More Americans Turn Classic Cars into Electric Cars
2022-12-26
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1A growing number of Americans are turning gas-powered vehicles into electric ones by using a process called an electric powertrain conversion.
2Such conversions are becoming more popular as battery technology gets better and the world turns toward cleaner energy sources.
3Kevin Erickson owns a 1972 Plymouth Satellite that he renamed "Electrollite" after conversion.
4Now, the car can go from a still position to 97 kilometers per hour in about three seconds.
5Its top speed is almost 250 kilometers per hour.
6At the end of 2019, Erickson bought the car for $6,500.
7He then began a year-and-a-half-long project to convert the car to electric.
8He used battery packs, a motor and parts from a Tesla Model S that had been in a crash.
9"This was my way of taking the car that I like - my favorite body - and then taking the modern technology and performance, and mixing them together," said Erickson, who has put about $60,000 into the project.
10Jonathan Klinger is vice president of car culture for Hagerty Insurance.
11He said converting classic cars into EVs is "definitely a trend," although research on the activity is limited.
12In May, the Michigan-based company did a web-based study of about 25,000 automobile lovers in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
13About one percent had at least partly converted an older model car to run on some form of electric power.
14The top three reasons for converting the vehicles were for better performance, for a fun project, and because of environmental concerns.
15About 25 percent of respondents said they approve of older automobiles being partly or fully converted to electric vehicles.
16Klinger, who owns several vintage vehicles, said he does not think electric motors will replace all gas engines - especially when considering historically important vehicles.
17"There's something satisfying about having a vintage car that has a carburetor," he said, because it's the same as when the car was new.
18Some car lovers want to keep the sound of older cars' original engines.
19Electric conversions require special knowledge to complete.
20They also involve safety concerns and parts that are sometimes hard to find.
21And then there is the price.
22Sean Moudry, who co-owns Inspire EV, a small conversion business near Denver, recently worked on a 1965 Ford Mustang.
23The year-and-a-half-long project cost more than $100,000 and involved many difficulties.
24Moudry and his partners replaced the gas engine with a motor from a crashed Tesla Model S.
25They also added 16 Tesla battery packs weighing a total of about 363 kilograms.
26Most older cars, including the Mustang, were not designed to have that much weight or the increased performance of a powerful electric motor.
27So, the team had to make changes to other parts of the car, including the suspension system.
28Moudry says many people do not have the resources necessary to carry out this kind of project.
29As a result, he says, it will take a while for electric conversions to become common.
30"I think it's going to be 20 years," he said.
31"It's going to be a 20-year run before you go to a car show and 50 to 60 percent of the cars are running some variant of an electric motor in it."
32But that reality could be coming sooner than expected, says Mike Spagnola, president and CEO of the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA), a trade group.
33He said that electric vehicle products took about 1950 square meters of marketing space at SEMA's yearly show in Las Vegas this fall.
34That was up from only 232 square meters at the 2021 show.
35I'm John Russell.