Joined
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124 Posts
Do you offer a warranty? That's one that'll catch you out if your not careful. Just imagine a customer comes in and pays you 40K for a drive in/drive out conversion and 6 months later the battery dies?
That's potentially another $20k for the replacement. If you don't at least try to sort something out, the reputation from that would kill any credibility you had.
That's what happened with this build for a customer,
Anyways, My suggestion, If you want to do conversions as a workshop to the general public, Make a workshop car. Convert the parts chaser to electric and the experience and knowledge you'll get from that will be invaluable. Its only just been Chrismas break and recent lockdown/work from home restrictions have changed the way a lot of things are going, that's probably got a lot to do with why you haven't got an email reply yet, They may have only went back to work a few days ago.
It is potentially a booming market, but it'll be similar to what happened with the horses when the car came along. Most horses were replaced but the ones that still remain and the people who are really into them, that's a niche market with a small, but generally wealthy customer. The same will happen with cars, most people will just upgrade to whatever new car is available at the time, or just sign up to a subscription service once full autonomous arrives. The few left will spend absurd amounts on high quality conversions because that's just the cost to play, but they'll probably also want expensive classic cars and other cool things.That is still a while away, maybe 20 years? Until that point, its still realistically going to cost $40-60k to do a proper conversion, most people will just buy a new car and the ones like us will be figuring out how to do it ourselves to save some of that money. Qualification wise, you want to be a mechanic obviously, with good knowledge in electrical systems, wiring diagrams, circuits, electronics and have done a HV course. It would be absolutely ideal if you were a mechanical engineer, with approval from RTA to sign off on vehicles, Otherwise your shop will need to be working closely with an engineer, to ensure they are happy with the work you do and that you follow the rules and ADR's so it can pass at the end.
That's potentially another $20k for the replacement. If you don't at least try to sort something out, the reputation from that would kill any credibility you had.
That's what happened with this build for a customer,
Anyways, My suggestion, If you want to do conversions as a workshop to the general public, Make a workshop car. Convert the parts chaser to electric and the experience and knowledge you'll get from that will be invaluable. Its only just been Chrismas break and recent lockdown/work from home restrictions have changed the way a lot of things are going, that's probably got a lot to do with why you haven't got an email reply yet, They may have only went back to work a few days ago.
It is potentially a booming market, but it'll be similar to what happened with the horses when the car came along. Most horses were replaced but the ones that still remain and the people who are really into them, that's a niche market with a small, but generally wealthy customer. The same will happen with cars, most people will just upgrade to whatever new car is available at the time, or just sign up to a subscription service once full autonomous arrives. The few left will spend absurd amounts on high quality conversions because that's just the cost to play, but they'll probably also want expensive classic cars and other cool things.That is still a while away, maybe 20 years? Until that point, its still realistically going to cost $40-60k to do a proper conversion, most people will just buy a new car and the ones like us will be figuring out how to do it ourselves to save some of that money. Qualification wise, you want to be a mechanic obviously, with good knowledge in electrical systems, wiring diagrams, circuits, electronics and have done a HV course. It would be absolutely ideal if you were a mechanical engineer, with approval from RTA to sign off on vehicles, Otherwise your shop will need to be working closely with an engineer, to ensure they are happy with the work you do and that you follow the rules and ADR's so it can pass at the end.
