Secret EV “Time Bomb” About To Hit Australian Drivers Amid Sales Boom | 10 News+

We begin tonight with the ticking time bomb surrounding electric vehicles in Australia.It's plain to see how popular EVs have become over the past five to eight years, but that's also the timeline for warranties for cars and their batteries when they start to run out.

So are Australian drivers about to face a wave of post -warranty repair and maintenance bills?And do we have mechanics to do all the work?The answer may lie in a blast from the past.

And these shapes that we're working with, these are the cars that have stood out over history as the classics.

Favourites from the past, rebuilt for the future.Kombis, Minis, Beetles, Range Rovers, looking as good as they ever have, just a little different under the bonnet.

If you can have modern -day performance, reliability, and obviously the economy and benefits of electric in that classic shape and that feel, like, to me, that's my dream car.

Those dreams become reality in this Melbourne factory where they specialise in converting vehicles to electric.This is a 1975 Porsche 911 Targa, completely customised and now fully battery -powered, essentially a 50 -year -old EV.That's a nice set of wheels you've got there, Dave.

Yeah.Do you want to go for a drive?

She's hard to resist.No roaring engine.Man, it's so quiet, isn't it?It's...Isn't it, uh, strange?But you barely need to touch the accelerator to be pressed back into your seat.

Whoo -hoo!Yep.Yep.A bit of sweet -talking, and I get my own chance behind the wheel.It's nice and smooth, isn't it?You've kind of got that instantaneous control.

This is pretty good fun.But if you're thinking about getting your everyday family car at home converted, you might want to think again.We're yet to seewhere you could bring in your Hyundai i30 or your Suzuki Swift and get it converted?Technically the answer is yes, always yes.

Feasibly and viably the answer is quite often no, because it costs a lot of money.

I mean what is the sort of cost of a conversion?

It's probably around $200 ,000 to start.

So a petrol to electric conversion might not be for everyone, but the lessons learned in this factory have given the team a skill set that could be incredibly useful for anyone who already owns an EV or someone who might get one in the future.

What we realised we had was an electric vehicle engineering capability that didn't really exist.

A team which can build, connect and assemble, capable of safely handling the hardware and the software.

Replacing a part is one thing.Opening up that part, getting into the battery management system, changing the software, that's what we do every day.So, applying that to other makes and models of vehicles has been something we've started to do.Working on EVs in a far more forensic and cost -efficient way than a manufacturer might.This coolant... gets in here and you need to change this part, Tesla's approach to that is to change the whole motor and charge you a lot of money for that.We can fix just the part that's the problem and so do it for a quarter of the price.

Repairers are already warning of delays and backlogs when EVs or their batteries need a refresh.

Workshops are already reporting vehicles sitting idle for weeks, even months.leaving those owners paying finance and insurance costs simply because they cannot access the parts that they need to get their vehicle back on the road.

Still, demand for electric vehicles has never been higher.Sparked by soaring fuel prices because of the war in Iran, Google searches have skyrocketed, the Electric Vehicle Council'sin March 23 % of Australia's new car sales were electric, the highest on record.An influx that has the car repair industry scrambling.

The automotive trade industry really kind of has a gap, especially looking to the future.You do need specialist skills to be dealing with these high voltage cars and the batteries that go within.Electric vehicles, like any other cars, don't come with infinite warranties.Electric vehicles haven't really started to take off in the last five years.Now, all of those cars have come with an eight -year battery warranty and, for the most part, they've all come with a five -year warranty.So these cars haven't really run into any aftermarket servicing problems because they've all been covered by manufacturer warranty.

Something sorted out long ago for these classic cars, although even they are now part of the electric surge.Can we just go straight to my place?What do you reckon?

Park this in the garage?Yep.