Electric Vehicle enthusiasts excited about retrofitting cars. Subscribe to Electric Vehicle News Bitesize Podcast for FREE to hear more!
While the boutique industry is growing around converting classic cars to electric, it’s an exclusive, high-cost business.
Over the next decade, millions of new battery-electric trucks, SUVs and cars will hit the global market. In the US alone, Joe Biden is pushing for 50% of all new cars sold by 2030 to be zero-emission vehicles.
The situation is even more difficult with all the old petrol and diesel cars currently on the street. One idea that’s gotten a lot of attention lately is converting to electric vehicles. Toyota caused a stir at a recent industry event by showcasing two vintage Corollas that had been converted to electric and hydrogen power, with CEO Akio Toyoda raising the prospect of the company getting into the conversion game.
Doing this, however, isn’t likely to help those with little means to go electric. While a boutique industry around that idea is quickly growing, it’s an exclusive, cost-prohibitive one aimed at collector cars and niche enthusiast vehicles, something that won’t be an option for lower- or even middle-income people looking to electrify their current cars anytime soon. Just as the average new Electric Vehicle costs around £65,000, electric conversions, too, will probably be the sole purview of higher-income people until battery costs go down.
“It’s one thing to convert your 1965 Porsche and spend £50,000 or more to get an electric weekend car,” said Loren McDonald, the CEO of EVAdoption, an Electric Vehicle consulting and marketing analysis agency. “It’s another thing to take a 1980 Honda Civic that’s worth £1,000 to do the same. It doesn’t make sense.”
Transportation is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, and reducing it is critical to mitigating the effects of climate change. However, there are few solutions to the fossil-fueled vehicles that are likely to emerge in the coming decades.
Despite the recent rapid adoption of electric vehicles, a 2021 analysis by Rhodium Consulting shows that even at the highest possible sales rate, electric vehicles are expected to account for only 60% of the total number of passenger vehicles by 2060. According to MacDonald, that means a lot of fossilized vehicles. Petrol-powered vehicles will be on the road for decades to come.
“This is something that’s not being talked about enough,” McDonald said. “We’re buying more new petrol-powered vehicles each year than we are electric. So the supply of petrol car vehicles keeps rising … and people are holding on to their vehicles longer.”
Still, two of Toyota’s latest concepts demonstrate potential solutions to this emissions challenge.
At a showcase in Japan last month, the automaker unveiled two classic 1980s Corollas that have been modified to run on battery power and compressed liquid hydrogen.
“The reality is that we cannot achieve zero carbon emissions in 2050 simply by switching all new car sales to EVs,” said CEO Toyoda at the press conference. “It is important to provide options for beloved cars that are already owned.”
The presentation from Akio Toyoda felt like it could be a signal that his company’s massive manufacturing machine could be put into business converting its older cars to electricity or hydrogen at scale. However, the head of Toyota Japan said that there are no plans for this at the moment.
Some automakers have actually gotten into the business, albeit on a small scale. Mini’s Recharged scheme, launched in the UK in recent years, aims to give its iconic retro cars 100 miles of Electric Vehicle battery. Renault recently announced that it will launch electrified conversion kits for some of its popular classics, including the Renault 4, Renault 5 and Twingo, in France this year.
In the U.S., Ford sells the Mustang Mach-E with its own motor for $4,340 for retrofits and transplants; Chevrolet intends to sell a similar product, but its launch has reportedly been delayed by supply chain issues. The state of California is considering giving residents a rebate of up to $2,000 to convert a petrol-powered car to an electric one. But that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the total cost of an Electric Vehicle conversion.
In California, a growing number of shops will convert gasoline-powered cars to electric at a cost. With conversion costs on the order of $100,000 or more, they’re in the realm of niche classic car drivers and collectors on a large budget.
“We’re enthusiasts,” said David Benardo, the CEO of Zelectric Motors, a San Diego company that specializes in electrifying vintage Volkswagens and Porsches. “This whole company, and I think the people that are making a go of that, have all been enthusiasts. And it’s just caught on with people with deeper pockets that can support our enthusiasm.”
Zelectric’s projects start at approximately $70,000. Switching is costly, in part because they are largely done on a case-by-case basis. Getting enough specialized labour to do the job is an issue, Benardo said, as is sourcing batteries and materials for the job. Zelectric only delivers about six to eight cars a year, he said.
For these reasons and more, large-scale Electric Vehicle transitions remain elusive. “It’s not a $5,000 to $10,000 upgrade that will save your old car,” he said.
Asked what it might take to convert almost any older car at scale, “I don’t even have an answer for that question,” Benardo said with a laugh.
However, there is hope for the future. Benardo said he is encouraged by the increased availability of Electric Vehicle batteries as sales continue to grow, which he hopes will reduce the cost of off-board energy storage.
MacDonald also said he is encouraged by the number of businesses converting commercial vehicles, such as Lightning eMotors in Colorado, which is selling new electric converted vans, ambulances, buses and more. Other startups, such as Tandem, are trying to convert diesel trucks into hybrids, using battery packs that connect directly to the truck. That’s a much stronger reason to retrofit than an old personal car.
But even if Toyota doesn’t bring its older cars into production anytime soon, MacDonald said emissions will continue to be a challenge for all types of existing internal combustion engine vehicles as the auto industry electrifies in the coming decades.
“We’re actually not going to make a dent in the problem,” McDonald said. “Getting to 50% share of EVs does nothing to actually reduce emissions … the only way we can do that anytime in the near term is to get rid of the gas guzzlers.”
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