• Snot Flickerman
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    4 months ago

    Retrofitting kits, many of which are available on online marketplaces like Alibaba or MercadoLibre, often don’t guarantee a “minimum level of safety and quality for the retrofit unit,” Rojas said.

    They’ve been telling us the same lying bullshit about computers and phones for 40 fucking years.

    I have dealt with a massive number of Li-Ion batteries and never punctured one, always properly disposed of them.

    Like, a lot of this shit isn’t hard, and a lot of the pooh-poohing about safety comes from often are industry plants who basically exist to gatekeep people from being able to be in full control of the things they purchase.

    Since the practice is largely a DIY process, there are no official statistics on the retrofitting industry in Latin America. Many retrofitting jobs are done “by tinkerers who seek to extend the life of their petrol cars since they can’t afford a new electric one,” Adolfo Rojas, president of the Association of Entrepreneurs to Promote Electric Vehicles in Peru, told Rest of World.

    Hmmm, let’s see if we can find more about this Rojas guy.

    https://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/national-agency-pitched-to-advance-electromobility-in-peru

    The creation of a national electromobility agency will be crucial to incorporate electric vehicles in Peru, according to local market executive Adolfo Rojas.

    Rojas, advisory council president of the country’s electric vehicle business development and promotion association AEDiVE, made the comment during Prensa Grupo’s ElectroTransporte online event.

    Agency participants would include public institutions, industry groups, associations, academia, and cooperation funds, he said.

    A broader package of economic incentives will also be fundamental, from tax breaks to preferential insurance, added Rojas, who highlighted the opportunities from the build-out of electromobility for domestic industry, such as development of lithium batteries.

    Another key driver will be the implementation of charging infrastructure, said Rojas, who announced that AEDiVE is drafting a related national expansion plan with highway concessionaires, power distributors and companies interested in installing such infrastructure that will be released in two months.

    The energy and mines ministry recently released a draft decree to approve the regulation for the installation and operation of electromobility charging infrastructure.


    No offense intended to Rojas, who I’m sure is a decent enough of a person, but the related article I found about him makes him certainly sound like he’s a traditional business guy bureaucrat and so that says to me that at least part of the reason he speaks against conversions is because conversions impact all the business plans and bureaucracy he is working on.

    By his LinkedIn, he’s an executive of some type at Sustainablearth LATAM, a solar company.

    Just personal opinion, Rojas is biased. Doesn’t make him a bad person, but people within the industry generally don’t like people fixing their own devices. That’s a service they want people to have to pay for.

      • Miles O'Brien@startrek.website
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        4 months ago

        You know that “men only want one thing and it’s fucking disgusting” meme?

        For me it’s an electric Toyota Hilux. And not a new one, unless it’s one of the originals that’s been sealed away for decades.

        • Snot Flickerman
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          4 months ago

          unless it’s one of the originals that’s been sealed away for decades.

          Can’t you just beam it out of storage, O’Brien?

        • Grass@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          I’d be down to build that if I could source the truck in no holes condition and batteries that wouldn’t bankrupt me.

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          EV or (bio)diesel plug in hybrid Chevy C10. Battery can cover most of my use cases, but every now and then, I need to do a long haul.

    • Num10ck@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      the ones ive seen are either hobbyist janky or crazy expensive. im surprised this isnt a bigger thing already, but i dont want to pay > $30K to end up with 100 mile range and zero reliability assurance.

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I’ve been following Edison Motors and they look the most promising for pickup trucks. You can get the electric Mustang motor as a new crate engine if you don’t want to pull a Tesla rear end from a totaled car.

        • BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world
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          4 months ago

          Ooh, I’ll have to remember them in the unlikely event that I ever have money. I want nothing more than a 80s F150 retrofit to be all electric.

  • forrcaho@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Although safety is certainly a legitimate issue, I can almost guarantee that car manufacturers will use that as an excuse to kill this form of competition – yet another way in which capitalism is dooming our species to extinction.

    • bassad@jlai.lu
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      4 months ago

      A company in my city created an EV conversion kit for any cars years ago. As they could not get certification for all models, they made a partnership with the constructor and managed to have certification for only 1 model (Renault Master, a utility truck) and now the company is controlled by Renault (the constructor).

      They indeed killed the competition…

      • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        It’s almost like they should be open sourcing the method, so it can be accessible to anyone.

        • bassad@jlai.lu
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          4 months ago

          Unfortunately open sourcing is not an option without certification, cause vehucles will not be allowed to go on roads.

          At least here in europe

          • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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            4 months ago

            As long as the car is inspected and passed after the fact I don’t see why you would need certification for the actual conversion. Of course that’s a big risk on the owner, but if you’re pretty sure you know what you’re doing it’s not that much of a risk

    • bamfic@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I test drove an electric conversion vw bug and vw gti 25 years ago. I saw but did not drive electric porsche 914s and fiat 124s 20 years ago. I remember seeing electric miata conversions. This is not new and it should continue

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    If I had the money and knew people who could do this type of stuff, you bet I’d wanna buy my favorite 90s vehicle and turn it into an EV

    Edit:

    Tried looking up the vehicle because I wanted to remember what it’s called, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is, even after attempting to look it up. All I remember is that it was potentially a Chevrolet with 3 seats up front, 3 in the back, and a little divider thing in the middle of the back seats you could pull out.

    I absolutely loved it and it was a sad day when we had to get rid of it. It may have been a safety hazard, with the back heating up and burning (thankfully it didn’t actually reach the seats, just heated them up, or there could have been 3 burned minors, myself included), but I still love it since it was the family car.

    I’m definitely gonna have to continue searching for the name, using my limited car knowledge.

    Edit Edit:

    I’m not a car person, so shoot me for this if you want, but it was actually a Chrysler Concord. Again, I’m not a car person, so I don’t know much about vehicles other than basic things like how to change a tire or on changing the oil on a 2000s Toyota Town and Country.

    My mechanically inclined father came to the rescue as to what it was.

  • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
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    4 months ago

    In my country any modification of any importance is required to be signed off by a mechanical engineer. If I were that engineer, I would never sign any of these conversions. Too much liability, especially with old cars of unknown integrity.

  • _stranger_@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I stared at that thumbnail for a solid 10 seconds trying to figure out why there was a water cooled GPU in someone’s trunk

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    4 months ago

    I really wish I could afford an EV but it’s just way out of my price range the damn things are so expensive and they don’t come down in price all that much on the second hand market either.

    I can’t really even get anything from my current car except the scrap metal value. It still works it’s just not a desirable vehicle.

    So for me I’m much better off just keeping this current car until the maintenance of it becomes prohibitively expensive. That’s the problem really, no one’s been incentivized to buy electric vehicles unless they’re in the market for a new car anyway, and have a lot of money so don’t mind spending a bit extra, which is a really limited subset of the population.