Technology

Retrofitting kits, many of which are available on online marketplaces like Alibaba or MercadoLibre, often don’t guarantee a “minimum level of safety and quality for the retrofit unit,” Rojas said.

They've been telling us the same lying bullshit about computers and phones for 40 fucking years.

I have dealt with a massive number of Li-Ion batteries and never punctured one, always properly disposed of them.

Like, a lot of this shit isn't hard, and a lot of the pooh-poohing about safety comes from often are industry plants who basically exist to gatekeep people from being able to be in full control of the things they purchase.

Since the practice is largely a DIY process, there are no official statistics on the retrofitting industry in Latin America. Many retrofitting jobs are done “by tinkerers who seek to extend the life of their petrol cars since they can’t afford a new electric one,” Adolfo Rojas, president of the Association of Entrepreneurs to Promote Electric Vehicles in Peru, told Rest of World.

Hmmm, let's see if we can find more about this Rojas guy.

https://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/national-agency-pitched-to-advance-electromobility-in-peru

The creation of a national electromobility agency will be crucial to incorporate electric vehicles in Peru, according to local market executive Adolfo Rojas.

Rojas, advisory council president of the country’s electric vehicle business development and promotion association AEDiVE, made the comment during Prensa Grupo’s ElectroTransporte online event.

Agency participants would include public institutions, industry groups, associations, academia, and cooperation funds, he said.

A broader package of economic incentives will also be fundamental, from tax breaks to preferential insurance, added Rojas, who highlighted the opportunities from the build-out of electromobility for domestic industry, such as development of lithium batteries.

Another key driver will be the implementation of charging infrastructure, said Rojas, who announced that AEDiVE is drafting a related national expansion plan with highway concessionaires, power distributors and companies interested in installing such infrastructure that will be released in two months.

The energy and mines ministry recently released a draft decree to approve the regulation for the installation and operation of electromobility charging infrastructure.

No offense intended to Rojas, who I'm sure is a decent enough of a person, but the related article I found about him makes him certainly sound like he's a traditional business guy bureaucrat and so that says to me that at least part of the reason he speaks against conversions is because conversions impact all the business plans and bureaucracy he is working on.

By his LinkedIn, he's an executive of some type at Sustainablearth LATAM, a solar company.

Just personal opinion, Rojas is biased. Doesn't make him a bad person, but people within the industry generally don't like people fixing their own devices. That's a service they want people to have to pay for.

Ev Resto-mods are where it's at

Although safety is certainly a legitimate issue, I can almost guarantee that car manufacturers will use that as an excuse to kill this form of competition -- yet another way in which capitalism is dooming our species to extinction.

If I had the money and knew people who could do this type of stuff, you bet I'd wanna buy my favorite 90s vehicle and turn it into an EV

Edit:

Tried looking up the vehicle because I wanted to remember what it's called, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is, even after attempting to look it up. All I remember is that it was potentially a Chevrolet with 3 seats up front, 3 in the back, and a little divider thing in the middle of the back seats you could pull out.

I absolutely loved it and it was a sad day when we had to get rid of it. It may have been a safety hazard, with the back heating up and burning (thankfully it didn't actually reach the seats, just heated them up, or there could have been 3 burned minors, myself included), but I still love it since it was the family car.

I'm definitely gonna have to continue searching for the name, using my limited car knowledge.

Edit Edit:

I'm not a car person, so shoot me for this if you want, but it was actually a Chrysler Concord. Again, I'm not a car person, so I don't know much about vehicles other than basic things like how to change a tire or on changing the oil on a 2000s Toyota Town and Country.

My mechanically inclined father came to the rescue as to what it was.

I love my 2010 Mazda 3. It's basically the same platform as the Ford focus from the same year. If they were able to eventually make a Focus EV, then I'd bet it's possible to do the same with my Mazda.

Ay, yeah. Electric Fiero!

I stared at that thumbnail for a solid 10 seconds trying to figure out why there was a water cooled GPU in someone's trunk

In my country any modification of any importance is required to be signed off by a mechanical engineer. If I were that engineer, I would never sign any of these conversions. Too much liability, especially with old cars of unknown integrity.

Das awesome

I really wish I could afford an EV but it's just way out of my price range the damn things are so expensive and they don't come down in price all that much on the second hand market either.

I can't really even get anything from my current car except the scrap metal value. It still works it's just not a desirable vehicle.

So for me I'm much better off just keeping this current car until the maintenance of it becomes prohibitively expensive. That's the problem really, no one's been incentivized to buy electric vehicles unless they're in the market for a new car anyway, and have a lot of money so don't mind spending a bit extra, which is a really limited subset of the population.