We all know that cars pollute, even if we don’t like to think about it when we hit that accelerator.

We also know that new cars generally pollute less – sometimes, even down to zero emissions.

What no one talks about is how many older cars are out there that will continue polluting, largely because of socio-economics. I’m pretty sure given the opportunity, everyone would buy a Tesla at this point, but could they afford it? In making the Tesla brand necessarily exclusive to gain traction, it also put it out of reach of the people who own possibly the worst polluting cars on the planet. They’re working on that, I’m sure.

As far back as I can remember, I have been passionate about cars. I never had a car profile picture, but there’s a part of me that loves staring under a hood at what makes it all work.

And I always have loved getting more and more out of any machine. Even when I worked at Honeywell, I’d play with the gum machine and get almost double out of it for my 25 cents. Why? Because it was a challenge, and because it was a machine.

And what I always wanted to do was improve on the RX7 by adding an electric motor to it – something that was already done with a newer model.

And then there’s the Teslonda – a 1981 Honda Accord retrofitted with a Tesla motor, with a Raspberry Pi in the mix whose acceleration gives supercars pause.

It’s clear we have the technology to deal with the socioeconomic gap.

My Old Plan

I had a plan at one point. The family business was rewinding electrical motors, established in 1936 by my paternal grandfather in Trinidad and Tobago. I’d even reached out to Tesla when they were first starting to see about becoming a distributor and/or repair center for the Caribbean and Latin America.  They weren’t interested in the market at the time, and I was considering a project to get something off the ground. After all, local taxi drivers might prefer charging their battery to go 300 miles on a small island to make their runs back and forth.

In Trinidad and Tobago, that’s roughly 18 runs back and forth between San Fernando and Port of Spain. On one charge.

Instead, they use diesel for a variety of reasons – and should you be behind one, you’ll see them coughing black, some more than others.

Sadly, because of what I could only classify as myopia of those who had control of the family business. They closed it down after a 73 year run, bankrupting it and selling off things.

There were other challenges, of course – such as how to license the vehicles, creating a standard charging interface, and getting a hold of good battery tech that is light and efficient but can generate sufficient power.

It just didn’t happen. I’m just not in a position to do it myself, anymore. Yet it’s not a bad idea at all for someone else to explore, a reason why I’m publishing this now.

We Have The Technology.

Around the world, we could implement this sort of thing instead of waiting for billionaires to do it for us. It’s not as hard as it used to be thanks to advances in technology, and there’s no shortage of cars to work on – the lighter, the better.

So, why isn’t it being done? I know I’m not the only one with such ideas – in fact, that’s how I know now that this crazy idea I had decades ago is a good idea now, because others have been doing it.

It’s time to start retrofitting some cars with electric motors – and then let everything else get sorted out.

It can be done.

People are already doing it.

And if you’re curious about resources, I can – with enough interest – follow up on this with more articles from my research over the years.