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Upcycling vehicles

  • by JW

“Converting cars to electric is much more sustainable than buying new.”

.

How much carbon and how many resources do you need to make a nice new EV?

Measuring carbon footprints: old bangers vs new electric cars – Vision Group for Sidmouth

What’s the carbon footprint of a gas field, an electric car, a football stadium? – Vision Group for Sidmouth

A correspondent has got in touch with some research on ‘upcycling vehicles’ from combustion to electric.

As she says: “It is especially interesting to me that it is working on Council type vehicles. I think converting cars to electric is much more sustainable than buying new, when it becomes time I will have mine converted.”

Here is some great news:

Lunaz massively expands facility for ‘upcycling’ industrial vehicles

British firm Lunaz Applied Technologies (LAT), which specialises in ‘upcycling’ and electrifying industrial and commercial vehicles such as bin lorries, has completed a huge expansion of its campus at Silverstone – giving it the capacity to work on 1100 vehicles per year. The firm says that the expansion of its facility is to meet surging demand to convert diesel-powered machines to electric power. Lunaz has expanded its campus at the Silverstone Technology Park in Northamptonshire by 300%, adding 140,000sq ft of space to give it a total footprint of 200,000sq ft. Lunaz is also planning to add 300 jobs.

Lunaz massively expands facility for ‘upcycling’ industrial vehicles | Move Electric

Lunaz quadruples size of UEV campus as part of global expansion

This is their latest venture:

Company Unveils World’s First Upcycled Electric Vehicle

While Lunaz was previously known for converting luxury vehicles to electric drive, their latest product is a refuse truck, or a garbage truck if we want to get to what most people refer to these vehicles in real life. The idea is that most of the existing refuse trucks have a diesel engine to power them, even though they are not meant to travel long distances in a single drive, but rather go through predefined routes through cities. In the UK and Europe, or just in the U.S. alone, Lunaz estimates that there are about 80 million units of trucks like the one they converted to electric drive. Instead of just scrapping old vehicles and building new ones, the British company manages to save a claimed 80 percent of embedded carbon by “upcycling” industrial vehicles like these.

Company Unveils World’s First Upcycled Electric Vehicle, It’s the Lunaz UEV – autoevolution

Classic car EV converter Lunaz reveals first upcycled refuse truck | | WhichEV.Net

With more from the company itself:

Lunaz Group | Converts vehicles to zero-emissions powertrains