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All you’ll need is thousands of dollars and some elbow grease.
When Adam Roe hits the accelerator and sends his vintage Land Rover flying past a Porsche, he likes to imagine what the other driver must be thinking.
While Roe’s ride looks the part of a restored Land Rover Series II, an off-roading, unbreakable icon from the late 1950s, the secret is what’s under the skin. Whereas the original bruiser produced about 45 total horsepower, Roe says, the “restomod” created by his company, ZeroLabs, is a fully electric vehicle with 600 horses — more than enough to catch a sports car by surprise.
Being a classic car enthusiast doesn’t have to mean burning fossil fuels anymore. ZeroLabs is part of a small but growing community of startup companies and DIYers who are transforming some of the most beloved vehicles of automotive history into zero-emissions EVs. The next time you see a beautifully restored boxy Chevy Blazer rolling down the highway, it might just be battery-powered.
Patrick Mackey has been turning vintage Mazda Miatas into electric cars for more than a decade. Back in the 2000s, he wanted a fun but fully electric car like the original Tesla Roadster, but couldn’t afford what Elon Musk was asking. When he looked around at the kind of cars the DIY-inclined were hacking into EVs, he thought about small rides like the Toyota Yaris and Honda De La Soul. But it was the classic Miata — derided by muscle-heads as too wimpy, but beloved by car enthusiasts who recognize its compact greatness — that became the obvious choice.
“The Miatas have a great reputation for handling,” Mackey says. “They sold a ton of ‘em, so there’s a lot of ‘em out there and you can get one for a reasonable price.” Despite its small stature, the Miata was a sturdy car, with thick frame rails that are strong enough to hold a hefty EV battery back. (Mazda itself won’t be selling you an electric Miata until 2026, by the way.)
Initially, Mackey and his colleagues considered building their own EV conversions and selling them directly to people, like ZeroLabs does, or making kits to sell that would contain all the parts a person would need to turn a gas-powered Miata into an electric one. But the steel parts weighed a ton and wouldn’t fit inside one another for shipping, rendering the idea impractical.
Instead, Mackey’s EV Miata website offers all the plans and fabrication documents a home mechanic would need to take on the job. It’s up to the builder to source the off-the-shelf electrical components to do the job, or, perhaps, to salvage them from a wrecked EV as many DIYers do now, he says.
Courtesy of EV-Miata.com
A surprising amount of the original Miata parts can survive the transformation. “You would keep the transmission and everything behind it, so that part of the powertrain you keep. You’d replace the motor with an adapter plate to connect the motor up to it. Then there’s the battery pack and the controller and all those E components come into play. But in that case, the majority of the car is there. If you are going racing, or you’re looking for something with higher performance, you could remove the transmission and then do a direct drive and have two or three motors that are driving the rear wheels.” Or, he says, some people are doing what’s called a stack replacement. They get a Nissan Leaf’s entire subframe, containing the axles and transmission and motors, and swap that into their EV conversion so it’s running on all Leaf parts.
Car restoration has always been a money pit of a hobby. EV conversion is no different — you do it for love, not because it’s cheaper than just buying an electric car. Mackey says the EV Miata project probably costs about $22,000 now, not counting the cost of buying an old Mazda nor the sweat equity required to build it.
Nevertheless, plenty of people with the proper mechanical chops take on the challenge. At Caltech, where I work (and where lots of people are electrical engineers), there’s a vintage Porsche often plugged in next to me that was clearly hacked into an electric. With enough cash, you could buy a kit to convert just about any classic car into an EV.
And the DIY EV is just one end of the spectrum. On the far side lies fully realized conversions like those by ZeroLabs, which specializes in not just electrifying, but modernizing Ford Broncos and other beloved SUVs of yore.
Courtesy of ZeroLabs.
“A restoration is to say, hey, we’re going to put this back to the original condition exactly as it would’ve been, which means no Bluetooth, no three-point seat belts. You got to use radial tires, you got to put on whitewalls. You got to use period-correct paint and AM radio and [an] ashtray. That’s a restoration. That’s not what we’re doing.”
Roe was inspired by a backcountry snowboarding trip when the engine on his old Bronco cut out, a problem that plagued the old SUVs. As it coasted silently, he fell in love with the idea of a classic car without all the noise. “You could hear the winds, you could hear the tires, you’re in your classic, but you’re also kind of with nature versus being hidden by this loud rumbly loud noise engine with your stereo,” he says.
In place of their original bare-bones interiors, ZeroLab’s reimagined EV trucks and SUVs have all the tech features of a modern vehicle. “We looked at everything that needs to be done for a modern car: How do we think about steering, how do we think about brakes, communication, upgradeability, and charging rates? All of that has changed, and so simply electrifying that car isn't really enough.”
Their creations aren’t for the faint of wallet. The fully realized ZeroLabs first-generation Bronco starts at nearly $300,000. But it seems there are plenty of wealthy buyers looking for a boxy, retro, or just plain eccentric electric car that doesn’t look anything like the production EVs now rolling off the assembly line. Roe exudes optimism that EV restomods will have their Tesla moment within the next couple of years — and the EVs that are old on the outside and new on the inside will be the next big thing.
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On the World Bank’s bad record keeping, Trump’s town hall, and sustainable aviation fuel
Current conditions: Parts of southwest France are flooded after heavy rains • Sydney’s Bondi Beach is closed because lumps of toxic tar are washing ashore • A winter storm warning is in effect for parts of Montana.
Nearly 40% of the climate finance funds that have been distributed by the World Bank over the last seven years are unaccounted for due to poor record keeping, according to a new report from Oxfam International. That’s up to $41 billion that is untraceable. “There is no clear public record showing where this money went or how it was used, which makes any assessment of its impacts impossible,” the report said. “It also remains unclear whether these funds were even spent on climate-related initiatives intended to help low- and middle-income countries protect people from the impacts of the climate crisis and invest in clean energy.”
The World Bank is the largest multilateral provider of climate finance, and has a goal of directing 45% of its total financing toward climate projects by 2025. The report noted that climate finance will be a key issue at the upcoming COP29, where countries will put forward a new global climate finance goal. “The lack of traceable spending could undermine trust in global climate finance efforts at this critical juncture,” Oxfam said.
During a town hall event hosted by Univision last night, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was asked by a veteran construction worker – who had seen first-hand “the devastating impacts of climate change” – if he still believed global warming was a “hoax.” In his response, Trump claimed to be an environmentalist, saying he’d won “many awards over the years” for the way he’d constructed his buildings, “the way I used the water, the sand, the mixing of the sand.” But, he said, “we can’t destroy our country” for the sake of saving the climate. He said the U.S. is competing against China, which “doesn’t spend anything on climate change.” According to the International Energy Agency, last year China alone accounted for one-third of the world’s clean energy investments.
Needless to say, Trump didn’t really answer the question about whether he thought climate change was real, but he did cast doubt on sea level rise and claimed “the real global warming we have to worry about is nuclear.”
I’ll just take this opportunity to remind you that Heatmap’s Jeva Lange put together an exhaustive fact-check on Trump’s climate and weather claims going back to 2001.
The Supreme Court yesterday allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to move forward with its rule restricting climate pollution from power plants, meaning that one of the Biden administration’s key climate policies can stay in place. For now. The high court’s decision will allow the EPA to defend the rule in a lower court over the next 10 months. Whether the Biden administration’s new attempt at regulating climate pollution will survive depends on the outcome of next month’s election. The Trump campaign has said that it will overturn the EPA’s new climate rules. Should Harris win, the rule will still have to survive the lower court challenge. That case is scheduled to be heard in front of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this term.
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The Department of Energy yesterday announced its first two loans for sustainable aviation fuel. The roughly $3 billion in funding will go to two companies:
“As the aviation sector aims to meet its decarbonization goals, SAF will become increasingly vital,” the DOE said in a statement. “SAF is the only viable near-term option to decarbonize the airline industry.”
A Canadian court’s ruling on a climate lawsuit today could influence similar cases in Canada and other countries. Seven young people are suing the Ontario government over its emissions targets, which they say are inadequate and violate their human rights. If the case heads to Canada’s Supreme Court, and the plaintiffs win, that would “dramatically open the door to new litigation,” constitutional law expert Emmett Macfarlane toldReuters. “That would be explosive. It would have immediate ramifications for all governments.”
The University of California, San Diego, is the first major public university to require all its undergraduate students to complete a climate change course.
They may not survive a full challenge, though.
The Supreme Court allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to move forward with its rule restricting climate pollution from power plants on Wednesday, meaning that one of the Biden administration’s key climate policies can stay in place. For now.
The high court’s decision will allow the EPA to defend the rule in a lower court over the next 10 months. A group of power utilities, trade groups, and Republican-governed states are suing to block the greenhouse gas rule, arguing that it oversteps the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act.
The EPA’s new rules, which were finalized in April, would be the government’s first successful effort to regulate climate pollution from the power sector. The electricity industry is the second most-polluting sector in the American economy.
The Obama administration previously tried to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from the power sector. The Supreme Court blocked those rules from taking effect in 2016, before striking them down completely in 2022.
This time, the agency has written the rules within a framework laid out by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in that ruling. In that now landmark case, the court ruled that the EPA could restrict greenhouse gas pollution from power plants only by requiring new technology, such as carbon capture equipment, to be installed at the plant itself. The agency couldn’t require utilities to stop burning fossil fuels and build more renewables.
In the near term, whether the Biden administration’s new attempt at regulating climate pollution will survive depends on the outcome of next month’s election. The Trump campaign has said that it will overturn the EPA’s new climate rules. During his first term, Donald Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental and climate protections.
Should Harris win, the rule will still have to survive the lower court challenge. That case is scheduled to be heard in front of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this term.
“The high court made the right call,” Meredith Hankins, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “Given its rulings in recent years undercutting environmental protections, the refusal of the majority on the Supreme Court to block this vital rule is a victory for common sense.”
Not all the news from the Supreme Court on Wednesday was good for climate advocates, though.
In the same decision that let the new rules stand, the high court’s conservative justices signaled that they might block the rules next year.
“In my view, the applicants have shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits as to at least some of their challenges” to the rule, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a short statement attached to the stay, which was cosigned by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
But because the rules don’t require utilities to start complying until next June, there was no reason to grant an emergency stay, the two justices added.
Justice Clarence Thomas would have gone further and stepped in to block the rules immediately. Justice Samuel Alito, another reliable conservative vote, did not participate in the deliberations.
That suggests that four justices could be ready to block the rules as soon as next year. They would need only one more vote — from Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Amy Coney Barrett — to stay the protections from taking effect.
The statement didn’t provide any hints to what Roberts or Barrett are thinking.
Has Plug Power pulled the plug on its upstate New York facility?
In 2021, top elected officials in New York state promised that Plug Power, a nascent company in the growing hydrogen industry, would build a large hydrogen fuel production facility in the Buffalo-Rochester area. It was supposed to make the state an industry leader.
Today, the project is looking more like a warning sign about the perils of being a first-mover in the unproven hydrogen business.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Plug Power, an American hydrogen and fuel cell producer founded in 1997, believed it would capitalize on rising demand for the liquid fuel when it broke ground at its hydrogen production facility at Genesee County’s Science, Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park in 2021, a project known colloquially as STAMP. Heavy polluting industries like steel and transportation were chomping at the bit to strike supply deals for hydrogen, a liquid fuel that produces no carbon when burned. And this New York plant would on paper be particularly attractive from a climate perspective: It would be powered by hydroelectric dams at Niagara Falls, offering a potential carbon reduction of an estimated 14,000 tons of CO2 per year. It would also be the largest project of its kind in the Northeast.
Three years later and the project appears to be on ice, according to a phone call recording between New York county officials and a real estate developer that was obtained by Heatmap News.
Construction stopped in January, per the call, as did work Plug Power promised to do on an electrical substation that will also power a neighboring semiconductor manufacturing plant. Now energy-hungry data center developers are bidding to pick up the substation work instead in exchange for a spot at STAMP and access to some of the remaining hydroelectricity, and county officials are looking at buying Plug Power’s electrical equipment.
It is unclear whether the hydrogen production plant will ever be completed.
“They’ve put things on hold and now we’re coming to pick up the pieces,” Chris Suozzi, an executive vice president at the Genessee County Economic Development Authority, told one bidder – PRP Real Estate Management – on a call last month. PRP taped the call and shared it with us after it was first reported by local news nonprofit InvestigativePost. Suozzi also said on the call: “They’re not ready to go. They’re on pause. We don’t know what’s going to happen with them at this point.”
The New York Plug Power plant’s problems should be familiar to anyone in the climate tech startup space but for the unfamiliar, the company’s rapid growth seems to have run headlong into struggles with cash. A year ago Plug Power said in an investor filing there was a “substantial” concern the company may not have “sufficient funds to fund [its] operations through the next 12 months.” So problematic are Plug’s financial woes that they’ve become a political target; after the Energy Department offered a $1.6 billion conditional loan commitment to Plug for building hydrogen production plants, Republicans in Congress called for an inspector general investigation into the move.
But the New York production facility won’t benefit from the potential loan either. We’ve learned from two sources familiar with the matter that the project is not included in its potential loan application currently pending before DOE.
Then there has been the rollout of the Inflation Reduction Act. Even though the project relies on carbon-free hydropower, it may not qualify for the IRA’s hydrogen production tax credit because of proposed requirements for fuel to rely on new renewable energy sources (known as “additionality”). This has been a major sticking point in implementation of the credit, and Plug Power is quoted in InvestigativePost last week linking the work stoppage at the production facility on waiting for the final regulation implementing the credit. This is even as the company uses the yet-to-be finalized credit in its financial analyses for other hydrogen facilities in operation today, like this one in Georgia.
Environmental justice issues have also been a drag on development. The native Tonawanda Seneca Nation is opposed to the entire industrial park because of the resulting impacts on wildlife, noise and the visual landscape. In April, the Fish and Wildlife Service revoked a necessary permit for a wastewater treatment pipeline that would be used by companies at the park.
Earthjustice attorney Alex Page – who is working with the Nation to fight the project – told me the tribe was told last year by the Energy Department that Plug Power had withdrawn the New York site from its loan application. The Nation will continue to fight the project and DOE’s loan financing to Plug Power on the chance that money could be reprogrammed to the industrial park. Page said: “The Nation remains very, very much opposed.”
We sent Plug Power multiple requests for comment as well as Suozzi. A representative for Plug Power declined to answer questions about the project. I got a text from a number listed for Suozzi asking to chat later, but I didn’t hear back before publication.