So VW are doing an electric conversion for the classic Beetle taking the motor and batteries from an E-Up, with a conversion for Porsche and Buses to follow. Form and orderly queue...possibly at the pawnbrokers to sell the family silver first.
I genuinely love this... I accept that there are sceptics and there is a question mark over the resources used / available for the batteries (and wouldn’t wish to restart the debate), but I find the re-engineering of our old classics into the 21 century fascinating! Found it odd that they show the engine and floorpan exposed like that... that’s most of the conversion on show!! It’s also going to take some bodywork mods as the motor sits in the rear luggage space below the rear window. No sign of the batteries though. Hopefully these are nearer the front to balance that weight distribution. In time, there will a raft of second hand motors and gearboxes hitting the market and this type of conversion will drop in price. Brilliant!
I don’t get it. People trying to save the Earth, with their battery powered this and that. Seems a good idea, but the lithium mines are huge, and they build more power stations to charge the new batteries? It just seems like taking a step backwards! Sort of like ‘ scrubbing the old fuel power vehicle out and replacing it with a new way to mess the planet up’. Anyway, what with the cheap price of fuel in America and Australia, realistically, what’s the chances of everyone with their 6 litre vehicles, swopping for a turbo charged milk float? Really? Too little, too late.
This is probably based on the E Up By Gum, that one was modified and has way more power for the hill. Unsure if it’s twice the range though.
Electricity is more efficient than petrol in terms of power in motive power out. Agreed infrastructure is a challenge, but getting the pollutants in to one place (power station) as opposed to in each car is probably easier to tackle, especially if we target nuclear. It could also be argued that oil wells, shipping to shore, processing, further shipping then delivery by tanker isn’t a great infrastructure either. If the world wakes up to more efficient less polluting end points (the car) and has a scientific approach to nuclear then we might be able to fix some of the issues. Agreed it’s not perfect.
yep, and if you wind the clock back 100 years you'd probably find some guys using horses saying that internal combustion engines will never catch on.. i agree it's pointless for planet-saving if you're burning fossil fuel to run your electric car, but if you look at the direction of travel of renewables generation, more and more of our elec will come from green sources in the future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renew...ngdom#/media/File:UK_renewables_generated.PNG IMHO we need legislation that says that any new-build needs to have solar designed in, with storage so you can capture energy during the day and use that to charge your car/ run your house in the evening.
https://jalopnik.com/volkswagen-will-now-convert-classic-beetles-to-electric-1837900039 another write up here. wonder how much it'll cost? i spoke to one of those classic car conversion places a few months back and they wanted £35k to convert a t2. Yes. thirty five thousand pounds.
Renewables are a waste of time. It takes 250 tonnes of steel to make one wind turbine....that requires 250 tonnes of coal to make one turbine. It’s estimated we need 350,000 new wind turbines per year worldwide to simply stay on top of new demand, that’s not historical demand, just new. That’s a lot of coal to facilitate a non 100% up time solution. Based on current capabilities, we should drive hard at nuclear, and cut waste.