“Why can’t you take your car into the garage, have the petrol engine ripped out and stick an electric motor in there instead?” Makes sense. Logical. Instant fix to the emissions problem. How hard can it be? I’d do it myself. Here’s what you do:

Open the bonnet. Always a good start. Remove the engine and… all the ‘bits’ attached to it. Like exhaust pipes, gearbox… other things. And put it to one side.

Buy an electric motor. On Amazon, they probably sell them. Put the motor into the engine compartment. Wire it up to the wheels. Insert 47 AA batteries and off you bloody go.

No congestion charge, no road tax and no emissions. When the batteries die, about half way down your road, just replace them.

I spoke to a guy last week who is having his camper van ‘converted’. It will henceforth be known as ‘Shlomo the Van’ as removal of exhaust pipes counts as circumcision. Sorry, conversion joke. He actually converted it to electric. It cost £30k. I hope he’s very happy with it.

This problem basically polarises the market in new electric cars.

It is very challenging to take an existing car; body, chassis, frame, and ‘make it electric’. Though most manufacturers, in their panic to jump on the holiest of holy bandwagons (electric ones) have done precisely that. Take a Volvo X40 body, put a couple of electric motors in and jam all the batteries you can in every space you can find. Mercedes have done the same with their EQA. Hyundai have done the same, Kia, lots of them.

The way to build electric cars is to start from scratch. Then you can be clever. Like Tesla. Like the BMW I3. Like the VW ID3. Then you can put the batteries in the floor. This keeps them out of the way and gives the car a very low centre of gravity, which makes it handle like… like an electric car. And you actually design the thing with all the empty spaces in mind, extending the size of the interior because there is no engine block and gearbox. Using existing bodies does not allow this.

The problem is that some of the ‘old’ type electric cars, made with existing parts, are very pretty. The new ones have a space-age look. Which I love, but Mel doesn’t. And its her car. Apparently.

So do you go with old-tech-re-vamp? Or drive a space ship to Brent Cross?

First world problems.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx