I don't often believe conspiracies, but I cannot understand these sort of things... what was the justification for such law? security? Industry protectionism?
Depending on interpretation that would open for liability of a modified vehicle by a third party for the manufacturer.
Maybe. But your source is an anonymous poster on the forum. I'm not saying they made it up, but that there's likely more to the story. It isn't exactly far fetched to think there is strict regulation about how you can modify your car for the roads. The "explicit permit" might be to signify that everything is done to the highest standards.
By whom?
>This is clearly a power move to protect their industry.
You're arguing against a conspiracy for which not a shred of evidence has been provided.
Obviously a power move? Do you, in fact, know that paperwork from the manufacturer is required for any modifications, and what the source and/or requirements of it are? Or have you dreamed up some conspiracy where permission from the manufacturer is required to modify your car because you read a random comment on HackerNews (despite the fact that there's a massive aftermarket modding community in the real world)?
I also find it quaint that some posters here think we need to regulate mortgage loans because people aren't capable of calculating interest and what they owe, but the same people should be able to replace the fuel tank in their vehicle with 1000lbs of combustibles, in their garage, and then take it out onto the road. With no oversight.
Furthermore, in the case of an EV conversion you can basically just make sure the EV power-train does not occupy physical space that the ICE power-train did not and your crumple zones and airbags will work fine.
Edit:
Making batteries that don't catch on fire is a solved problem. Getting those electrons to the motor without starting a fire is a solved problem. You really only get fires when you're trying to push the performance envelope which is generally a low priority for commercial conversions.
Cars are not hyper-complicated non-deterministic black boxes. It is possible to modify them without causing unforeseen consequences. Just because you may personally lack the expertise to understand how the systems interact does not mean that nobody can understand it. A qualified engineer with an automotive background should have no problem creating an EV conversion that is every bit as safe as the base vehicle though it will probably be slightly less efficient in terms of materials and labor usage than a conversion for the same vehicle designed by an OEM team for manufacture at scale. The OEMs don't have people that are magically smarter, or different laws of physics if anything they will have a harder time engineering an equivalently performing system because they have many more constraints to optimize for than a conversion company.
Agreed that they're not black-boxes and there's a lot of assumptions you can carry over, though. The NCAP rating of the donor vehicle won't be valid any more, but all that tells you is how well its siblings survived destructive testing - it's likely to perform similarly.
TLDR: it's not quite that simple, but assuming you're not driving like an idiot it'll probably be fine.
Cars are designed to operate in a certain range of weights, as they get loaded with drivers, passengers, cargo, etc.... so long as the distribution is roughly the same, then the careful tuning of the suspension and handling, etc... should all still mostly work the same.
Sure, it might be a bit more sluggish if it is significantly heavier, but that should be about it. You might b able to largely solve that problem by just putting some stronger springs in the suspension, which might already exist in the third party market for other people who are doing other kinds of work on the same type of vehicle.
Of course, you’ve got to actually do the work to make it right, but keeping the same basic weight distribution will probably solve at least 80% of the problem.
With regards to components being really heavy, consider that the engine and the transmission are two of the heaviest components in most any car. If you can eliminate those in your BEV conversion, that gives you quite a bit of weight to work with for the new heavy components.
A lot of this has parallels in the world of aviation. For example there are provisions for owner supplied parts on certified airframes. Experimental / homebuilt aircraft have to meet a standard of the amount of work completed by the original builder (usually 50%).
Personally, I do think that this poses some risk- I might be hesitant to put my kids on a converted EV school bus, for instance- I think it's probably a better idea for a specialized contractor to outfit a fleet than it is for the fleet's mechanic to do so, especially if it's something that they've never done before.
AKA. Why you can't repair most cell phones now.
And once they establish business units to compete against the new company in the secondary market, suddenly the established companies aren’t so pressed about needing to enforce regulations anymore.