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What to do with fuel-burning cars -- convert them? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The avg. age of a car bought in Africa at the time of purchase is 21 years old. All these people buying EVs think they are taking a gas-burner off the road. But in fact cars do not get thrown away. They get shipped to Africa where they live on and continue to emit GHG for decades longer.

So what’s the answer? Destroying the car is a non-starter, as no one would throw away value. It would be like asking people to set some of their cash on fire.

Why not remove the engine and repurpose it as a backup power generator for power outtages? Then convert the rest of the car into an EV.

Conversions are being done. There are some companies offering to do the work. But these are very small scale operations that are rarely spoken of. I have to wonder why (what seems like) the best solution is being overlooked.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Well, a car ICE car converted to an EV will typically not be as good a vehicle as one built as an EV in the first place. But the real issue is the same one behind not seeing small cheap EVs in the US, lower profit margins.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

What do you mean by “good”? I see a constant stream of articles about EVs being enshitified with cloud-attached surveillance tech and vulnerable to unwelcome remote hacking. To privacy advocates and tech rights proponents this means the ones designed as EVs are worse.

If you mean efficient, I’d be tempted to say the difference would be negligible in the big scheme of things. Factory produced EVs are not only surveillance systems on wheels, they are more hackable by threat agents than they are by their owners. Whereas a converted EV is likely more conducive to a /right to repair/.

The best scenario I could envision is this:

You bring your car to shop of expert converters. You watch over their shoulder as they convert it. This serves as training to know your own car. And as well to know how the power generator is built. You drive away with an open source EV that you can fix yourself, pulling behind it a trailor with a power generator, which is then connected to the charging inlet of the EV.

Okay, that last sentence was a joke, to be clear.. Some Teslas have been spotted pulling a power generator on a trailer which then plugged into the car. I hope that practice of towing a generator is not actually a serious trend.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I was talking about efficiency and range, which typically falls pretty short of cars intended to be EVs. But there are also other changes like wheels being closer to the front ends of the vehicles and not needing the transmission hump in the floor, giving more passenger and cargo space.

All new cars are terrible for privacy, EV or not. Small shops doing conversions on older cars will absolutely be better in that regard. But as soon as you make it a mass market thing, the same incentives to invade the privacy of their consumers will end up with the same result. Better privacy and data protection laws are the only way to stop that, I think.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Part is lower profit margins. Part is total cost of ownership. Part is recharging them. If I don't have a charging station at my place of residence, I have to drive somewhere find an open charging station and spend time waiting for it to charge. There are fast charging stations but they cost more (total cost of ownership) and they still aren't as fast as filling a gas tank (time is money). Depending on where the charging station is, I might be stuck there just waiting for it recharge.