TAKING CHARGE

THE complex electric conversion work on the Cortina was performed by James Pauly, founder of Queensland’s Traction EV. The company provides EV conversion on the components, while James has numerous EV projects demand. go – his own and for customers – and is in huge with a His demonstrator car is an 88kw 1968 VW Beetle but there’s 28kwh Tesla battery pack and range of 150km, are much more to come. A couple of Land Rover Defenders uses in the works, while his own 1987 Nissan R31 Skyline two 300kw Netgain Warp11 DC motors and a Powerglide and gearbox. With 600kw of power, 50kwh Tesla battery SHOCKR range of 200km, the street-legal weapon suits its number plate.

James says it’s tricky converting anything post-1990s softwarewise running CAN bus electronics – just too complex – but reckons sedans and utes are good potential parcel shelf conversion vehicles: batteries can go under the or under the tray respectively. to What’s next? A Kombi with a Tesla small drive unit 350km give about 225kw, fed by a Tesla battery pack for range. That’s set to be one very rapid bus.