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As the world moves to electric vehicles (EVs), what should happen to all the gas guzzlers who will remain on the road?
This is an important question because even if the US reaches President Joe Biden’s goal of 50% new electric car sales by 2030, many people will still be driving their older fossil fuel-powered vehicles .
“This is something that is not being talked about enough,” said Loren McDonald, CEO of EVAdoption, as reported by The Guardian. “We’re buying more new gas-powered vehicles each year than electric ones. So the supply of gas-powered vehicles continues to increase … and people are holding on to their vehicles longer.”
A potential solution to this problem is to convert conventional vehicles into electric vehicles. In theory, it’s a simple process, according to the US Department of Energy (DOE).
“Although rare, a vehicle with an internal combustion engine can be converted to an all-electric vehicle by completely removing the engine and adding a battery, one or more electric motors, high-voltage cables and instrumentation,” he explained the DOE. adding that it’s important to make sure the converted car has the space and can support the weight of the new battery and motors while meeting emissions and crash safety standards.
However, in practice, electric vehicle conversions are expensive and therefore out of reach for many, as The Guardian pointed out.
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For example, San Diego-based conversion company Zelectric Motors said its conversions typically start around $70,000, five thousand dollars more than the average cost of a new EV at $65,000.
“It’s not a $5,000 to $10,000 modification that’s going to save your old car,” company CEO David Benardo said, as reported by The Guardian.
The reason is both the current cost of batteries and the fact that each car has different requirements, calling for specialized labor. The company mainly mods vintage Porsches and Volkswagens and only works on six to eight conversions a year.
There was a possible sign of hope in January when Toyota debuted two green versions of its classic 1980s Corolla GT-S at the 2023 Tokyo Auto Show, as KTSM 9 News reported at the time.
“The reality is that we cannot achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050 simply by switching all new car sales to electric vehicles,” Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda said in a speech announcing the conversions.
However, Toyota told The Guardian that the company had no plans at the moment to mass convert its older models.
The two cars on display at the show were converted differently. One, the AE86 BEV, was electrified with a Toyota Tundra pickup hybrid engine and a Prius Prime plug-in hybrid battery pack. The second, the AE86 H2, kept the combustion engine but ran on hydrogen.
So-called clean fuels like hydrogen are the solution pushed by the Rhodium Group in a 2021 paper. Currently, transportation is the US sector that emits the most greenhouse gas emissions, and even with the largest absorption of electric vehicles will not reach zero by 2050. Even if almost 90 percent of light vehicle sales are electric by 2035, transportation would still emit 525 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 The report argued that the remaining emissions could be reduced by switching to decarbonised fuels such as biofuels, electric fuels or fossil fuels that are successfully offset. Another solution? Make trips more efficient.
“The most direct way to reduce transportation emissions is to move people and goods more efficiently, either by improving the fuel economy of cars, trucks, buses, ships and planes, or by reducing how many miles these vehicles need to move people or merchandise.” the report’s authors wrote.
Finally, instead of converting private fossil fuel cars to electric vehicles or running them on alternative fuels, we can move away from the one-person, one-car model of transportation. C40 Cities chief executive Mark Watts said one of the most important things city leaders could do to tackle the climate crisis was to prioritize pedestrians and cyclists in the design of private motor vehicles.
“A global shift from cars to more active forms of travel is exactly what the world needs right now,” he said. “Replacing a car journey with an active journey is a very effective way to reduce emissions quickly.”
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