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A little insulation goes a long way toward decarbonizing.
When you think about ways to decarbonize, your mind will likely go straight to shiny new machines — an electric vehicle, solar panels, or an induction stove, perhaps. But let’s not forget the low-tech, low-hanging fruit: your home itself.
Adding insulation, fixing any gaps, cracks or leaks where air can get out, and perhaps installing energy efficient windows and doors are the necessary first steps to decarbonizing at home — though you may also want to consider a light-colored “cool roof,” which reflects sunlight to keep the home comfortable, and electric panel and wiring upgrades to support broader electrification efforts.
Getting started on one or multiple of these retrofits can be daunting — there’s lingo to be learned, audits to be performed, and various incentives to navigate. Luckily, Heatmap is here to help.
Cora Wyent is the Director of Research at Rewiring America, where she conducts research and analysis on how to rapidly electrify the entire economy.
Joseph Lstiburek is the founding principal at the Building Science Corporation, a consulting firm focused on designing and constructing energy efficient, durable, and economic buildings.
Lucy de Barbaro is the founder and director of Energy Efficiency Empowerment, a Pittsburgh-based organization that seeks to transform the home renovation process and help low and middle-income homeowners make energy efficiency improvements.
Definitively, yes! When people hear the word “insulation” they often think of how it can protect them from the cold. And while it certainly does do that, insulation’s overall role is to slow the transfer of heat both out of your home when it’s chilly and into your home when it’s hot. That means you won’t need to use your air conditioning as much during those scorching summer days or your furnace as much when the temperatures drop.
Quite possibly! The most definitive way to know if your home could be improved by weatherization is by getting a home energy audit —- more on that below. While a specific level of insulation is required for all newly constructed homes, these codes and standards are updated frequently. So if you’re feeling uncomfortable in your living space, or if you think your heating and cooling bills are unusually high, it’s definitely worth seeing what an expert thinks. And if you’re interested in getting electric appliances like a heat pump or induction stove, some wiring upgrades will almost certainly be necessary.
Energy efficient appliances like electric heat pumps or induction stoves are fantastic ways to decarbonize your life, but serve a fundamentally different purpose than most of the upgrades that we’re going to talk about here. When you get better air sealing, insulation, windows, or doors, what you’re doing is essentially regulating the temperature of your home, making you less reliant on energy intensive heating and cooling systems. And while this can certainly lead to savings on your energy bill and a positive impact on the environment at large, these upgrades will also allow you to simply live more comfortably.
This is the starting point for making informed decisions about any energy efficiency upgrades that you’re considering. During a home energy audit, a certified auditor (sometimes also referred to as an energy assessor or rater or verifier) will inspect your home to identify both the highest-impact and most cost-effective upgrades you can make, including how much you stand to save on your energy bills by doing so.
Wyent told me checking with your local utility is a good place to start, as many offer low-cost audits. Even if your utility doesn’t do energy assessments, they may be able to point you in the direction of local auditors or state-level resources and directories. The Residential Energy Services Network also provides a directory of certified assessors searchable by location, as does the Department of Energy’s Energy Score program, though neither list is comprehensive.
Audits typically cost between $200 and $700 depending on your home’s location, size, and type, as well as the scope of the audit. Homeowners can claim 30% of the cost of their audit on their federal taxes, up to $150. To be eligible, make sure you find a certified home energy auditor. The DOE provides a list of recognized certification programs.
Important: Make sure the auditor performs both a blower door test and a thermographic inspection. These diagnostic tools are key to determining where air leakage and heat loss/gain is occurring.
Your energy audit isn’t the only thing eligible for a credit. The 25C Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit allows homeowners to claim up to 30% of the cost of a variety of home upgrades, up to a combined total of $1,200 per year. This covers upgrading your insulation, windows, doors, skylights, electrical wiring, and/or electrical panel. Getting an energy audit is also included in this category.
While $1,200 is the max amount you can claim for all retrofits combined, certain renovations come with their own specific limitations. Let’s break it down:
State and local incentives:
Depending on where you live, there may be additional state and local incentives, and we suggest asking your contractor what you are eligible for. But since incentive programs change frequently, it’s a good idea to do your own research too. Get acquainted with Energy Star, a joint program run by the Environmental Protection Agency and the DOE which provides information on energy efficient products, practices, and standards. On Energy Star’s website, you can search by zip code for utility rebates that can help you save on insulation, windows, and electrical work.
“Starting by looking at your local utility programs can be a great resource too, because utilities offer rebates or incentives for weatherizing your home or installing a new roof,” said Wyent.
Everyone wants to minimize the number of times they break open or drill into their walls. To that end, it’s useful to plan out all the upgrades you might want to get done over the next five to 10 years to figure out where efficiency might fit in.
Some primary examples: Installing appliances like a heat pump, induction stove, or Level 2 EV charger (all of which you can read more about in our other guides) often require electrical upgrades. Even if you don’t plan to get any of these new appliances now, pre-wiring your home to prepare for their installation (with the exception of a heat pump — see our heat pump guide for more info on that) will save you money later on.
De Barbaro also notes that if you’re planning to repaint your walls anytime soon, this would also be a convenient time to add insulation, as that involves drilling holes which then need to be patched and repainted anyway. Likewise, if you were already planning to replace your home’s siding, this would be a natural time to insulate. Finally, if you’re planning to get a heat pump in the coming years, getting better insulation now will ensure this system is maximally effective.
Conversely, if you’re cash-strapped, spreading out electrical and weatherization upgrades over the course of a few years allows you to claim the full $1,200 tax credit every year. Whether those tax savings are enough to cover the added contractor time and clean-up costs, though, will depend on the particulars of your situation.
“Come in with a plan and talk to the contractor about everything that you want to do in the future, not just immediately,” said Wyent.
Unlike solar installers, which are often associated with large regional and national companies, the world of weatherization and electrical upgrades is often much more localized, meaning you’ll need to do a bit of legwork to verify that the contractors and installers you come across are reliable.
Wyent told me she typically starts by asking friends, family, and neighbors for references, as well as turning to Google and Yelp reviews. Depending on where you live and what type of work you want done, your local utility may also offer incentives for weatherization and electrification upgrades, and can possibly provide a list of prescreened contractors who are licensed and insured for this type of work.
These questions will help you vet contractors and gain a better understanding of their process regardless of the type of renovation you’re pursuing.
Common wisdom says you should always get three quotes. But that doesn’t mean you should automatically choose the cheapest option. Lstiburek says the old adage applies: “If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true.” Be sure that your contractors and installers are properly licensed and insured and read the fine print of your contract. Beyond this, how to find qualified professionals and what to ask largely depends on the type of upgrade you are pursuing. So let’s break it down, starting with the biggest bang for your buck.
Air sealing and insulating your home is usually the number one way to increase its energy efficiency. Energy Star says nine out of 10 homes are underinsulated, and many also have significant air leaks. In general, homes lose more heating and cooling energy through walls and attics than through windows and doors, so air sealing and adding insulation in key areas should be your first priority.
“People don't realize how collectively, small holes everywhere add up. So on average here in Pennsylvania, typically those holes would add up to the surface of three sheets of paper, continuously open to the outdoors,” said de Barbaro.
Determining where air is escaping is the purpose of the blower door test and the thermographic inspection, so after your energy audit you should have a good idea of where to begin with these retrofits. This guide from the Department of Energy is a great resource on all the places in a home one might consider insulating.
Choosing an insulation type:
Every home is different, and the type of insulation you choose will depend on a number of factors including where you’re insulating, whether that area is finished or unfinished, what R-Value is right for your climate, and your budget. You can check out this comprehensive list of different insulation types to learn about their respective advantages and use cases. But when it comes to attic rafters and exterior walls, De Barbaro said that one option rises above the rest.
“The magic word here is dense-packed cellulose insulation!” De Barbaro told me.
This type of insulation (which falls under the “loose fill and blown-in” category) is made from recycled paper products, meaning it has very low embodied carbon emissions. It’s also cheap and effective. For exterior walls and attic rafters, be sure to avoid loose-fill cellulose, as that can settle and become less effective over time — although for attic floors, loose-fill works well. Both are installed by drilling holes into the wall or floor space and blowing the insulation in under pressure.
We recommend discussing all of these options with your contractor, but here are the other materials you’re most likely to come across:
In addition to asking friends, family, and your local utility for contractor recommendations, Energy Star specifically recommends these additional resources where you can find licensed and insured contractors for insulation work.
While air sealing and insulation should definitely be number one on your weatherization checklist, plenty of heat gets lost through windows, doors, and skylights, as well. Single pane glass is a particularly poor insulator, and while fewer houses these days have it, upgrading to double or triple pane windows or skylights can be a big energy saver. Likewise, steel or fiberglass doors are much better insulators than traditional wooden doors.
But be warned: These can be pricey upgrades. The cost of installing windows alone ranges from hundreds of dollars up to $1,500 per window, and many homes have ten or more. It’s unlikely you’ll fully recoup the outlay through your energy savings, so before going about these retrofits, be sure that you’ve taken care of the easy stuff first.
Once you’ve done your research, it’s time to schedule a consultation with an installer, who can help you refine your project needs, discuss design and installation options, and provide you with a quote.
“So if you pick a Marvin window, make sure that you have a Marvin certified installer in your location, installing the Marvin window according to the Marvin instructions.” said Lstiburek.
Insulating your attic floor or your roof rafters is the best way to ensure that your home is sealed off from the elements. But if you live in a hot climate and need a new roof anyway (most last 25 to 50 years), then you might consider getting a cool roof, which can be made from a variety of materials and installed on almost any slope. However, they won’t lead to energy efficiencies in all geographies, so be sure to do your research beforehand!
Last but certainly not least is a retrofit that’s a little different from the rest. Unlike getting insulation, new windows, or a new roof, upgrading your wiring or electric panel doesn’t lead to greater energy efficiency by regulating the temperature of your home. What it does instead is enable greater energy efficiency by making it possible to operate an increasing number of electrified appliances and devices in your house.
For example, getting an electric or induction stove or dryer, a standard heat pump, a heat pump water heater, or an electric vehicle charger will require that you add new electric circuits to support these devices. And as these new loads add up, you may need to install a larger electric panel to support it all.
After sourcing electrician recommendations from family and friends, a good place to turn is Rewiring America’s contractor directory network. (Rewiring America is also a sponsor of Decarbonize Your Life.)Networks in your area can then provide you with a list of qualified electricians.
“Most people are really only using somewhere around 40% of what their current panels space. So you can actually add a fair amount of new circuits to your existing panel and upgrade your wiring while not having to upgrade your panel at all,” Wyent said.
Once you have three quotes in hand, all that’s left to do is evaluate your options, choose a contractor or installer, and sign a contract. Cost will likely be a major factor in the decision, but you’ll also want to ensure that the cheapest quote doesn’t mean corners will be cut. Here’s what to look out for.
Pay close attention to warranties. This applies both to the warranty for the work being performed and to the warranties for the products themselves. If an installation job or a product is well priced but comes with a short warranty, this should give you pause.
Avoid “same day signing specials.” If you’re being rushed into signing a contract, this is also a bad sign. Be sure to read the fine print — most cost estimates should be good for a few weeks at minimum.
Get specific. Your quotes should specify the type of work being performed, the scope of the work, cost (broken down by materials, labor, permits, and other expenses), payment method, and a tentative timeline for completion. A quote is much less formal than a contract, so if some of this information isn’t provided up front, don’t hesitate to ask for clarification so that you can make apples-to-apples comparisons between different contractors.
When you get a contract in hand, double check that:
Then it’s time to sign, sit back, and enjoy the soothing sounds of hammering, drilling, insulation blowing, and wire tinkering, content in knowing that you’re decarbonizing your home down to its very bones!
Now that you’re living comfortably in a maximally energy efficient home, you’re probably wondering when you’ll start seeing all those incentives you researched pay off. First off, know that you must wait until all renovations are complete and paid for to claim your federal tax credit. That means that even if you purchased new windows this year, if you have them installed in 2025, you’ll file for a tax credit with your 2025 return. Here’s how to go about it.
For state and local incentives, check the website for your local utility as well your local and state government and energy office to see what documentation is required. When in doubt, keep all of your records and receipts!
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Businesses were already bracing for a crash. Then came another 50% tariff on Chinese goods.
When I wrote Heatmap’s guide to driving less last year, I didn’t anticipate that a good motivation for doing so would be that every car in America was about to get a lot more expensive.
Then again, no one saw the breadth and depth of the Trump administration’s tariffs coming. “We would characterize this slate of tariffs as ‘worse than the worst case scenario,’” one group of veteran securities analysts wrote in a note to investors last week, a sentiment echoed across Wall Street and reflected in four days of stock market turmoil so far.
But if the economic downturn has renewed your interest in purchasing a bike or e-bike, you’ll want to act fast — and it may already be too late. Because Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs stack on top of his other tariffs and duties, the U.S. bicycle trade association PeopleForBikes calculated that beginning on April 9, the day the newest tariffs come into effect, the duty on e-bikes from China would be 79%, up from nothing at all under President Biden. The tariff on most non-electric bikes from China, meanwhile, would spike to 90%, up from 11% on January 1 of this year. Then on Tuesday, the White House announced that it would add another 50% tariff on China on top of that whole tariff stack, starting Wednesday, in retaliation for Beijing’s counter-tariffs.
Prior to the latest announcement, Jay Townley, a founding partner of the cycling industry consulting firm Human Powered Solutions, had told me that if the Trump administration actually followed through on a retaliatory 50% tariff on top of those duties, then “we’re out of business because nobody can afford to bring in a bicycle product at 100% or more in tariffs.”
It’s difficult to overstate how existential the tariffs are for the bicycle industry. Imports account for 97% of the bikes purchased in the United States, of which 87% come from China, making it “one of the most import-dependent and China-dependent industries in the U.S.,” according to a 2021 analysis by the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which advocates for trade-protectionist policies.
Many U.S. cycling brands have grumbled for years about America’s relatively generous de minimis exemption, a policy of waiving duties on items valued at less than $800. The loophole — which is what enables shoppers to buy dirt-cheap clothes from brands like Temu, Shein, and Alibaba — has also allowed for uncertified helmets and non-compliant e-bikes and e-bike batteries to flood the U.S. market. These batteries, which are often falsely marketed as meeting international safety standards, have been responsible for deadly e-bike fires in places like New York City. “A going retail for a good lithium-ion replacement battery for an e-bike is $800 to $1,000,” Townley said. “You look online, and you’ll see batteries at $350, $400, that come direct to you from China under the de minimis exemption.”
Cyclingnews reported recently that Robert Margevicius, the executive vice president of the American bicycle giant Specialized, had filed a complaint with the Trump administration over losing “billions in collectable tariffs” through the loophole. A spokesperson for Specialized defended Margevicius’ comment by calling it an “industry-wide position that is aligned with PeopleForBikes.” (Specialized did not respond to a request for clarification from Heatmap, though a spokesperson told Cyclingnews that de minimis imports permit “unsafe products and intellectual property violation.” PeopleForBikes’ general and policy counsel Matt Moore told me in an email that “we have supported reforming the way the U.S. treats low-value de minimis imports for several years.”)
Trump indeed axed China’s de minimis exemption as part of his April 2 tariffs — a small win for the U.S. bicycle brands. But any protection afforded by duties on cheap imported bikes and e-bikes will be erased by the damage from high tariffs imposed on China and other Asian countries. Fewer than 500,000 bicycles in a 10 million-unit market are even assembled in the United States, and essentially none is entirely manufactured here. “We do not know how to make a bike,” Townley told me flatly. Though a number of major U.S. brands employ engineers to design their bikes, when it comes to home-shoring manufacturing, “all of that knowledge resides in Taiwan, China, Vietnam. It isn’t here.”
In recent years, Chinese factories had become “very proficient at shipping goods from third-party countries” in order to avoid European anti-dumping duties, as well as leftover tariffs from Trump’s first term, Rick Vosper, an industry veteran and columnist at Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, told me. “Many Chinese companies built bicycle assembly plants in Vietnam specifically so the sourcing sticker would not say ‘made in China,’” he added. Of course, those bikes and component parts are now also subject to Trump’s tariffs, which are as high as 57% for Vietnam, 60% for Cambodia, and 43% for Taiwan for most bikes. (A potential added tariff on countries that import oil from Venezuela could bump them even higher.)
The tariffs could not come at a worse time for the industry. 2019 marked one of the slowest years for the U.S. specialty retail bike business in two decades, so when COVID hit — and suddenly everyone wanted a bicycle as a way of exercising and getting around — there was “no inventory to be had, but a huge influx of customers,” Vosper told me. In response, “major players put in huge increases in their orders.”
But by 2023, the COVID-induced demand had evaporated, leaving suppliers with hundreds of millions of dollars in inventory that they couldn’t move. Even by discounting wholesale prices below their own cost to make the product and offering buy-one-get-one deals, dealers couldn’t get the bikes off their hands. “All the people who wanted to buy a bike during COVID have bought a bike and are not ready to buy another one anytime soon,” Vosper said.
Going into 2025, many retailers were still dealing with the COVID-induced bicycle glut; Mike Blok, the founder of Brooklyn Carbon Bike Company in New York City, told me he could think of three or four tristate-area shops off the top of his head that have closed in recent months because they were sitting on inventory.
Blok, however, was cautiously optimistic about his own position. While he stressed that he isn’t a fan of the tariffs, he also largely sells pre-owned bikes. On the low end of the market, the tariffs will likely raise prices no more than about $15 or $20, which might not make much of a difference to consumer behavior. But for something like a higher-end carbon fiber bike, which can run $2,700 or higher and is almost entirely produced in Taiwan, the tariffs could mean an increase of hundreds of dollars for customers. “I think what that will mean for me is that more folks will be open to the pre-owned option,” Blok said, although he also anticipates his input costs for repairs and tuning will go up.
But there’s a bigger, and perhaps even more obvious, problem for bike retailers beyond their products becoming more expensive. “What I sell is not a staple good; people don’t need a bike,” Blok reminded me. “So as folks’ discretionary income diminishes because other things become more expensive, they’ll have less to spend on discretionary items.”
Townley, the industry consultant, confirmed that many major cycling brands had already seen the writing on the wall before Trump announced his tariffs and begun to pivot to re-sale. Bicycling Magazine, a hobbyist publication, is even promoting “buying used” as one of its “tips to help you save” under Trump’s tariffs. Savvy retailers might be able to pivot and rely on their service, customer loyalty, and re-sale businesses to stay afloat during the hard days ahead; Moore of PeopleForBikes also noted that “repair services may increase” as people look to fix what they already have.
And if you don’t have a bike or e-bike but were thinking about getting one as a way to lighten your car dependency, decarbonize your life, or just because they’re cool, “there are still good values to be found,” Moore went on. “Now is a great time to avoid a likely increase in prices.” Townley anticipated that depending on inventory, we’re likely 30 to 40 days away from seeing prices go up.
In the meantime, cycling organizations are scrambling to keep their members abreast of the coming changes. “PeopleForBikes is encouraging our members to contact their elected representatives about the very real impacts these tariffs will have on their companies and our industry,” Moore told me. The National Bicycle Dealers Association, a nonprofit supporting specialty bicycle retailers, has teamed up with the D.C.-based League of American Bicyclists, a ridership organization, to explore lobbying lawmakers for the first time in decades in the hopes that some might oppose the tariffs or explore carve-outs for the industry.
But Townley, whose firm Human Powered Solutions is assisting in NBDA’s effort, shared a grim conversation he had at a recent trade show in Las Vegas, where a new board member at a cycling organization had asked him “what can we do” about Trump’s tariffs.
“I said, ‘You’re out of time,” Townley recalled. “There isn’t much that can be done. All we can do is react.”
Any household savings will barely make a dent in the added costs from Trump’s many tariffs.
Donald Trump’s tariffs — the “fentanyl” levies on Canada, China, and Mexico, the “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly every country (and some uninhabited islands), and the global 10% tariff — will almost certainly cause consumer goods on average to get more expensive. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that in combination, the tariffs Trump has announced so far in his second term will cause prices to rise 2.3%, reducing purchasing power by $3,800 per year per household.
But there’s one very important consumer good that seems due to decline in price.
Trump administration officials — including the president himself — have touted cheaper oil to suggest that the economic response to the tariffs hasn’t been all bad. On Sunday, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent told NBC, “Oil prices went down almost 15% in two days, which impacts working Americans much more than the stock market does.”
Trump picked up this line on Truth Social Monday morning. “Oil prices are down, interest rates are down (the slow moving Fed should cut rates!), food prices are down, there is NO INFLATION,” he wrote. He then spent the day posting quotes from Fox Business commentators echoing that idea, first Maria Bartiromo (“Rates are plummeting, oil prices are plummeting, deregulation is happening. President Trump is not going to bend”) then Charles Payne (“What we’re not talking about is, oil was $76, now it’s $65. Gasoline prices are going to plummet”).
But according to Neil Dutta, head of economic research at Renaissance Macro Research, pointing to falling oil prices as a stimulus is just another example of the “4D chess” theory, under which some market participants attribute motives to Trump’s trade policy beyond his stated goal of reducing trade deficits to as near zero (or surplus!) as possible.
Instead, oil markets are primarily “responding to the recession risk that comes from the tariff and the trade war,” Dutta told me. “That is the main story.” In short, oil markets see less global trade and less global production, and therefore falling demand for oil. The effect on household consumption, he said, was a “second order effect.”
It is true that falling oil prices will help “stabilize consumption,” Dutta told me (although they could also devastate America’s own oil industry). “It helps. It’ll provide some lift to real income growth for consumers, because they’re not spending as much on gasoline.” But “to fully offset the trade war effects, you basically need to get oil down to zero.”
That’s confirmed by some simple and extremely back of the envelope math. In 2023, households on average consumed about 700 gallons of gasoline per year, based on Energy Information Administration calculations that the average gasoline price in 2023 was $3.52, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics put average household gasoline expenditures at about $2,450.
Let’s generously assume that due to the tariffs and Trump’s regulatory and diplomatic efforts, gas prices drop from the $3.26 they were at on Monday, according to AAA, to $2.60, the average price in 2019. (GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick De Haanwrote Monday that the tariffs combined with OPEC+ production hikes could lead gas prices “to fall below $3 per gallon.”)
Let’s also assume that this drop in gas prices does not cause people to drive more or buy less fuel-efficient vehicles. In that case, those same 700 gallons cost the average American $1,820, which would generate annual savings of $630 on average per household. If we went to the lowest price since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, about $3 per gallon, total consumption of 700 gallons would cost a household about $2,100, saving $350 per household per year.
That being said, $1,820 is a pretty low level for annual gasoline consumption. In 2021, as the economy was recovering from the Covid recession and before gas prices popped, annual gasoline expenditures only got as low as $1,948; in 2020 — when oil prices dropped to literally negative dollars per barrel and gas prices got down to $1.85 a gallon — annual expenditures were just over $1,500.
In any case, if you remember the opening paragraphs of this story, even the most generous estimated savings would go nowhere near surmounting the overall rise in prices forecast by the Yale Budget Lab. $630 is less than $3,800! (JPMorgan has forecast a more mild increase in prices of 1% to 1.5%, but agrees that prices will likely rise and purchasing power will decline.)
But maybe look at it this way: You might be able to drive a little more than you expected to, even as your costs elsewhere are going up. Just please be careful! You don’t want to get into a bad accident and have to replace your car: New car prices are expected to rise by several thousand dollars due to Trump’s tariffs.
With cars about to get more expensive, it might be time to start tinkering.
More than a decade ago, when I was a young editor at Popular Mechanics, we got a Nissan Leaf. It was a big deal. The magazine had always kept long-term test cars to give readers a full report of how they drove over weeks and months. A true test of the first true production electric vehicle from a major car company felt like a watershed moment: The future was finally beginning. They even installed a destination charger in the basement of the Hearst Corporation’s Manhattan skyscraper.
That Leaf was a bit of a lump, aesthetically and mechanically. It looked like a potato, got about 100 miles of range, and delivered only 110 horsepower or so via its electric motors. This made the O.G. Leaf a scapegoat for Top Gear-style car enthusiasts eager to slander EVs as low-testosterone automobiles of the meek, forced upon an unwilling population of drivers. Once the rise of Tesla in the 2010s had smashed that paradigm and led lots of people to see electric vehicles as sexy and powerful, the original Leaf faded from the public imagination, a relic of the earliest days of the new EV revolution.
Yet lots of those cars are still around. I see a few prowling my workplace parking garage or roaming the streets of Los Angeles. With the faded performance of their old batteries, these long-running EVs aren’t good for much but short-distance city driving. Ignore the outdated battery pack for a second, though, and what surrounds that unit is a perfectly serviceable EV.
That’s exactly what a new brand of EV restorers see. Last week, car site The Autopiancovered DIYers who are scooping up cheap old Leafs, some costing as little as $3,000, and swapping in affordable Chinese-made 62 kilowatt-hour battery units in place of the original 24 kilowatt-hour units to instantly boost the car’s range to about 250 miles. One restorer bought a new battery on the Chinese site Alibaba for $6,000 ($4,500, plus $1,500 to ship that beast across the sea).
The possibility of the (relatively) simple battery swap is a longtime EV owner’s daydream. In the earlier days of the electrification race, many manufacturers and drivers saw simple and quick battery exchange as the solution for EV road-tripping. Instead of waiting half an hour for a battery to recharge, you’d swap your depleted unit for a fully charged one and be on your way. Even Tesla tested this approach last decade before settling for good on the Supercharger network of fast-charging stations.
There are still companies experimenting with battery swaps, but this technology lost. Other EV startups and legacy car companies that followed Nissan and Tesla into making production EVs embraced the rechargeable lithium-ion battery that is meant to be refilled at a fast-charging station and is not designed to be easily removed from the vehicle. Buy an electric vehicle and you’re buying a big battery with a long warranty but no clear plan for replacement. The companies imagine their EVs as something like a smartphone: It’s far from impossible to replace the battery and give the car a new life, but most people won’t bother and will simply move on to a new car when they can’t take the limitations of their old one anymore.
I think about this impasse a lot. My 2019 Tesla Model 3 began its life with a nominal 240 miles of range. Now that the vehicle has nearly six years and 70,000 miles on it, its maximum range is down to just 200, while its functional range at highway speed is much less than that. I don’t want to sink money into another vehicle, which means living with an EV’s range that diminishes as the years go by.
But what if, one day, I replaced its battery? Even if it costs thousands of dollars to achieve, a big range boost via a new battery would make an older EV feel new again, and at a cost that’s still far less than financing a whole new car. The thought is even more compelling in the age of Trump-imposed tariffs that will raise already-expensive new vehicles to a place that’s simply out of reach for many people (though new battery units will be heavily tariffed, too).
This is no simple weekend task. Car enthusiasts have been swapping parts and modifying gas-burning vehicles since the dawn of the automotive age, but modern EVs aren’t exactly made with the garage mechanic in mind. Because so few EVs are on the road, there is a dearth of qualified mechanics and not a huge population of people with the savvy to conduct major surgery on an electric car without electrocuting themselves. A battery-replacing owner would need to acquire not only the correct pack but also potentially adapters and other equipment necessary to make the new battery play nice with the older car. Some Nissan Leaf modifiers are finding their replacement packs aren’t exactly the same size, shape or weight, The Autopian says, meaning they need things like spacers to make the battery sit in just the right place.
A new battery isn’t a fix-all either. The motors and other electrical components wear down and will need to be replaced eventually, too. A man in Norway who drove his Tesla more than a million miles has replaced at least four battery packs and 14 motors, turning his EV into a sort of car of Theseus.
Crucially, though, EVs are much simpler, mechanically, than combustion-powered cars, what with the latter’s belts and spark plugs and thousands of moving parts. The car that surrounds a depleted battery pack might be in perfectly good shape to keep on running for thousands of miles to come if the owner were to install a new unit, one that could potentially give the EV more driving range than it had when it was new.
The battery swap is still the domain of serious top-tier DIYers, and not for the mildly interested or faint of heart. But it is a sign of things to come. A market for very affordable used Teslas is booming as owners ditch their cars at any cost to distance themselves from Elon Musk. Old Leafs, Chevy Bolts and other EVs from the 2010s can be had for cheap. The generation of early vehicles that came with an unacceptably low 100 to 150 miles of range would look a lot more enticing if you imagine today’s battery packs swapped into them. The possibility of a like-new old EV will look more and more promising, especially as millions of Americans realize they can no longer afford a new car.