Probably a total mess, but I love that someone did this. Stickshift mounted clutch lever FTW!
Probably a total mess, but I love that someone did this. Stickshift mounted clutch lever FTW!
That, is pretty awesome. Also curious how CA would do any testing on it...
Looks like used reman battery packs go for around $7500 and new ones are about $17k...if those were the only options the 'busa swap would not only be fun but practical. But I'd have to think repairing the existing pack would be a cheaper option. At nearly 20 years old this pack might not have a lot of life left in it but one more repair would probably make sense.
That said, one of these with the original powertrain was a "glorified golf cart" sort of EV so that's another point in favor of the 'busa swap for anyone who doesn't just want a thrifty commuter.
That's just down the road from me..... an awful lot of awesomeness for the price. I imagine that EVs don't have to undergo periodic inspections, so one could probably slip it under the wire. Might be interesting to insure.
Where did the "50% of EV buyers switch back ICE..." come from?
I say BS on that stat.
This article is about a study that says less then 1%...
https://www.teslarati.com/study-less-than-1-percent-ev-owners-switch-back-ice/#:~:text=The%20stats%3A&text=Less%20than%201%25%20of%20EV%20drivers%20will%20return%20to%20a,with%20being%20an%20EV%20driver.
In reply to 67LS1 :
I think that was something that was sent floating around the internet a year or two ago by the EV haters. It's a bad statistic, but I doubt the accuracy of the less-than-1 percent stat also. Whatever, it's meant in jest in this context.
In reply to 67LS1 :
There was a study that found that nearly half of American EV owners said they were very likely to switch back to an ICE vehicle when their EV needed replacing:
https://insideevs.com/news/726008/mckinsey-study-half-ev-buyers/
Note that this study was done by a market research company, and the one showing less than 1% likely to switch back was done by an EV industry group...while seeing 20%+ wanting to switch back is worrying, less than 1% not wanting to switch back is a bit of a red flag. If you ran a survey asking random people if they'd like to slam their head in a car door, it wouldn't be uncommon to see 2-3% voting yes...
Speaking of goofy stats- I recently read that a full 85% of counseling therapists think it's bad therapy practice to kiss their clients.
Wait
Wut?
15% think kissing their clients is therapeutic!?!
P3PPY said:Speaking of goofy stats- I recently read that a full 85% of counseling therapists think it's bad therapy practice to kiss their clients.
15% think kissing their clients is therapeutic!?!
No, 15% responded with "How does that make you feel?"
Eh tons of EV hate out there, have never had a car that brings so much hate and so much love simultaneously. I liken it to the carbs vs FI battles back in the day. I ended up in a M3P as I needed a company travel car and there was literally nothing fun to drive that met all the company criteria mid 2021. Coming from a rowdy 500Hp CTS V1 it was quite a change. I'm surprised to say I won't go back to ICE for a daily. I've gotten really spoiled by the Iphone esque functionality and frugality of it. It just always works, fast as H, and is super cheap to run. I hit 80K miles and it's gonna get swapped out this year to meet the 4yr criteria for the company. Thinking of a 12-18month old S Plaid as they depreciate like a rock and are now in the 50K range.
The 4 year swap out with company covering the cost is the answer to EV ownership, because nobody wants to own these when they hit about a decade of use. They are a great idea until you see that battery replacement looming in your future. So everyone will dump them before that time, which means they will have terrible resale value. For someone like me who doesn't want eternal car payments and keeps cars a long time, they are a poor financial decision. I have no trouble selling ICE vehicles with 200,000 miles on them.
In reply to ddavidv :
You are predisposing that they are useless in 10 years. While I think early models face some challenges from less technical enhancements in design and manufacturing, with each new year they get better. An EV produced today isn't comparable to one produced 5 years ago.
Also, the charging infrastructure continues to grow, widening the market of potential buyers as it gets easier to charge.
Your point isn't lost on me, I just don't see it as black or white, but rather shades of gray.
The market will follow opportunities. I believe if the cars become very cheap, just needing a new battery pack, then places that refurb and replace battery packs will crop up. I've participated in dropping a few packs, in the ID 4's I was involved with, with the right tools and expertise it can be swapped in an hour or two tops.
Testing of old batteries is getting better all the time, in stream health check tech also. Also, the packs in most cases can be broken down to modules and they usually just replace an individual module rather than the whole pack if they can...
An entire battery reman industry is something I see cropping up as long as profit can be made, and I think efficiencies will be found and it will make sense.
That all said, cars are being looked at more and more as disposable, like a cell phone. The parts support challenges will be around things like infotainment and other specific complex modules.
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to 67LS1 :
I think that was something that was sent floating around the internet a year or two ago by the EV haters. It's a bad statistic, but I doubt the accuracy of the less-than-1 percent stat also. Whatever, it's meant in jest in this context.
All those studies are such garbage. What they need to track is actual behavior. When someone trades a car in, which way did they go? You do a survey and you can change the wording to get a particular result. You can change how you sample to get a result. I wonder how a lot of them feel after they see the trade in value of a EV? Timing is going to matter a ton too with the weird distortions in the market from covid. Someone surveyed in 2022 who got more than msrp reselling their tesla will have a way different experience than now. Id be shocked if it is anywhere near either extreme in reality.
I expect to switch back and forth between EV and ICE for a while - went EV-ICE-EV for my last three cars and am satisfied for now with what I have.
Don't understand ev love affair other than they are fast. With my cars I spend 5 minutes at a gas station and get 450 mi range. On a trip I take any route I want and only have to spend 5 minutes at gas station to get another 450 miles. At home they are in garage and I don't have to unplug and hope I have enough charge if I want to run to store or heaven forbid the emergency room. Don't hate them, just don't see the attraction. Also my 911 and Macan sound so good.
I loathe the "EVs are going to save the planet" marketing BS; I don't actually loathe the vehicles themselves. So with that said:
Unlike when people switched from horse n buggy to cars; EVs aren't significantly better than ICEs. Each one has it's pluses.
Most people see vehicles as appliances; so we are basically debating about whether to buy a gas or electric dryer. It's pretty much going to come down to which one works for you.
67LS1 said:Where did the "50% of EV buyers switch back ICE..." come from?
I say BS on that stat.
63% of statistics are made up.....
In reply to JimS :
Imagine if the gas tank was half the size, but if you plugged your car in at night, it had a full tank every morning for less than the cost of one gallon of gas. Next imagine it had an engine with only one moving part that plugged straight into the diff so there were far less parts to break, making the car more reliable. Then imagine that some gas stations had a special machine that would let you fill up that half-size tank to 80% capacity in 30-45mins just in case you did manage to run low over the course of a normal day.
Finally, and here's the hardest one for all of us but the biggest deal of them all, imagine you're a normie who has never owned a car with an engine louder than the tires, who doesn't care for engine noises, is only vaguely aware of some cars having some sort of "manual transmission," knows a gear change as that annoying jerky thing the car does when you accelerate hard, and knows the engine bay only as a place mechanics go to take chunks out of your net worth.
Imagine all those and it makes way more sense.
JimS said:Don't understand ev love affair other than they are fast. With my cars I spend 5 minutes at a gas station and get 450 mi range. On a trip I take any route I want and only have to spend 5 minutes at gas station to get another 450 miles. At home they are in garage and I don't have to unplug and hope I have enough charge if I want to run to store or heaven forbid the emergency room. Don't hate them, just don't see the attraction. Also my 911 and Macan sound so good.
Zero time at the gas station in daily use, and the "fuel" is half the price per mile, generally paired with more power as an added bonus. Arrive home, plug in, and it'll be full again when you leave in the morning, there's no hoping about anything. I agree that they still make little to no sense for a vehicle that sees regular long trips, but for the average person that drives 30-100 miles per day to and from work and not much else, it's basically the perfect situation.
I had a thought a few years ago. With more and more EVs that will eventually have dead batteries. If you desire a late model chassis to do a hot ICE build on but to skirt emissions testing why not?
Like for instance...in MD a used car gets an inspection after purchase, but never again until title switches hands again. So if you can find one with just enough battery life to get thru inspection. Then build your monster. Being electric originally, emissions testing will never be called up. So short of being an idiot and dumping fuel out on a state cop you could get away with quite alot.
I can only speak for myself but here is my 2 cents worth.
My partner and I own 6 cars+trucks plus a bunch of motorcycles. Most of them are gas and I'll probably always have a gas "fun car" and bikes. I'm not anti-ICE.
And.. the vehicle that puts a smile on my face every day, my daily driver, and the car my partner loves to steal from me, is a BMW i3. Electric. And it's even a "short range" EV at that, about 100 miles range not the 200-300+ that many EV's have now. Here is why:
- Light and fun to drive. Under 3000 lbs, very low CG, nimble and quick. It's just a hoot to drive on my daily commute.
- Silent, so I can be an absolute hooligan and mostly folks don't even notice.
- BMW driving dynamics and adequate performance. It's 1 second slower to 60 than my 6MT 128i was, but it's so accessible and so quiet I can do that 7 second thing leaving every stoplight. And I do. In the gas 128i I could do it in 6 seconds but it would take concentration and make a lot of noise, I'd need to be checking for blue lights all the time. So I didn't use its full potential very often.
- My commuting fuel cost in the last 18 months has been.... zero. I charge it at work. For all that fun, all I buy is tires and brake pads. If I had to charge at home the electricity cost would be about 1/4 of what I used to pay for gas in my 128i, so I'd still be happy.
The bottom line is that I'll probably always have ICE fun cars and bikes. And a burly V8 tow vehicle. But for a daily driver the EV works very well. I'm 99% sure that when / if I replace the i3 it will be with another EV.
In reply to malibuguy :
An interesting legal workaround but a practical problem is that most EVs have frames that are very different from those in vehicles made for ICEs. Cars like the 1st-gen Leaf which are basically a factory-EV-swapped ICE vehicle are the exception. Cars like the Tesla S that don't have a central tunnel or a real engine bay because they were never designed with an ICE in mind are the norm, so you'd have to do heavy chassis mods to make room for an ICE-swap.
A more legally daring approach that would work around that issue would be to try the body swap/"hat car" approach, to just make an ICE vehicle look like an EV and register it as one. So it might be possible to have a V8 TT Superlite Coupe with good mufflers wearing the sides and top of a Tesla S body (including VIN plate) as "sheep's clothing."
In reply to GameboyRMH :
You forgot to imagine nearly no service work required, with no oil changes!
In reply to ekauppi7 :
You basically outlined why we love our e-Golf so much. We have recently replaced it with an ICE vehicle for our kid to take to college, but EVERY time I get behind the wheel I smile like an idiot.
The Golf is far slower than your i3 but with similar range. However it *feels* quick with all of that instant torque and it rivals some of the better cars I've owned in chassis refinement and handling. It's really a wonderful little car that **might** go 120 miles in a perfect situation on one charge. I truly hate that we are going to sell it on as it's just so good. However my Lightning is good-er so choices had to be made.
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