Report: This company is converting ICE cars to EVs in France

This converted Renault Twingo can reportedly go 112 miles on a charge.

If you live in France and have a small, older Volkswagen, Renault, Peugeot or Fiat, you can get it converted to an all-electric vehicle. And it’ll only cost you $5,600 if French startup Transition-One is to be believed.

“I’m selling to people who can’t afford a brand-new 20,000 euro electric car,” founder Aymeric Libeau told Bloomberg while aboard his first prototype, a Renault Twingo from 2009 with an electric driving range of 180 kilometers (112 miles). “We’re turning the best-selling models across Europe into electric cars.”

See? Easy peasy.

The hook here is that Transition-One is trying to work with French and European regulators to make such a plan (and let’s be honest, it’s a decent, if simplified, plan) safe, legal and worthwhile. Europe is stricter on emissions than we are here in the U.S., with several metro areas making new rules. For instance, Amsterdam will ban all ICE cars in the city by 2030; London adds a tax if you’re driving a polluter in the city; and Edinburgh, Scotland, has low emissions areas as well. Paris, Madrid and Mexico City have regulations too. Did founder Libeau find an unserved market here?

The prototype Twingo, Bloomberg reports, has three battery packs in front and two where the gas tank used to be. The battery packs are from a Tesla parts reseller (not sure how Elon Musk would feel about that). The extra stuff weighs 265 pounds and the transition takes less than a day, “leaving the original stick shift and gearbox and installing the plug behind the hatch that drivers usually pop open to refill the tank.”

Aymeric Libeau and his EV-converted Renault Twingo.

Libeau is looking to raise 6 million euro to build a factory capable of doing 4,000 transitions next year. That sounds optimistic, but you know who else was optimistic!? Abe Lincoln, Albert Einstein and Bill Gates! That’s who!

“If the end goal is to cut pollution, all solutions should be on the table,” Libeau said. “New cars aren’t enough.”

Check out more (in French) at Transition-One’s homepage. We’ve also reached out for more information.

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