[euromodder]

Originally Posted by Vekke

Firm will mostly design the parts to be used.

First show car will be VW Lupo 3L Target is to get it going 100MPG at steady state driving, so without P&G...

That's a difficult car to showcase anything with, as it already has many ecomods done to it by VW, and is already highly efficient.
There aren't that many of them around either : 69 "3L" are for sale in Europe according to autoscout24, out of 2056 Lupo's on their site.

It's also quite an old car - the youngest are already 5 years old, so they're already beyond half their useful life, so they only have half the time left to repay any investment in ecomods.

There are a lot of different cars out there, so you can't mod them all.
Picking the right cars to start the modding business with will be crucial.

IMO, the car you showcase should

• be popular, so you have a lot of potential customers - but not an icon like a Mini as people may be reluctant to mod it ;
• be popular in countries with higher environmental awareness, like Scandinavia - despite the green hype, a lot of people can't be bothered ;
• not be too expensive, so it's bought by people who may actually want to save some money on gas ;
• have room for some easy improvements ;
• be rather recent but not brand new ;
• not be a car that is mostly sold to leasing companies - unless you can get them or their clients interested of course ;

I dont know if you know, but I am a automotive engineer, currently working at valmet automotive R&D department.

That's a good start !

Average car age finland is 10 years so people are driving the same car long time, maybe average 200000km so basicly what if you are able to keep the kit part price under 300€ you would save 1700€.

300 euro's won't buy me a lot of car parts - a spoiler or some el-cheapo wheels .
Are you sure you can design, manufacture and sell an entire modding kit for that price ?

plus every yearly payed car taxes about 400-700€ per year based on your car "EPA" figures.

Unfortunately, those taxes don't take any ecomodding efforts into account.


IMHO, the entire EU should tax cars only by the amount of fuel they effectively use (i.e. tax at the pump), it's the only way that takes both engine size and the way it's driven into account.
But that's a different story .