Old cars retrofitted with electric kits to check pollution
NEWDELHI: In what could give fresh life to cars that will have to be taken out of the national capital for their age, a team of researchers has succeeded in retrofitting old vehicles with electric motors and battery packs – turning them into zeroemission vehicles that could one day be roadworthy.
Petrol cars that are more than 15 years old and diesel vehicles that were made over 10 years ago are not legal in the national capital, a rule made in order to curb air pollution. Nearly 1.1 million private fourwheelers come under this ban, leaving policymakers and administrators with a massive logistics challenge, including the question about what to do with these vehicles.
The developments by a team of researchers from Dehradun’s Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), a governmentfunded organisation under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), may have the answer.
“We have replaced the engines of at least two cars with electric motors and balancing equipment, while keeping the body intact. The engine and fuel tank have been removed, and since it would be emission free, the tail pipe has been removed,” said Anjan Ray, director of IIP.
“We are soon going to start a pilot project in Delhi,” he said.
The retrofitted vehicles are currently being tested at the Dehradun campus, and the researchers are using a host of different batteries for the trials.
The vehicles are being run on lithium ion batteries. “While such batteries have also been developed by Central Electrochemical Research Institute (CECRI), another CSIR lab at Karaikudi in Tamil Nadu, we are also coming up with a solarpowered EV charging station to ensure a fully operational ecosystem for users,” said Poonam Gupta, head of IIP’s Automotive Fuel and Lubricant Applications division.
One of the scientists said the electric cars would also be significantly cheaper to run, costing as little as ~58 for every 100km, as compared to the approximately ~458 that it costs to run a petrol vehicle over the same distance.
The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has already sanctioned money for a pilot project from the Environment Protection Charge (EPC) funds. EPC is a surcharge collected from sale of diesel vehicles that have an engine larger than 2000cc capacity, and it is meant to support projects that could provide a solution to Delhi-NCR’s pollution problem.
“With the present retrofitting approach, cars would be able to reach a maximum speed of about 60km/hour. This can be adapted to higher speeds in future if desired. As of now, we have tried this out only on BS-II and BS-III cars. We are yet to try this on two wheelers and heavy weight vehicles such as trucks. But it can be done with some tweaks and additional features,” said Robindro Lairenlakpam, a senior scientist who is heading the project.
According to IIP scientists, this would not just reduce the vehicular pollution but would also be economical and save urban space from becoming home to large junkyards of scrapped cars.
The retrofit could cost around ₹1.5 lakh – not accounting for the battery which is likely to add a significant chunk to the price – but scientists said those numbers will come down once production is on a larger scale.