The Blog

It’s not quite finished, but… …Fully Charged Live is a big event, the first of its kind in Australia, and many exceptional classic EVs will be on show, so why not send the VW Tesla Kombi down to Sydney to show it off? Despite a few things that couldn’t be fixed/finished in time, it is […]

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2022 is coming to an end and looking back, it’s been a bit of an up-and-down year for my EV projects. There were a few highlights (e.g featuring in a TV commercial; and getting the Kombi engineered and registered), but the second half of the year has been pretty frustating. Both the Cortina and Kombi […]

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Hitting TV screens across Australia now is the new commercial from Gearwrench tools, which pits the electric Cortina against a rumbling V8 Camaro in a traditional dragstrip duel. True to the campaign’s slogan of “powering the do’ers“, Gearwrench wanted not just an electrified classic car, but also myself as the owner to drive it down the strip alongside […]

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After featuring on the cover of UK magazine Classic Ford earlier in the year, the electric Mk1 Cortina has been nominated as a contender for their Car of the Year 2021. It only takes a few seconds, 3 clicks, and no need to enter name/email/data etc. So no excuse! Let’s try to get an electrified […]

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This month’s Street Machine magazine (Australia’s leading customised car magazine) is a very special issue, not just because it is the 40th anniversary edition, but also because they have featured a full 6 page spread on the electric Cortina! Not only that, but here is another full article all about EV conversions, with more pics […]

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How cool is this? A cover story in the new Classic Ford magazine from the UK! Classic Ford wanted to know all about the conversion process, the history of the Cortina and how I decided to tackle the task of electrification. The photos by Matt Williams were so good that it nabbed the front cover […]

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Finally the next installment in the video series documenting the conversion of our 1973 VW T2 Kombi to 100% electric Tesla power. In this episode we: Talk about the goals for the conversion project (will we be held accountable to achieve them all??). Show the good parts being salvaged from our wrecked Tesla Model X […]

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Iconic Australian auto magazine Street Machine have gone out on a limb and featured the electric Mk1 Cortina in the below video on their YouTube channel, posing the question: “Is this the future of Street Machining? This Cortina has ditched the factory four-pot for a single Tesla motor and a reduced battery back. It gets […]

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There’s been some considerable progress on the 1973 VW Tesla Kombi restoration and electric conversion recently. Let’s start off with a reminder of what the goals for this project are: Successful “Tesla Swap” – whilst there are plenty of EV conversions utilising re-purposed Tesla parts salvaged from written off Teslas (the Charged Garage Mk1 Cortina […]

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Check out the new Charged Garage t-shirts! Designed by us with hand-drawn images of the first 2 conversion projects – the 1965 Ford Cortina and the 1973 VW Kombi bus, and printed locally by Queensland Decal in a cool “white-wall off white” ink colour. Just $25 AUD each plus postage (about $10 within Australia). Available […]

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