Fixer Upper Idea

The latest brainstorm on this ammonia/fuel cell electric car idea is to take an old or worn out vehicle and fix it up.

What does this do?

It's cheaper.  Less financial risk.

I'm thinking of a particular example.  Not that long ago, my brother's truck blew an engine.  The truck itself wasn't too bad, but it had over 250k miles on it.  So, its resale value wasn't all that high even with a good engine.  With a bad engine, it was worth even less.

Now, if you can find vehicles like that and salvage them by replacing their worn out drive trains with this technology.  You wouldn't have to hock the farm to try it out and see if it can work.

Maybe Apollo wouldn't sell on those terms.  Anyway, its a thought.

Update:

I was thinking in terms of what would be useful for me personally.  Let's say that you have a vehicle such as I described.  If you replace the engine with a propulsion system and it can add 100k miles to its useful life, would it be a worthwhile investment?

To me, it a lot depends upon how much the conversion will cost.  If it cost less than 6k bucks, it would make sense. If it cost more, it gets a bit more iffy.  But that is only one way to look at it.

Now, the cost of electricity to charge the batteries would be about $0.10 per kwh divided by about 3 giving about 3.3 cents per mile.  The actual cost of fuel per mile might be close to 20 cents.  That would cost $20k for the gas over 100k miles and $3300 for the electricity.  Plus the cost for the ammonia fuel.  But, if Apollo's claims are correct, there wouldn't be much need for that.  It wouldn't cost that much since you'd be using the batteries most of the time.  Once you consider it that way, it looks like a no-brainer.

Then there's the risk.  If the propulsion system doesn't last or the vehicle doesn't last, you could be out your investment.  But that's the chance you take on any used car.  I have had lots of used cars, but never have I been burned really badly on one yet.  Doesn't mean though, that it couldn't happen.