this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
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Very, very fair points. I wondered sometimes why no enterprising manufacturer simply took an existing ICE car and made an EV conversion kit. Like a conversion kit for a 2010 Honda Civic, take out the ICE engine etc. and replace it all with electric. That's the car we want.
Because that kit would cost around what a new Civic would cost, and you're going to get a 16 year old car made worse.
EV components don't really swap into the spots that ICE components do. An engine is relatively large, a motor is relatively small. A gas tank is relatively small, a battery is relatively large. Most ICEs designed from the ground up use a "skateboard"-like chassis with the battery taking up basically all the volume below the floor. The motor can be tucked away somewhere, and then the body built on top. You don't need the volume in the nose for the engine so you get a frunk. a 15 year old ICE car didn't portion out the room for the batteries, so you've got some of the area under the trunk occupied by the gas tank. That's about the volume that the batteries in a golf cart take up.
Anyone who's capable of designing and manufacturing that kit might as well go into production of new cars.
The thing is they do make the parts, but it's a custom job and generally changing from a mass-manufactured EV to a hand-crafted car. The savings in reusing the reusable portions of the car are more than offset by the labor associated with putting them in. So it's only really reserved for 'classics' with some iconic design, and even then the person risks enraging fans of the car who find it heretical to rip out their engines.