When there is a demand to convert ICE cars, I think there will be options popping up. At the moment it might be too expensive for most people to convert. It is cheaper to pay the higher fuel price, but at some stage it will become more compelling to change.
Converting will never become mainstream, will take any bet you like.
Old cars will die, new ones will replace it.
I am somewhat resistant of changes that cost me extra money, yet leave me in exactly the same position I was before that.
Some years ago I ran into the philosophy of a man called āMr Money Mustacheā. That guy is extreme, but he also makes a lot of sense. He says simply that you never spend all your money (or even MORE than you have, aka borrow) on a car. While I am willing to borrow, I too have always insisted on large deposits and no balloon values. That means I donāt buy new. I honestly donāt know who can afford to spend a third of their monthly after-tax income on a car.
Not buying new means way way less money lost on depreciation and opportunity cost. It means buying in the sub-500k bracket. Right now, there isnāt an electrical car that fits the bill. There are a handful of second hand BMW i3s in the market, for around the price of a brand new Corolla.
You can shout all you want about how cheap the EV runsā¦ it kills itself in opportunity cost and devaluation. It reminds me of that time I compared house prices between Stellenbosch and a neighbouring town, and concluded that for the difference in price, I can buy a car and several years of fuelā¦ and have a bigger house to boot.
As the shiny new electrics come in, they will not find a home among people like me (who buy second hand). They will have to trickle down to us. Until then, I cannot imagine that the second-hand ICE market is going anywhereā¦
Gents, not to derail your discussionsā¦ā¦ if you read the beginning of this piece here, it is actually not about EVs per seā¦. but what EVs will cause locally and in Africa. I donāt really care much for EVs nor green stuff and the CO2 bumf is just a money making racket, in my humble opinion.
The issue is as ICE cars banning and demise gets nearer, and EVs start to dominate the World, our local production of the normal cars are in jeopardy. The parents like VW, BMW etc etc are having a hard time to invest in their home countries as it is, just look at the debt and dwindling sales figure Worldwide, straining profits more and more. And no more exports when the ICE cars are banned. Norway banned hybrids already.
The lats place in the World they will invest will likely be Africa because the investment is huge and the sales are small. On top of that, we have no local manufacturing of ant Lithium based cells to go into battery packs, nor and Electronic chip manufacturing. Do not know if there are any component manufacturers that currently have the capability to make any EV specific componentry.
So to my thinking, our manufacturing are going to be killed off locally when its no longer profitable. Will anybody invest in EV manufacturing locally?
This will then leave us in a bad spot, no new ICE made locally, and no ICE to import either. Will this happen tomorrow, no, but in a few short years it will start to happen, not all at once but slowlyā¦. and then suddenly.
We are ill prepared for this change and no real planning are happening that I am aware of. Us lot on here me thinks are a resourceful bunch, but most of the population may not be. Most of us will be able to at least slowly, charge a small EV if push comes to shove.
Groetnis
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Adding to what Sarel is pointing out, a disaster, recently someone bought a 2nd hand nice car.
Seller lied, the car was in an accident after the headlamp fell apart having been glued back.
That headlamp unit costs R16k new, the Xeon bulbs needed replacement too, another R8k
Then we āinvestigatedā more prices, so adding to Sarelās post above, what Iāve been seeing on the fringes, to keep later modelās 2nd hand vehicles on the road, parts and specialist workshops, is probably going to kill the 2nd hand car market,as the older simpler ICE vehicles are scrapped.
Basic stuff man, like headlamps ā¦ not to mention the computers in newer 2nd hand cars, the way some of these newer cars have integrated electronics.
Like the map system on Xtrail, stock standard SD card, map upgrade costs like R800, but it does not work. You need R3.5k to get one for the agents.
We also stumbled over these.
So manufacturing AND the 2nd hand car market ā¦ jinne.
I see it is a KIA. If you live in the USA, parts for Hyundai and KIA are cheap. You order online, they are easy to work on, etc etc. Lovely vehicles to have. Over here in SA, you need somethingā¦ āback order from Korea sir, should be here in 14 work daysā. I ended up ordering the parts I needed from an American site and shipping it via a forwarder. Still took ten days and was only a little bit cheaperā¦
My advice is to buy something boring and super common, like Corollas, Polos, that sort of thing. You break something, you go to a breakers yard and you get a second hand one. Donāt be smart and get a Kia Soul (like my wife just did). Not many of them on the road, even fewer in the scrapyards. Engine parts are very common (G4FG engine), body partsā¦ not so much 
I have a similar story. We used this service (they are in Vereeniging, but Iām going to be nice and not name namesā¦ you knowā¦ not in the mood for that sort of legal stuff) that allows you to buy a car from a distance. So if you cannot find the car you want locally, you can buy it in another province.
On the face of it, this is a really useful service, and one that a knowledgeable person could make a big success of. They send the cars to Dekra for a full test, they arrange the finance, they have the car cleaned if necessary, they license it, and they deliver it to your door. Sounds good, right? Well, if they actually did that.
Car arrives almost two weeks late from the original promise date. Car is a little dirty but initially we ignore that. License expired, no new plates, no temporary license. Go for a drive, feels fine, no problems. Get home, pull it in the garage, all excited. Later that day we open the rear right doorā¦ why is this thing so stiff!? Oh look at the terrible bodge job! Car was in an accidentā¦ and it was not disclosed.
And now there is a very long chain of people and nobody knows anything.
And since it is a rare model, no junkyard spares. Had to buy a brand new door at 12k and have it sprayed. 25k in work done to that car.
Got no assistance from the dealer. Ombudsman sided with the dealer who claimed the damage could have been repaired for 4k (you can hardly get a second hand door for the PREVIOUS model for 3.5kā¦ let alone paint it, but I digress). We ended up accepting a āgoodwill paymentā and that was thatā¦
I threw some video footage together, removed the sound.
But Iām wondering, what is going to happen to all the 2nd hand Mercās, BMWās, Touaregs, Xtrails etcā¦
The Corollas, Poloā etc are getting as integrated electronically and nice features, as the above.
The high tech is the problem, as the old ācoal burnersā are getting really scarce ā¦ oldā¦
Firstly, this scarcity will not happen tomorrow. Take Hyundai, they are still building new ICE engines and cars, but no more development of ICE at all, zip and zero since Dec 2021. So what about them in SA and Botswana and rest of Africa?
All imports, mostly from India if the internet is to be believedā¦. How long before the demand for ICE is so low from India, that they stop production. And the. The component manufacturers stop making parts due to low demand?
We just donāt know. However, repeat this scenario across al the manufacturers, and the smaller ones will give up first. Also their component suppliers will go away. Imagine the OEM no longer making the ICE cars, they would also now have zer0 incentive to supply parts. Now we have to find parts secondhand.
That will quickly become a nightmare as prices skyrocket due to demand and scarcity. All the body panels will be used up soon, all the parts prone to failure will quickly disappear.
The OEM will want to pivot quickly to EV or go bust, so no incentive left to supply parts or buy new parts to support old ICE vehicles, I bet out of warranty repair will quickly disappear.
Groetnis
This made me think of the plauge we had a while ago, where your car parts were stripped, thinks like bumpers, grills, headlights etc. while part somewhere.
Now imagine what will happen to the taxi fleets locallyā¦.
Groetnis
I think having two batteries so that one can charge at home and then get swopped out the next day is a great idea but just looking at how heavy my lithium batteries are you would need some serious muscle to swop out a 30 or 40kwh battery. This article sort of describes a power bank type battery that can be used to supplement your power when needed either at home or to your car.
For me bidirectional charging will change things. Being able to use your EV battery to supplement your home storage, and visa versa, is the key.
I still think that if EV-makers actually market their vehicles as a load-shedding solution (on top of being able to drive it to work), Iām sure a lot of people will consider it more favourably. At the moment most of them are saying ābut what about load shedding and my power bill is already so high it will never workā¦ā, which is a load of crap. I mean Iāve been plenty negative about EVs in this thread, but I do believe it will work if approached correctly. And right now I donāt think itās being approached correctly.
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Love it!!!
South Africans in general are just incredibly resistant to change. Will just take longer here.
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Hardegat is more like it. Just watch the comment section under any News24 article even remotely to do with vaccinationā¦ 
I used to go there every day for the entertainment valueā¦
Indeed!
Being in darkest Africa thereās probably good reason to be cautious.
However if change is forced on society itās amazing how fast it can happen. e.g. I have wondered how long it would have taken for work from home to have gained acceptance if Covid hadnāt turned our lives upside down. My guess is years and yearsā¦
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Oh I think it is way deeper than that. Itās hardwired into humans. Itās part of the ancient fight-or-flight response. When we donāt understand something, we experience it as a threat, pretty much like you might experience a predator in the wild. We then respond in the same manner as we did throughout history, we fight it, or we flee from it. And we make up reasons to justify our decisions.
And you are right. There is a good reason we act like that. For the most part, it keeps us aliveā¦
Humans are by our very nature, wired to follow routine, that is after we have established that routine. It provides a feeling of comfort, of safety and of purpose. We are creatures of habit.
Next we think in a linear fashion, just like nature likes to get things done, mostly linear. Time is linear, growth is liner, creating and building things are normally happening in a linear fashion.
In SA we do not have a huge market, for anything, on a World scale, our market is minuscule. Way back when, we were innovators and inventors, now not so much. We depend on the rest of the World for most things. We do not really build much here that is our own. Others determine what we build, make manufacture and the like. Rooivalk is a flop, Joule was a flop and our participation in the Airbus A400M Atlas program flopped. We were supposed to manufacture fuselage parts, we lost that contract after a while.
To me it looks like our problem is more one of not in control of our own destiny, hence others decide what happens locallyā¦ EVs is a good example here. The Chinese brands like BYD and others sell all over Africa, even in Zim. Locally Toyota announced the possible assembly of the Hybrid version of the Corolla Cross and may export that into Africa. Lots o ifs and butsā¦
Because of our Tax and grift, the Chinese have this far avoided SA for the most part.
Groetnis