on the people that can only afford a $1000 crappy gas guzzler from circa 2010 or earlier from the halcyon days of the US's obsession with SUVs (now they at least are obsessed with crossovers, an improvement).
I'm hoping a drop-in cheapo conversion for $5000 becomes feasible in a few years and the Chinese start producing very cheap EVs that most people will prefer over a gas guzzling used car. I don't think the incumbent automakers in the US are interested in making a new car that can compete with the used car inventory.
Maybe scooters, ebikes, and other offbeat kinds of transportation can fill the market.
Everything about bills, even other branches of government like court cases are written so ambiguously, you never know from the headline or article about where the bill is in the process, what court is involved to gauge effect, but compared to something high tech there has been hundreds of years to get better at that
No-one is doing a bottom of the barrel EV conversion on a run down 2008 toyota corolla. I just don't see who this is targeted towards in any practical sense.
14k does not sound right for my vehicle. The battery pack for the Ford Lightning is $35+k and I would need a bigger one. It would surely be a lot more for my truck and that isn't counting the controllers, motors, coolant lines and heating system for the battery pack, new wiring and input controls and of course all the labor to do this. If I am going this far I may as well replace the frame to start rust-free and maybe even put extra corrosion mitigation on it. There is a lot of salt on my roads.
I think this would be a fun project for a vehicle hobbyist but I can't even fathom doing this for $14k and a $2k rebate is not much of an incentive in my opinion. If I had my own shop I could see starting a project like this but it would surely cost at least 8x what they are suggesting and that does not even factor in warranties.
[Edit] I forgot the most important issue. Supply chains. The way things are going globally all of these parts would have to be made and supported in the US, Mexico or Canada to have a reliable future for US residents. I think I personally would wait until the US or Mexico are mass producing 3D printed solid state batteries which should be relatively soon.
Full on move to EV has always seemed like the big moonshot, and is being pushed back on heavily, but we have other levers to pull to help slow emissions while a more gradual shift to EV happens.
I say this as someone who bought a car a few years back that supports flex fuel, and have been more keen to use it when I can over the last couple years. MPG goes down around... 10-15%, but the cost is usually.... 10-15% less, so that seems to balance out some, but flex fuels reduce emissions (no?) which would seem to be the more pressing concern.
I live in California, have a Subaru BRZ, and for a while I had a Flex Fuel "kit" installed onto my fuel line/ECU, along with a specialized tune.
At least for that platform the cost depends on how you want to run E85. For me it was roughly $2000 or a bit more for: the tune itself (on a dyno, there are some canned tunes that are cheaper but not necessarily as reliable), the flex fuel kit, and the license for the tuning platform.
In the end, the mileage was worse. I think on pump 91 I can average 26mpg with a good mix of highway/city driving, less if purely city.
With E85 I was lucky to get 16-18mpg. And I've heard it's worse for cars with more power (BRZ's are relatively underpowered, about 185hp at the wheels).
Price-wise, E85 was cheaper, sometimes a difference of $1 to $1.50 less than pump 91 (required octane for my car).
I guess it depends on what the goal is, because for some cars it'll mean filling up a lot more often; I'd be curious if the delta in emissions between pump 87/91 and E85 is substantial enough for the additional fill-ups to be worthwhile.
The goal was/is reduced carbon emissions.
California's gas is already E10 (and they'd probably go higher if it wasn't illegal federally).
I won't be surprised if my state does what some folks in Wyoming want to do, ban EVs entirely: https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a42532545/wyomin...
Safety calculations like crumble zones and weigh distribution go out the window. The car will weight more and the other parts may not support it, breaking distance may change, etc.
No idea how they actually manage to have the modified cars approved for street use, though in the UK AFAIK there are more possibilities (for prototypes and similar) than in the rest of Europe.
But there has been recently another show, this time Italian, called "Electromod con Mario Biondi", so there must be some way even in other EU countries.
This is wildly inaccurate. There was a trend for a few people customizing popular classic cars into electric drivetrains. The reality is any desirable VW Beetle, Porsche, Jaguar etc has a huge parts aftermarket for full restoration back to 'brand new' originality. Converting a classic car to be electric typically devalues it (classic cars are an asset class).
The challenge when putting heavy batteries in an older vehicle that was designed for a heavy engine at the front or back is that it changes the suspension, steering and handling characteristics, while the extremely rapid acceleration possible with any electric vehicle means the braking system design may need to be radically altered. We see way too many 'aesthetic' conversions of classic cars that are beautiful death traps in the hot rod world, and now in the EV bodge up world too.
The main concern is probably electrical safety and fire protection for the batteries.
Does anybody know if California has plans to significantly expand power generation in the next couple of years? Otherwise we might see even more rolling blackouts soon.
I'm always pissed how much lower people in Santa Clara City pay then those in neighboring PG&E cities [0]
[0] https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees
Enter your bid to convert it and if your in the X cars you get accepted.
You could maybe do some 15 mph conversion golf cart style with lead acid batteries for local block or farm use or whatever. For other use cases, don't do it.
The correct sustainable choice is to use public transit - offering a subsidy for EVs will be a generally inaccessible benefit to the working poor and will further encourage congestion.
On a less strictly policy level, the idea of "punish everyone until they do what I want" makes me at least a bit uncomfortable. On top of the authoritarian undertones to it, there is the more basic idea that clearly a large amount of the population doesn't believe that switching to an EV is in their best interests. People can certainly be wrong, but disregarding the signal out of hand seems a bit short-sighted.
How do you know this?
https://coryton.com/lab/videos/how-can-we-decrease-carbon-em...
Hybrid is clearly the way to go until SMR's and a 1st world electric grid are successfully operating in California.
I was in a home brew electric car club back in 2012 era, people had the entire pickup bed of trucks full of batteries with a deganging lever like a giant train brake to disengage the batteries in the event of thermal runaway.
Asking people who aren't interested or experienced with cars to 'convert' for 2k is going to end up with a lot of cowboy jerry rigged opportunist fire hazard vehicles on the road. Portantino's proposal is naive and highly irresponsible IMO.
People who are serious about EV conversions use excellent companies like EVWest.com you can do the conversion math there...
A 2008 Toyota Corolla will still be running in 2030, so it isn't really the prime target for a conversion. A 2014 Audi A4 would be.
Right, but California wants them to, so they are offering a subsidy.
The EV market is still growing and we will have to re-invent a lot of the well-established secondary ICE markets. These markets include engine rebuild, transmission rebuild, and component rebuild (starters, batteries, alternators, water pumps, etc.)
California is subsidizing the creation of secondary markets for reusing EV battery packs while also potentially increasing demand and service life for used cars. A savvy EV converter might target cars with particularly weak or undesirable powertrains for conversion. 2008 Toyota Corollas are already in high demand, but what about a mid-2000s GM crossover SUV?
Damn, if only there was a way for the government to make conversions less expensive and provide an incentive to grow that industry...
Anyway, California already has a pattern of behavior to spend 2 grand to take a polluter off the road. This bill seems to be in the same vein but instead of the car getting crushed, it stays on the road as an EV.
This company has it down to 5000 Euros: https://youtu.be/98mlJ1N50DU
That 5000 figure is after EU subsidies, so who knows how such a system would shake out with CA subsidies, but even still: it's possible.
the engine in a car, even a 20 year old car, is a touchstone of the vehicle. Things like air conditioning, heat, and windshield wipers often only run on vacuum from the engine. traction control, antilock brakes and AWD all rely on engine speed sensors from either the crankpin position or transmission data and have to be considered as well. ECU states in turn send measured return data to things like ECC components (radio, etc..) and even the anti-theft system. Engine data is even a component of the SRS (airbag) system in a lot of cars.
I would bill ten or fifteen hours of labor to safely drop the transmission and change an engine. then i would bill you for fluid disposal and parts disposal and we're assuming you have a drop-in replacement kit for the ECU/OBD components youll need to power things like brake lights and turn signals because they wont work without some input on the engine status either. Id also have to have an installer certified for the high voltage stuff, typically billed higher than a normal mechanic because electric cars are still pretty exotic for aftermarket custom maintenance.
The point to the rebate, FWIW, is to increase uptake at the margins. The assumption is that there is a population of users desiring the change for some external reason, and that a significant number of those are "on the edge" because of cost. So for comparably little public expenditure you can get an amplified signal. Think of the rebate spending as the base current in a transistor.
Given that you're already in a population (truck owners) who are heavily anticorrelated with the target population (people who want an EV), you aren't likely to be well served.
If the government wanted to get everyone to drive an EV from first principles, they'd just buy you a Rivian.
So a 100 kwhr battery will be 4,000$, and that is likely overkill for almost all conversions.
I would imagine these would be "city car" 100-150 mile range conversions, so probably 40-50kwhr packs and 2,000$.
YEs that is OEM supply cost, so we'll see what happens.
I think they'll become huge in classic cars, because the EV motor is compact, and the batteries can be placed in flexible ways. Classic car owners can ditch inefficient motors that they have no parts for. It's not like classic car owners routinely drive 1000 miles, they just toot around on the weekends/
By the time they're done with it, it won't just be the rebate (carrot of "carrot and stick") they'll use to motivate you. It will also be when gas $30+ per gallon (stick of "carrot and stick") as a result of other policies they'll develop when people aren't moving fast enough to get electified. Between artificial production limits/quotas/taxes/etc the EV cost to own and drive will be a lot more competitive and most people will do what they want just to stop the pain.
I think EVs are the natural future as tech improves (and I'm glad for it because we do have to get away from combustion for energy), but the amount of pain and suffering people are willing to inflict on others in order to accelerate the timeline really shocks me sometimes.
Probably not great for long range towing but seems fine for in-town commute and work. Like a construction or landscaping company. Bonus if you can get Ford Lightning type built-in inverters.
Basic economics says that as we increase the supply of something the price goes down, so even if this doesn't get EVs to a price where everyone can afford them it gets them to a point where more people can afford them.
Gas tax is a consumption tax, which is inherently regressive. This means that it costs more for lower earners as a proportion of their income. If a low wage earner wants an EV they can't currently afford one. A gas tax punishes them for this financially and makes it less likely they will be able to save for an EV. Meanwhile higher earners that can afford EVs don't pay the gas tax because they don't buy EVs.
As with anything, there are variables to consider, and there might not be enough of a measurable difference.
It's everyone's personal goal to not get murdered, and it's society's goal to minimize murders... but, from a personal perspective, being the murderer would probably be beneficial in a number of metrics. Viewing everything through an individualistic lens is pretty weird when we live as a society.
If I'm on a roadtrip I can still stop at a supercharger and be boosted up in 10-15 mins.
Anecdata: I never ever do this. The marginal savings isn't worth the mental space it would take to plan that sort of thing. To me it's all about the availability and the immediacy, so I fill up with premium any time it's convenient and don't even look at the price.
I regularly have 10+ hour driving days and don't want to have to wait around even at superchargers. I'm open to the idea EVs, but only once they can fit into my needs instead of curbing my needs for the sake of EVs.
If they can figure out how to have a fourth "nozzle" at every gas station that charges an EV in 10 minutes, I'll use it.
I'm sure there's SOME way to get LFP on fire. But the article basically is trying to point to one or two poorly documented instances of fires. That is a very small number.
Anyway, we'll see...
That depends on how far away the job site is. In my state that could be a long drive. For jobs in or near city/urban areas it's probably fine. I have a very difficult time as it is getting any contractors to come to me. This article is specific to Cali, but Cali does things first then others follow if it works out. Even Cali has some seriously spread out towns once one leaves the big cities. Actually let me correct that, Cali is massive. I've driven all over it.
And why would solar be required to charge an EV?
It is not, I added that as Will is kindof the Master-of-all-things-solar(c) and power at home is of no concern to him, but the video I linked helps clarify what I was referring to. The video is about getting free power when not at home however he was unable to do that.
Any additional range on top of a there-and-back trip could be used to power the tools.
Agreed. With a safety margin added in of course which the lightning does have a configuration option for. That said I am leery of new tech getting the measurements right. I would set a large margin of error until I knew for certain I could get to X place and back without risking needing a tow-truck.
I suspect most small commercial vehicles service this type of area. It takes a lot of service vehicles to keep a city functioning.
I have some friends who do residential window washing and other odd jobs like leaf blowing, Christmas light installation, power washing, and gutter cleaning. Even a long day for them is less than 50 miles of driving total.
When I worked on the farm the longest we ever drove in a day was 60 miles, occasionally with a trailer. But that was at low speed and only a few times a year. We could have used the grain trucks for that towing if the service truck didn't have the range.
Heck, I have seen a landscaper in my neighborhood that uses all electric tools and tows a trailer with his Tesla. You could eat his lunch with an EV swapped 2014 Silverado.
The one constant with all my work vehicle experience is that the owner is obsessed with fuel prices.
My boss on the farm would have loved the idea of electrical arbitrage. He was doing something similar with jerry cans and the three gas stations on the way to the shop.
Napkin math:
At 12k for an electric conversion, 50 miles a day, and $3.60 a gallon gas I figure a 8 year payoff for the driving we did on the farm. But we did a lot of summer driving. If gas prices went up to $5.00 a gallon the conversion could pay for itself in 5 years. For year-round work EV conversion pays off in 5 years at 12k conversion cost and $3.60 a gallon. At $5.00 a gallon it pays off in 4 years. If you drive 75 miles a day it could pay off in less than three years. At 100 miles a day and $4.00 a gallon payoff is in 2.5 years.