[zitterbewegung]

Retrofits for cars are around $50000 to make them barely street legal. You are looking at double the price for that retrofit and you might not get the range. You also have to buy a car (some retrofits on YouTube get around this by buying broken cars and restoring them) buying a broken car could be done if you don't have to do much work or if the engine is broken already.

[gbear605]

More realistically, a car manufacturer could make an EV that is basically a vintage car but made to modern standards. Obviously you can’t make the exact same car if you want to have things like crumple zones, but a lot of the changes to car designs have been for fuel efficiency and that’s not as important in an EV. And things like huge internal displays or automatic doors are just preference.

[datavirtue]

The changes to ICE vehicle designs for fuel efficiency are needed even more and are made more drastic for EVs. EV designs have painful, often ugly, aerodynamic considerations that have to be made. They go so far as to let aerodynamics completely dictate wheel design.

Your 1967 Pontiac GTO sitting on Kragers isnt going to go very far on batteries.

[M95D]

Yeah, but due to range and slow charging vs. refilling, electric cars are mostly used for city/commuting, where speed isn't that high to make a difference in aerodynamics.

[ahartmetz]

Well, at least crumple zones are much easier when you don't have a fat chunk of metal (engine and gearbox) competing for space.

[maxerickson]

The "fuel efficiency" of an EV translates more or less directly into the cost of a major component.

You can sacrifice range of course.

[darby_eight]

You don't need to retrofit, you can just build a reasonably-featured car to begin with. I imagine most people just want a corolla with a battery (or cheaper).

[mikro2nd]

Trouble with my ('95) Corolla is that it's the body that's showing its age. (Rust, and not the good kind.) The ICE is just fine and probably good for another 1/2-million km, but the whole thing has got to go soon.

[datavirtue]

Why let your vehicle rust?

[mikro2nd]

"Let it rust"? If you live near the sea, cars rust and there's not a lot you can do about it. You can attend to visible rust timeously, but there are plenty of hollow spaces where it can fester for years, all unnoticable, before it pops out through the paintwork.

[mikestew]

You assume that it is a matter of choice?