Company Turns Familiar Gas Cars Into Electric Vehicles
How would you like to drive an all-electric Mini? An EV Smart Car? A PT Cruiser? With the help of Hybrid Technologies, you can. They’ve taken many familiar vehicles, ripped out their engines, and replaced them with lithium batteries and electric motors.
On the surface it makes great sense and it seems there would be a huge demand for this sort of thing. Electric cars are nearly maintenance free. They don’t need oil changes and they have 90% fewer parts than gas cars. Plus, these EVs look like the normal cars that are already popular with many folks.
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Cool. How much will it cost? Glad you asked. How about a slick $40,000 for an all electric Toyota Yaris hatchback? Or $60,000 for the Mini? Come on now, I know you wanted that Beemer, but let’s be realistic, the price of gas is only rising and you never liked going to get oil changes anyways.
Given the savings on fuel and maintenance, the company states that they believe their prices are “competitive” with other vehicles when looked at over a 7 to 10 year time frame. Although this is probably true, I see some issues with their business model.
To start with, I’m guessing that coming up with $60,000 all at once (or even paying $1,200 a month on a 5 year loan at 7% interest) would be out of the realm of “doable” for the demographic typically interested in buying a Yaris, a PT Cruiser, or a Mini.
Secondly, at $60,000, you’re 60% of the way to buying yourself a Tesla Roadster with much better stats (not to mention a status factor light years beyond a mere all-electric PT Cruiser). Chances are, if you have $60,000 you can throw at a vehicle, you probably can manage the stretch to $100,000 as well.
Lastly, I think the company has missed a bigger consumer demand for converting cars that people already own into all-electric vehicles. If you’ve owned something like a PT cruiser for 6 years, you’ve probably paid it off and you might be thinking of buying a new car.
Buying a new car would cost you around $25,000. If the conversion to all-electric costs around $25,000, why not just do that instead? In the process they remove all the parts that tend to break down, you end up with a car that costs pennies per mile to operate, and you’ve essentially recycled your old car.
In 4 years time, I’d do that with my 2007 Yaris in a heartbeat.
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Image Credits: Hybrid Technologies
Converting existing gas guzzlers into electrics is a good start, but somewhere along the line we are going to have to break away from the 1930’s concept of a car, and go for a hemp fiber and soy, or carbon fiber ultra lite three wheeled super fast aerodynamic speedster that is half as wide as a Detroit steel behemoth and only half as long too. Statistically we commute two by two! so only put two seats in it, go like hell, more fun than a bag full of Prozac, and cost less to park. Oh, and those grid lock situations, go around that old-timers problem too! Sound good? Your electric conversions are the starting line, stay in the race, the race to kill big oil and steel and make life in America good again!
Me thinks that Nick should do a bit more Research.
Some of these companies ( which are springing up like weeds) have a better track record, and history than others.
That is for starters.
Secondly, the average cost to convert a small car to Electric is closer to $13,000. to $20,000. A WHOLE lot depends on the type of batteries chosen, and the Range and Speed the owner demands.
Take this one for example. ( http://www.voltrunner.com)
The Geo Metro cost $500. The conversion cost $13,000
And last month, with a few extra inexpensive lead acid batteries, this car did over 100 miles on the FREEWAY at freeway speeds. With its normal pack, Jeff routeenly gets 40 to 45 miles per charge.
Check out the Austin EV Album web site to get a more complete picture of what “Conversions” are all about
at: http://www.evalbum.com/
Don’t forget the Electric Auto Assoc. You can find a Chapter Near You, and talk with folks who have been down this road.
Thanks for listening….
@ Steve Lough
Thanks for your info.
As this was a piece only about this one company, I didn’t add other all-electric conversion companies in here. As you say, they are “springing up like weeds” and an article like that could go on for pages.
Also, I made my estimate for electric conversion that this company might do based on info provided by this company only…not for other companies that may or may not be doing similar things. My estimate was based on the fact that a Yaris has about a $15,000
base price and they’re charging $40,000 for it. 40K-15K = 25K.
It certainly would be cheaper to do the conversion yourself, but certainly only a small portion of the population is willing/able to do this themselves. The vast majority of folks will want to have somebody else do the conversion for them. And the vast majority of folks will not want a Geo Metro. A company doing these conversions for people would have to charge a premium to cover the labor, and using lithium-ion instead of lead acid (as the car in your example does) would also drive up the price. My estimates were not given as exact amounts, simply to make the point that changing the way we think about situations is sometimes very helpful.
Lead acid batteries are for sure a cheaper solution than lithium ion (at least for the time being, that may change as lithium ion become more popular), but they have their own set of problems. They are extremely heavy and take up a lot of space. They also pose dangers to the environment related to lead smelting operations and improper disposal of old batteries.
THE CHEAPEST WAY AND THE BEST WAY FOR ENERGY GREEN IS TO TAKE A DEEP BREATH IN THE MORNING THEN PUT ON YOUR SHORTS AND RUN TO WORK - NO GAS TO PAY - NO CAR TO BUY - ONLY ORANGE JUICE TO BUY TO DRINK ON YOUR MORNING RUN !! FROM NUNZIO BAGLIERE SYRACUSE N.Y. E MAIL NUNZIO61@VERIZON.NET
Thnaks Nick.
I understand.
Also Nunzio has a point too. As I am often known to say.., “There is no single Silver Bullit”
But a well made EV, with good Batteries, and Charging OFF-PEAK, with some solar panels on your garage roof, is about as close as you can get.
Nick… Could you drop me a line off list?
Nick,
You bring up a good point here - what’s the benefit?!
I sadly don’t see a big one.
1. If the owner wants to reduce CO2 emissions, then he/she should think about how much CO2 it takes to produce batteries and motors over continiuning to burn petrol for say 10years. (there was significant “CO2″ investment already made with the fabrication of the ICE).
2. If the person wants to save money long-term, again, a gut-check analysis should be done. What’s really the benefit of converting a Yaris or Metro that gets 35+ mpg if you only drive 15K miles a year (~ $1.7K @ $4/gal per year assuming electricity is free).
3. Bragging rights or having owners cover themselves under the auspices of being “Green”?
Thanks…
The fact of the matter is that most people out there aren’t shopping for electric cars. Moreover, lead acid batteries are dead cheap compared to lithium-ions and do a damn good job. The people out there that say that you need lithium are fooling themselves into thinking that there’s time for that kind of decision. Lithium batteries EXPLODE. Lead batteries are heavy but SAFE and CHEAP. Convert your car now. Later when batteries and controllers are better and cheaper, upgrade. It’s as simple as that. All the most labor intensive bits are already there, you’ll just have to swap out your batteries and controller when the good tech is released for public consumption. Thats right, cause it’s already here, but you can’t buy it yet.
why transform an expensive brand new car?
Go buy a 10 year old used car for a couple thousand and have the electric motor, battery, etc. installed.
Also, older cars are generally lighter cars because of more modern safety features have made brand new cars quite heavy.
[...] a few thousand dollars. Hybrid Technologies is one of those companies, they do a good job, but as gas2.0 says, “I see some issues with their business model”. I do see some serious issues with [...]
Nick,
Excellent assessment of Hybrid Technologies. I too looked at this company in great detail and was prematurely excited (not that I have a problem with that) until I did the basic math. Their average “upcharge” for the conversion is actually closer to $35,000 per car. That is a lot of money. To date, they have only sold about 16 cars (reportedly) to consumers, but I actually had my doubts on that number. They appear to have a good product, and certainly have good service. They offered to pick me up at the airport and bring me to their factory to show me around and test drive their vehicles. I also spoke with one of their customers that had great things to say about them. But as you point out, their business model is seriously flawed due to the unreasonably high premiums they charge.
I wish them the best of success, and hope they can get their costs down in the near future to make their product more attractive to all us crazy reasonable people out there.
Bo Bennett, Host
EVcast.com