I'm seeing more and more videos and posts about people converting classic cars from their original ICE engine to an Electric Motor.
Some are proud for having done so in a single day challenge, others for having overcome the technical challenges and fitted motor and battery pack on a chassis that was not designed at all for such conversion. 
​They do spend thousands of dollars, euros or pounds on the conversion, in the range of 15,000 or more.

​The converted classic car drives well with some immediate advantages:

• Getting the rid of the ICE engine maintenance and difficulty to find parts for it;
• Getting the rid of the gasoline problems with time, specifically when turning into varnish inside the carburetor and tank of the classic car.

The list of PROS ends here unfortunately, and here's why:

Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) or simply EVs, use a lithium battery pack to store electric energy that will be used to move the vehicle by the means of an electric motor.
The battery pack has a limited lifetime of 8-10 years.
A classic car is a vehicle that has more than 40 years of age as a minimum, with the most interesting ones being 50 or 60 years old at least.
They are renovated and stored indoors for years, so they can gain in value and be sold at a higher price by changing ownership from one collector to another.
Powering them with a battery pack that requires replacement every 10 years at best, is therefore obviously a major problem, as this requires replacing it, while it accounts for not less than 60% of the conversion cost. 
You might not find a replacement with the exact same dimensions, and as a result, you'd have again to consider an adaptation and modification, eventually consider dismantling the battery pack and replacing the lithium batteries inside, which is equivalent to an engine rebuild on ICE engines.
Engine rebuild occurs once in the lifetime of a classic car, upon renovation, while battery pack replacement would then have to be considered several times during the lifetime of the car, or else it won't be in a working condition.

Battery packs for EV conversion:

Electric vehicles are designed and manufactured by auto makers to have their battery pack fitted to the bottom of the car chassis, beneath the seats, for two specific reasons:

• Keep the center of gravity of the vehicle as low as possible
• Protect the battery pack and its wiring in case of crash, thus having it fixed within the safest and strongest part of a car. We're talking about a powerful battery that operates on a much higher voltage than the usual 12V of a regular car.

Below image courtesy of NISSAN USA

When converting a classic car to an EV, I'm seeing the battery pack being fixed in the engine compartment in order to put some weight there, and keep the same loading of the car suspension, compared to the ICE engine and its heavy gearox.
This is indeed a dangerous setup and architecture, since the battery will be directly involved in case of a mild crash. The deformed car chassis doesn't need necessarily to hit the battery or its wires, there's already a danger resulting from the battery pack being kicked out of its supports by the centrifugal energy and hitting the engine hood or car body.
This creates a dangerous situation where the converted classic can catch fire, especially old cars crash very badly even at low speeds!

For a budget of typically 15K of whatever currency like USD, EUR or GBP, are you sure you will sell your classic car at its current foreseen value + 15K or more?
There are no transactions and stats involving converted classics and nothing is so sure. Collectors won't necessarily invest in a converted vehicle for the below reasons:

• It is very much far from the original
• They have to consider a costly battery pack replacement every decade or before re-selling the car
• They have to keep charging the vehicle even if unused, not to let the battery deteriorate
• Conversion kit parts are not guaranteed to remain available for that exact kit, one would need to replace part or all of the kit components upon a failure of its electronics
• Etc.

The costly conversion kit also includes a cheap instrument panel to fit in replacement of the valuable original and beautiful instrumentation of the car. Imagine removing the superbly designed panel of a Mini Cooper, Beetle or 2CV and replacing it with the below EV kit instruments!

I see some blogs and websites talking about "driving your classic car daily"; seriously?
A classic car that isn't limited to a matter of 100 to 500 km yearly at max, and that is not driven on a sunny Sunday from time to time just for the fun of it, or for maintaining it in a good working condition, isn't a classic anymore. This is a renovated old vehicle that you drive daily, and therefore, which value is diminishing daily upon each km. You'd be also taking the risk of accidents, making it much difficult to repair due to the lack of car body parts or even headlights, bumpers, etc.

Do not think about the brand new battery, electric motor and reducing gear (wrongly called gearbox) of an EV kit as an upgrade to your "classic" car, or a mean to drive it on daily basis, without failures! What about suspension, brakes, steering, car exterior body, car interior, upholstery, windows, doors, rubber parts, roof and hood paint, etc., do these suffer no wear or failures? 

• Remove the back seats and fit the battery pack in there, eventually just behind the back seats if your car has a giant trunk like sedans.
• Fix the battery pack at the lowest possible level, i.e. directly to the bottom of the cabin
• Make sure the battery pack body and your car chassis are mechanically, thermally and electrically bound together.
• Add a temperature sensor to the hottest part of the body of the battery pack and a temperature gauge to your dashboard so you can monitor the battery temperature while driving or charging
• Do not install the charging terminal on the front or rear of the vehicle, rather on any side

You may buy your EV car conversion kit here:

Image courtesy of Renault Dubai

EVs in any of their version, EV, BEV, PHEV, FCEV, PZEV, etc. are promoted like a solution to all our pollution problems or at least the ones resulting from cars.
Cities and countries are considering the ban of ICE vehicles (Internal Combustion Engine) starting from dates that are so close and ranging from 2025 to 2050; No doubt we're like living a green revolution and an early happening of the future but are EVs really environment friendly?

Fully battery powered EVs often called BEVs rely on the power used to recharge them for being or not environment friendly.
Let's make it easy and consider for a while that we're now all driving BEVs. 

At the planet level and since since 64% of the energy on the planet is still produced by fossil fuels, weather liquid, gaseous or solid (2018 stats: 38% Coal, 23% Gas, 3% Oil, source iea.org), then one can easily tell that such vehicles are "64% emission vehicles" and not zero emission vehicles.
​
But is it as simple?
​
First, and at a local level, this simplistic perception can change to better or worse: take the Canadian example where the energy mix for generating electricity is as follows:

Electricity sources in Canada (2018):

If all Canadians were to drive BEVs, then cars in Canada would be 19% emission vehicles. That's already quite better knowing that there are indeed counter-examples which are worse, not better.

​Second, and coming back to the planet level, one should not forget that gas is a particularly clean source of energy burning better than gasoline or diesel while the efficiency of a utility size power plant is also higher than the one of a small ICE engine; That makes it better to shift the combustion away from cars and rely on the grid. To complete the efficiency comparison, the electric power train takes it over by far on the ICE power train which adds to the overall gain. 

One major issue remains however: how will utilities cope with the increased demand on electricity when a significant amount of electric vehicles will end up hitting the roads? How will the energy mix be impacted? Will it profit to the low carbon sources or to the fossil fuel plants?

Third, and regardless of the extents to which BEVs will end up being cleaner or not, a major advantage will remain and is that cars won't pollute locally anymore, rather add on the pollution generated by the power plants. 
This is good news for cities in particular, houses and apartments on each side of a road, pedestrians, bikers, etc.
It could solve partially at least SMOG problems, but this also extends to other kinds of pollution since BEVs generate less noise than ICE vehicles.

​Hybrid vehicles do combine an electric motor to a petrol one which result is as efficient as a diesel engine. Any investment to keep making cleaner diesels would have been probably better.
Hybrid vehicles where the electric motor is combined to a diesel engine do constitute a progress over ICE  as they generate even less CO2.
The problem for both relies in the fact that the technology consists of coupling an electric motor to an ICE which is technically complicated, expensive and leads to a heavier vehicle.

""​These are hybrid vehicles with an oversized battery that cannot be recharged by the only electricity generated when decelerating or by any recharging device built-in the car itself.
You need then to plug them in for recharging the battery that is however not as large as the one of a BEV.
So you drive a few tens of miles as a 64% emission vehicle, then hundreds of miles as an ICE vehicle.
One wonders if such technology is really worth it. Why not having then a larger battery and getting the rid completely of the ICE even if he range will be lesser?
On the positive side, think about commuters who would cross the city on the electric motor then drive on the highway thanks to the ICE...or vice-versa.
Car owners living in suburbs could then benefit from such technology provided the total distance they cross daily is more than what a BEV can offer.

UPDATE: The above definitely falls in positive and optimistic grounds if car manufacturers start a technological revolution like the 2020 Peugeot 3008 Hybrid 4 example. 
Instead of combining the electric motor to an already over-powerful ICE engine, Peugeot took advantage of the electric motor to downsize the ICE to a 1.2 petrol engine. Together, they provide a respectable power while a second electric motor has been added to the rear train for even more pollution-free power and at the same time, a "transmission free" AWD "transmission"! The result is 300 hp for 49g/Km of CO2 emissions in real driving and 29g/Km in the official WLTP test! This is what technology should be about, let's hope that other auto makers from outside the PSA brands will propose and generalize such ultra-low emission designs.

FCEVs are electric vehicles. Their power train is pure electric.
The electricity is not provided by a battery that temporarily stores the grid power, rather a static electricity generator built in the vehicle.
The so called fuel cell, requires a renewable fuel, hydrogen.
When turned into electricity, hydrogen combines to oxygen and the vehicle emits H2O or water vapor if you prefer.
This seems to be the ideal mean of transportation...provided storing and distributing the highly explosive hydrogen are mastered and made available everywhere, also that such highly explosive gas does not lead to explosive crashes.
But things are not as ideal as they would, since water vapor is a greenhouse gas exactly like CO2. CO2 emission by cars had already been boosted by emission standards imposed on ICE engines which worsened the global warming; the new debate is then about measuring how H2O emissions emanating from FCEVs could impact the global warming.
The choice is still between more pollutants and less greenhouse gases or less pollutants against more greenhouse gases...

Since individual transports cannot be completely eradicated regardless if the vehicle is self-driving or not, the various power trains known to engineers and scientists can only generate pollutants or greenhouse gases which are both harmful to our closed system planet.
The solution would consist of rethinking vehicles as a transport mean and come back to the basics of physics and common sense:

• lighter vehicles
• less complicated technologies
• less powerful vehicles which installed power matches the one that will be effectively used by the driver. 
• slower vehicles which performance is just enough to stay within the speed limits and road conditions
• better aerodynamics
• enhanced road surface and tires offering less friction
• eradicating any luxury and unnecessary items from vehicles including devices as simple as power windows
• etc.

Thanks for reading...
Antoine HARB