Ford is making an electric crate motor...

[brokencase]

https://www.thedrive.com/news/42076/for ... it-at-sema

So - here's the question...

What would you do if the government cracked down on the antique and classic cars an mandated that they be converted to electric or otherwise must be destroyed (or parked into museums)?

Uh - Oh yes, don't give me that standard response... "I hope I don't live to see that day"

[andyofcolumbusmerkur]

[milehighXR]

To paraphrase the NRA:

If they outlaw ICEs only outlaws will drive ICEs...

I'll move to WY or some other podunk middle of nowhere, and grow my own ethanol fuel. Just like old Henry wanted it...

Though I have often thought that IF absolutely had no choice, and I could do it without all the wi-fi and $#!* that a Tesla swap might be neat. As long as I can still go 375mi on a single charge, and charge it full in 5 min like I can the current "battery"

[brokencase]

From my point of view the batteries are the issue. If Ford wants to sell this electric crate motor then they have to offer a battery/controller solution as well.

It is hard to put together an aftermarket battery solution that would cover all the cases.

At one point I was considering converting an MG midget to electric using two hub motors like
these...
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/group/ ... c76bnk54Ti

Basically I would throw out the rear axle/diff and replace it with a box section beam and mount the motors to the beam.

You then toss the driveshaft, trans, gas tank, engine, radiator etc...

But where do you find all the battery modules to fit in all these various empty spots?

You really have to fill in all these empty areas if you are to get the range desired and to keep weight distribution correct.

It is not really practical to build up your own packs from bare 18650 or 21170 cells. I've done this for electric bikes, but doing it for a car is
several magnitudes more difficult.

Some sort of modular "lego" type of battery solution is needed, that includes the BMS and thermal management.
No doubt - super expensive.

In addition this solution has to be "state by state" approved. In Pennsylvania, electric conversions have to get specially inspected in order to be permitted on the road. Redundant thermal battery management is something they want to see.

[thesameguy]

I think it's unlikely gasoline will ever be outlawed. More likely as electric cars gain market share it will eventually no longer make sense to build gas stations and then there will be a supply problem. Or, they will tax it into oblivion. I mean, they could have outlawed cigarettes but they just decided to make it prohibitively expensive to smoke.

I love ICEs in the same way I love watches or even guns. They are an amazing mechanical achievement full of interesting engineering and tactile feedback. But there's no long term for any of this stuff beyond curiosity and hobbyist interest. Nobody needs an ICE to get to work, a watch to tell time, and a handgun ain't gonna do $#!* against drone strikes, nausea rays, and terrifying robot dogs. I accept the reality. We like 'em because we like 'em.

50 years from now - maybe 30 years from now - enthusiasts will buy synthetic gasoline from the gasoline store and enjoy a weekend of motoring before putting the XR away and driving a Mach-e or whatever to work.

There are some cars I can't imagine converting to electric, but I've been seriously toying with converting my Falcon to electric. There are lots of neat kits repurposing Leaf and Tesla parts to do it. Just like some people wanna drive their Model A like Henry intended, others are happy to repower with a Pinto motor. There's no right answer when it comes to hobby and art.

[brokencase]

I am a firm believer that significant increases in the efficiency of the ICEs are still obtainable and should not be ignored.

There was an article in Popular Science or Popular Mechanics about 2 years ago about a new ICE engine called the "Omega Motor"

It was a rotary design utilizing a common rotating assembly, where the first section would compress air into an intermediate chamber,
then this would be released via a port into the combustion section. The combustion section had a long rotating stroke.

They claimed about a 30% improvement above convention ICE's. I believed it.

Sadly I am having a hard time finding a link to the company's website.

[thesameguy]

Sure, there are lots of efficiency improvements to be had, The new Achates motor is pretty amazing.

But none of this will ever touch electricity, even electricity generated from fossil fuel powered plants. A car is like 30% efficient. Even if you could boost that 30% you'd be at 40%. A modern efficient power plant runs at about 60% efficiency. Making it more difficult is exhaust treatment to clean up the rest is a lot less efficient and harder to maintain at small scale than it is at large scale. A billion cars running around with catalytic converters gets nowhere near the same result as a gigantic combined cycle plant cleaning up its waste. That doesn't even take into account the actual effort of distributing gasoline - we dig holes, build tanks, send trucks all over the place solely for the purpose of running cars. Electricity powers virtually everything *except* cars and you don't need to dig holes and send trucks all over the place, because electricity distributor is fixed, multipurpose, and reusable infrastructure. And all these overlooks what IMO is the gold standard for an electric vehicle future - plugging your car into your home or office and charging it from the electricity generated by solar cells on top. Or wind. Or hydro. Or even nukes. I never paid a dime to recharge my electric car because the solar at home took care of that for me. My next electric car - hopefully - won't even need to plug in at all as it carries its solar array with it.

I don't think there is any discussion where gasoline beats electricity on efficiency. The discussion (IMO) is the lifespan/waste scenario from electric cars - batteries, etc. Nobody knows what that looks like. Current evidence seems to support that EV batteries last way longer than expected, and there are increasing reuse/recycle opens (eg Tesla Powerwall) but it's a bit scary to think of what happens when 10 billion pounds of li-ion needs to be dealt with.

[milehighXR]

The biggest issue I have with electric cars is there is no infrastructure for them, and I'm not talking about a lack of charging stations, but that is part of it. The big issue is the power grid is not capable of supporting the power we're gonna need. Look at Cali, and now Texas. Blackouts due to freezing temps, or too many people running a/c. And if we use nothing but renewables, and don't build any more nukes, we'll never have the power to distribute. We have plenty of infrastructure for gasoline, and even e-85. A properly tuned e-85 conversion will only lose about 10-15% mpg over gasoline, is higher octane, and burns cleaner than gasoline. Plus it would give farmers something to plant. Do I think corn is the right feedstock, no. There's far better stocks out there, including sunchokes.

My intent, once the car is done, is to drive my XR daily until I die, I can't afford fuel, or they outlaw it, and I can't grow my own fuel off grid in WY cuz "she who must be obeyed" won't consent to moving there just so I can drive my first car....

[thesameguy]

The Texas and California problems are two different issues and largely not affected by electric cars. The Texas issue was failure to plan for unusual weather, and the California problem is *primarily* $#!%^& management from PG&E - they bonus the c-suite annually while letting their infrastructure literally fall apart. (I was involved in those lawsuits, I read the discovery) SCE is in a somewhat similar but less dramatic situation. Well-run utilities like SMUD have been unaffected by these problems.

In any case, the primary use pattern for electric cars is charging at night, when usage is very low. To that end, electric cars can be helpful by creating a revenue stream that makes better use of existing infrastructure (by using it off hours) and encourages investment. Just like roads, electricity usage typically has insane peaks during a fraction of the day and goes under utilized the rest of the time. Electric cars help smooth that out. Nobody is charging their car during peak hours... They are stuck in rush hour.

The trifecta here is electric cars, off hours charging and a distributed generation network (eg solar cells). That, done on a large scale, is magic. Throw in recycled EV batteries for fixed storage (Tesla Powerwall) and you've created a very resilient configuration.