The Guy Putting Tesla Power Into Classic Cars

So quiet, stealthy. If you have the money— are you guys rolling?

Uh, yeah.

And you want your old but beautiful car to be modernized and fast-forwarded into the future— this is the shop, I presume?

Yes, indeed. Here is where it all happens.

Then you should visit Mark Davis in Austin. If you parked this and you walked up to it, you're like, "My God, look at my car!" For almost a decade now, Mark has been transforming classic cars with their internal combustion engines into all-electric dynamos.

This beast, so it's a 1972 Chevy Blazer. Driving it out of a Tesla Sport Model S. This is the fastest fucking Blazer you've ever been in.

He's an engineer and an artist. He's a lover of nostalgia and technology, the old and the new. Mark is positioned between two worlds, and in that, he's a perfect metaphor for Austin itself, as you'll see.

So, to take these classic cars and turn them into electric vehicles, and this is a great example of where we might start. Start, right? So this is a gorgeous 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback. It's, uh, technically a replica of the Bullitt car.

Sick.

This particular car had a modern Ford V8. So we pull that out, and that's kind of the, the first step. And, and really what we're going to then do is we go in and we 3D scan everything. You know, in 1968, they were not thinking about how to fit a giant battery pack in these things, right? So we have to occupy the same space that the V8 engine was in, and sometimes that's tricky, right? So we have these big battery boxes, and the 3D scan helps us position them in there just right. So these are what's going in that Mustang. And you can kind of see these modules are actually the same modules that are used in a Volkswagen ID. Yeah, careful. That is live. See, that's angry.

I didn't say shit. I didn't say shit. I'm sure people want as much range as they can get, but it's not like you have to go for max range.

We don't have the ability to achieve modern EV ranges for a couple of reasons. One, this is 1968. It's never seen a wind tunnel in its entire life. It weighs more than a modern EV does. Its driveline isn't as efficient. This pack is an 80-kilowatt-hour pack. And so in a car this size, that's respectable. We'll get probably around 200 miles out of that. And then obviously we can do DC fast charging and we can extend the range. So this— it's a Lotus Esprit. It's a Series 1. It's the same car that James Bond drove. Alone at last. It's just one of those heartbreaker cars. You know, this is one I had on my locker, you know, all through high school. It is a bit of a don't meet your heroes kind of car. It had about 180 horsepower and was pretty pathetic from a performance standpoint. But if you look in, that is an example of the motor that we would use. That little motor that is maybe this big, it's about 370 foot-pounds of torque and about 300 horsepower when you use it with that inverter. So this car that used to have 180 horsepower and maybe 150 foot-pounds of torque is now going to have double, if not triple its power. And it's going to absolutely fly. It's going to be borderline scary. But what you can see in here is all the componentry captured in these little side pockets. So in this original car, these side areas were the gas tanks, actually. And so you could actually fill it from either side. So that's an example of where this is not the easiest, best way to put all these components together, but it's the space that we're given, right?

Each car is a puzzle, and Moment Motor works on about a dozen cars at a time. The easy ones take a couple of months to be made electric. The harder ones can take 4 months or more. All told, you're looking to pay $75,000 to $175,000 for the work.

So you can see we've got 4 here, and there's 4 over there, and another 4 over there. And then there's cars like this, which are done. This one is a 1970 Mercedes-Benz 280 SL. I would say the most beautiful SL that Mercedes has ever made. So this client had this fully restored in Germany, sent back to him. He got in it and he tells me, he's like, well, when I drive it, I really have to press the pedal. I can't, it doesn't make a lot of power. I'm like, well, yeah, that's the way it was in 1970, right? And he's like, and then when I finally do get up to speed and I'm on the highway, it's just droning, right? Because I was like, yeah, that's the way these cars were. 1970. So he came down and he— we had— this is the 6th one we've done of this, right? And so he, he drove number 5, and within 30 seconds he was like, oh my God, this is perfect, this is exactly what I want, right? And so I really do firmly believe you can get passionate about these engines and the sounds and stuff like that. There was nothing particularly passionate about that engine sound. And I think if we went back in time and brought Mercedes the electric drivetrain and said here, put this in the car, they would have done it instantly. Let me tell you what Melbourne Post is packing right here, all right? We got 411 Posi-Track Outback, 750 double pumper, Edelbrock intakes, Ford over 30, 11:1 pop-up pistons, turbojet, 390 horsepower. We're talking some fucking muscle. So here it is, okay, 1960 Ford F-250.

No Texas episode would be complete without a nod to Dazed and Confused. And no day with Mark would be complete without a ride in one of these electrified beauties and a little time chatting about Austin. It's the state capital and, as such, celebrates Texas' short but spectacular history all over the place. As you might have heard, Texas went to war with Mexico in 1836 and then became its own country. There are many reminders of these military victories. Because, was your state ever its own country? No, I didn't think so. Austin is also the home of the University of Texas Longhorns football team, who are beloved, but also really not as good as they should be. And Austin has largely been the funky haven of free-thinking liberal types in a state full of gun-toting, oil-crazed NFL franchise owners way past their prime. But whatever Austin was has changed fast. It's now overrun by tech people, Elon Musk and his acolytes, and podcasters and comedians, which means Austin is still weird, just not weird like it used to be. Since I grew up in Texas, I am free to crap on Austin and Jerry Jones with impunity. You can, however, judge Mark as you see fit. What part of Austin are we in?

We're in South Austin at the very end of South Congress. South Congress kind of goes straight up through the middle and ends at the Capitol right in the middle of the city, and then down here ends with a shopping mall.

When I was growing up, Austin wasn't like some bustling metropolis. It was just a university.

No, exactly. And that's, you know, when I moved here, that's what it was. I was part of the tech influx, if you will. Okay. We were all working for these startups in the '90s and making, you know, crazy money for the time and buying our BMWs. And there's a lot of boo-hooers around here that'd be like, "Oh, Austin was cooler and better." But like, there's just more. And that means more issues and population and problems and stuff like that. But it also means Michelin-starred restaurants and museums museums and music venues, and it's now like a comedy epicenter, right?

Like, it felt like there were two waves, right? And there was Dell, and the success of Dell kicked off this first tech wave going into the early 2000s. And then even pre-COVID, you had the comedians showing up, you had Elon showing up. Yeah, Joe Rogan.

I think you're right. I think the early tech of Austin was very hardware-focused, like you said, Dell, AMD, and Motorola. And then in The '90s and the 2000s was when software kind of started consuming the town. And that's really what I participated in. What Elon did with Tesla, Oracle's headquarters are here. And all of these tech companies decided, hey, Austin is where we want to be.

Are people still calling to keep Austin weird, or is that done now?

I think that was definitely that generation. You don't see those stickers or that kind of approach to things. Absolutely, it is unaffordable for a lot of people. And it does, and it detracts from the culture that we have. And I don't know that we have an answer for it.

All right, so this is like the heart of South Congress.

This is the heart of South Congress, yeah.

This is built up even from when I was here last time.

I know, it's crazy.

This is insane though, man. I can't remember how long ago I was here, but this feels very new.

Yeah, and things have changed a lot. So I've been a car guy from birth, right? But I never really followed the automotive passion, and then kind of had a midlife crisis. I was like toying with the idea of the electrification and classic cars. This is a city where there's tons of tech-focused people who appreciate the technology. There's a nostalgia kind of baked into Austin, and I just spent all this time in the tech industry, so my relationships were people who, you know, had considerable wealth and could support me and trusted me. And so my initial clients were all people that I had from my tech days.

Dude, this is Rainey Street now. That's where— that's where it started.

That's exactly where it started. This whole fucking thing was just these little bungalows, right?

And now, last time I was here, this was a neighborhood.

I know, I know. We would walk to that bar, met by people who were sitting on their front porch. You could still see it, like some of these are still the old bungalows, right? But this is crazy.

So people know all of this was just those houses in a neighborhood.

We're surrounded. We're like his canyon, right?

Like, that is crazy.

Yeah.

Okay, I haven't been here in a long time. This is— I am kind of distraught, actually. Do you guys use Brex?

Brex?

Yeah.

No, that's Brexit.

Let me tell you about Brex, Mark. Um, what are you running your finances on?

That's funny.

That's hilarious. Uh, Brexit This is the modern finance platform. Oh, really?

Yeah. I'm in, I'm in. Say no more.