• Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    110
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    I really REALLY hope someone at some point starts a gasoline to electric car conversion company at some point.

    I love my car because it has just the right amount of technology: Bluetooth connectivity for calls and music. That’s it. That’s all I need.

    • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      52
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yup. Unfortunately, since most people seem to prefer the dystopian futuretech, all auto manufacturers are going to employ it. Just like with cell phones. The last phone I know of with 16:9 aspect ratio and no blighted hole punch or notch was in 2018. There’s a market full of us luddites who prefer the old ways, but we’re invisible to manufacturers because it’s more profitable to make something that more people want to buy, and we’re forced to buy that garbage as well anyway.

        • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, it goes further than just designing the hardware to only last a few years, all of these electronics ensure that the car is fucked as soon as the necessary online services go down. Meanwhile a well-maintained '93 Geo Metro, driven in the south where they don’t salt the roads every year, can last decades.

          • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            I’ve had my 2010 Mazda 3 for 13 years now and I’m taking every precaution to keep it as long as I can.

            • cordlesslamp@lemmy.today
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              hi, I’m looking to buy my first car and have my eyes on the 2015 Mazda 3 but it is a little bit over my budget. Would you recommend getting the 2010-2013 Mazda 3 in 2023? Or just downgrade to a 2015 Mazda 2?

              • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                The 2010-2013 ones have a few problems because they’re the first of a new series. And it was when the company was breaking off with Ford and still had crap American parts.

                There was a 2012 update where they added the skyactiv engine and made a few improvements to the body and a new facelift. I recommend you get that one. It has better gas consumption and has better handling while maintaining the same interior. Although I think the interior dash lighting is blue instead of red.

                You can see what I mean in the Wikipedia page here.

      • gullible@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        There are some positives and negatives to the desire for old form factors. Secondhand phones from 2018 cost much less than new ones but lack some of the new features like… I can’t think of any.

    • BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      the only tech i need in my car is an aux port. i will forever buy used cars from before 2010 but after around 2004ish?

    • atrielienz@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Depends on what kind of car you have. I know for a fact there is a company doing this with classic mini coopers.

    • Mothra@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don’t even use BT in mine and don’t use the music system either. I stick to my phone. I just hope by the time I need to switch cars, I’ll be able to jailbreak it without bricking.

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I dont know the details, but Ive heard of companies that do this, or kits that can be used for it, existing, though I can only imagine that changing a car that one’s business has not manufactured and was never designed for such a conversion must take a lot of manual work, which would be expensive before even considering things like the cost of batteries.

      • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Power train conversion is reasonably simple. Just throw combustion engine and transmission box away, make brackets for electric motors and attach them directly to the wheels (with axles if necessary). Conversion of controls is (I assume) is also somewhat simple since existing brake system and power steering is quite straightforward to run with electric motors since you just need something which can run a belt drive and gas pedal is most likely already electric. For all the electronics you have plenty of space in where the engine used to be.

        But. And there’s a pretty big but. Batteries are pretty big and pretty heavy. On any given combustion engine car there’s just no room for them (at least if you’re after a conversion with similar range/power than a readily built electric car). And even if you cut the floor panel off and modify it to accomodate battery pack (or whatever the route you choose might be) it’ll heavily affect weight distribution, frame stability and many other things, suspension included. Model S battery is apparently 540kg, so if you’ll do a conversion to your corolla you might save around 150kg of weight by removing old engine+transmission but you’d still have additional 300kg of mass to deal with.

        For a van which is designed to haul heavy loads from the start it might be pretty simple to just raise floor of the cargo space a bit but for a common sedan that’s a whole another thing.

        • GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          I looked into this for my car. The conversion has a 50 mile range, essentially replaces the engine with an electric motor, locks the car in 3rd gear, and replaces the fuel tank with batteries.

          It cost about £3500, which was a bit much for me considering the car only cost £3k, and I could just sell my car to buy a 100mile+ leaf for the same outlay.

          • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            In our local craigslist for cars website someone has been selling a -84(or so) Nissan Sunny for ages with electric conversion. The seller did just that, took combustion engine out, attached a electric motor into transmission and the result is that you have 80’s car, with manual transmission and batteries so small that once you’re out of the driveway you’ve depleted 10% of the batteries (give or take, but that’s pretty much what you’ll get). And it had something like 15kW minus losses of the drive train.

            But the parts are so expensive (at least for now) that listed price is almost 10k€. I can understand that seller wants their money back and it isn’t the most serious conversion out there, but the reality is that you’ll get a shitty 80’s car with a even shittier EV conversion (since the frame has it’s limits and high quality components are expensive) while you can sell a similar car with a combustion engine for 350€ on a good day and a tank full.

      • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Swapping an engine is relatively easy if you know what you’re doing… If these kits can connect the electric motor to the existing drive train it wouldn’t be too bad. Messing around with batteries big enough for an electric vehicle can be really dangerous though.