VIDEO. From a petrol car to an electric car, behind the scenes of a transformation

Here, customers arrive with gasoline vehicles, and they leave with 100% electric vehicles. This technique has a name: retrofitting. “There, it is our electric motor that will take the place of the heat engine. In terms of volume, it is much smaller and lighter“, explains Martin Boissonnet, engineer in production management at the Méhari Club Cassis. The original gearbox of the vehicle is not modified. Indeed, the interest of the retrofit is to keep as many existing elements as possible: the bodywork will remain as is, the mirrors, the braking system, the suspension system.

When you manufacture a new electric vehicle, it will be much more polluting to manufacture than a thermal vehicle. “We keep an existing thermal vehicle, which has already polluted during its manufacturing cycle, and we are just going to change the mode of propulsion“, specifies Martin. The cost of the retrofit is 13,000 euros compared to around 30,000 for a new modern car. Finally, an electric vehicle will cost an average of 400 euros per year in energy compared to 1,200 euros in fuel for a thermal vehicle.