Located just off the Bruce Highway at Chevallum, 100km north of Brisbane, is British Off Road, one of the largest independent Land Rover specialists in the country.

Established in 1970, and now owned by the Calder family with brothers Ross and Mark at the reins, British Off Road must qualify as some sort of automotive heaven for the Land Rover enthusiast.

If you want, a team of mechanics can modify and upgrade your off-road adventurer or bring your tired workhorse back to life in workshops equipped to handle any job, from the earliest Series 1 to the latest Discovery. And behind the modest building that lies at the front of the business lies a veritable Aladdin’s cave of Land Rover and Range Rover goodies: The parts department carries thousands of components; you can get your hands on any one of hundreds of accessories; and way out the back is an epic Land Rover/Range Rover holding yard – a treasure trove of more than 150 vehicles laid up and ready to be used for parts.

As if all that wasn’t enough, in 2022, British Off Road is offering its customers an even broader service choice. Like the Land Rover brand itself, the business is embracing the automotive electrification revolution to offer electric vehicle (EV) conversions.

And this is a service not just for owners of vehicles from the venerable British brand. While British Off Road has made its name dealing with Land Rover products, the EV conversion service has a much wider scope. The service is open to all. If you want your prized classic, of any make and model, to be converted to take advantage of the EV revolution, British Off Road can do the job.

Moving into the EV conversion space is, said Ross Calder, a natural shift. With the whole industry pivoting on electrification, and public interest in it on the rise, considering all the opportunities presented by the shift just made business sense.

“The interest in EV conversions has been building for a number of years – especially in the US and UK where you see quite a few companies doing them – and to our mind it was clear that it was something that would be coming here,” he said.

“We chose to be active about it, to get in there and learn all about it and get started now.”

That meant research and experimentation, and a lot of it, with Mark and Ross first hitting every training course and investigating every bit of technology in their search for exactly the right products and parts, and then converting an old VW Beetle to test and evaluate those products and prove they could deliver.

“We spent an intensive period learning about the different aspects of conversions, doing every course that was available and researching every component,” said Mark. “What we are not interested in doing is cheap, low-end conversions or using unproven products.”

“We spent a couple of years talking about and researching it,” added Ross. “And that coincided with an approach by one of our customers – Noah Wasmer from Mint EV, to be Mint EV’s conversion and parts partner. So we started by converting one ourselves, the Beetle, to iron things out, and then we got started on his Perentie.”

THE LAND ROVER PERENTIE EV

That first customer EV vehicle conversion from British Off Road is this Land Rover 110 Perentie FFR – a big, two-tonne+, ex-military Land Rover that had been ‘Fitted for Radio’ (FFR) during its time in Australian Defence Force (ADF) service.

Once powered by a big, heavy, 3.9-litre diesel, the now-completed EV is almost silent as it glides from the workshop,
the only noise coming from the crunch of tyres on gravel as it moves smoothly onto the road that runs through the British Off Road site.

The reason for the eerie quiet is, of course, that the engine bay is no longer packed with that heavy Isuzu motor. Instead, a look under the camouflage bonnet reveals a bespoke battery pack box containing five Tesla battery modules of 5.3kWh each, all neatly packaged and flanked by associated controllers, cabling and cooling components.

Underneath these components lies a single 100kW/230Nm electric motor, while directly behind the cabin, mounted high up in the tray, is another battery pack. This one is a mirror of the one up front, with the separation of the two heavy battery packs done to balance weight distribution.

Under both the driver and passenger seats are various components related to battery charging and management, including the DC-DC Converter which enables the 124.5-volt high voltage system to charge the 12-volt battery that runs all the regular accessories that vehicles use – from the electric power steering to the lighting and so on.

In the cabin itself, a small digital screen is sat central on the dash to keep the driver up to speed on battery pack usage and status. Rather brilliantly, the standard Land Rover gauge set-up is still there in front of the driver and behind the steering wheel, and there are no digital displays here, just the regular look a Land Rover owner would recognise but with the clever tweak that the fuel gauge is plugged into the electric system and reflects how much battery charge is left – a nice, analogue touch.

On the outside, there’s a Type 2 (Mennekes) charging inlet – the industry-standard vehicle connector for charging – and while there is no DC fast-charging available on this vehicle (future builds are on the drawing board which will have fast-charging), the Perentie can be recharged at up to 5kW and has three charge profiles – 10 amp, 15 amp, and 32 amp – meaning an overnight recharge is no problem.

Back in the cabin there is a functional gear stick – which might be a surprise to those who have read that many production EVs have a single-speed transmission.

An internal combustion engine requires gears because it is at its most efficient and performs best in a small band of revolutions. A gearbox provides the right gear ratios for it to do so at different speeds. An electric motor, on the other hand, can perform well across a much wider range of speeds, and continue to deliver decent power.

However, an electric motor’s efficiency and torque is not optimum at all times and, in some circumstances – for example, with a smaller motor, lower voltage system, smaller battery pack, and, of course, when a customer prefers it – an EV with gears is the way to go. So it is with the Perentie EV.

“The benefits of being able to change through the gears mainly comes down to efficiency,” said Mark. “Efficiency is the main thing because there will be less battery draw. In any motor – electric or internal combustion – there is a specific rev range at which it is most efficient. If you use that rev range, then you get better range and the best power too.

“You could have a single gear in this car, but it would, with the size motor it has, be sluggish off the mark, and you would have a big draw until you reached a sweet spot. Once you move past that sweet spot, your draw would increase again and the motor would be revving at the high end. That’s fine for a light sports car, and it could work on this size car too but only with a much bigger motor and more battery.

“There are advantages in going to a single gear, but not so much in this vehicle set-up.”

The Perentie build uses a suite of proven components that the British Off Road team sourced from respected manufacturers within the industry.

The electric motor – a Hyper 9 AC SRIPM – comes from US company Netgain.

The Battery Management System, as well as the Charge Controller, Charger, and cabin touchscreen display, comes from Thunderstruck, also a US company.

The batteries come from salvaged Tesla cars, and Mark and Ross assert that using Tesla batteries makes sense. As the EV market leader – and approaching its 20th anniversary as a carmaker – the company’s technology is at the leading edge and provided you can get your hands on them, the batteries offer a very inviting energy solution for EV conversions. While British Off Road won’t restrict itself to using Tesla packs, for the moment that is the technology of choice.

“You can get semi-modular battery packs from a number of manufacturers, and it will evolve so that they are much more readily available, but we chose to go with Tesla as they have the highest density ratio and are the most efficient batteries you can get. As they are coming out of an EV, they also already have cooling and cell monitoring built in,” said Mark.

“And as we are a salvage yard as well, using batteries salvaged from Teslas suits us,” added Ross. “We currently have four Teslas in our yard and customers we have spoken to like the idea of recycling batteries in this way. We are, essentially, recycling an existing vehicle.”

At a technical level, the Perentie is top-notch, using quality components. But what about performance? A Land Rover of any kind, and particularly an ex-military one, would be tuned to offer excellent off-road ability. Does a conversion to electric mean that performance is diminished?

While a sacrifice will be made in terms of range (the Perentie will do about 150km on a full charge, though it should be noted that it is not fitted, at the customer’s request, with either a large battery pack or particularly powerful motor), according to Mark and Ross the switch to electric means other performance elements will be boosted. And as for future builds, performance will depend on just how big and powerful the customer wants to go.

“For this build, the customer specification was not about range. However, elements such as weight distribution and off-road performance are enhanced,” said Mark. “You have maximum torque at zero revs from an electric motor, so there is no lag. Your throttle control is much better, and because you have a wider rev range, there is a lot less need for a gear change to get to the right speed.

“There are options about how much battery you can have, how powerful you want the motor, whether you retain the gearbox and so on, and the only restriction on any of that is the vehicle. For Land Rovers, there really aren’t that many limitations – you have a massive cargo on any Land Rover so you do, for example, have the facility for quite a lot of battery.”

In fact, the next conversion on the British Off Road schedule will highlight this point, as the customer’s requirements for that vehicle were for something with more power and longer range.

“Our next build will have a much higher output Tesla motor, be single gear, have a much bigger battery pack and be much higher voltage, so the efficiencies and range will be better,” said Mark.

“A lot of it comes down to what the customer wants and how much they want to spend,” added Ross. “Componentry is expensive. If you want a very fast, long-range Land Rover, then you’ll want a lot of battery, a powerful motor, the right controllers and DC fast charging. Within reason, anything is possible.”

With electric vehicles soon to be a regular sight on our roads, and infrastructure and technology improving all the time, there likely will be many people who will look to take advantage of the growing EV conversion opportunities.

British Off Road’s entry into that sector looks to be at the right time, not only because, as public interest grows, potential customers will be looking for experienced businesses with an excellent reputation to do the conversions, but because the DIY sector will likely grow too, and with it the need to access parts and advice – another area for with British Off Road is well known.

On top of all that is the recognition that with the Land Rover brand embarking on its own electrification adventure, it won’t be long before British Off Road will be welcoming the company’s factory-built hybrids and EVs into its workshops for repair and maintenance. Delivering EV conversions now will develop the team’s experience and knowledge for when those new vehicles arrive.

For now, however, and with a VW Kombi, another Land Rover, and a classic BMW already in the pipeline for EV conversion, the hard work of the past two years is starting to pay off.

“There is a lot of potential to expand,” said Ross. “There’s the conversion business itself, but also a market for those who want to do a conversion themselves, so there is the side of our business that is concerned with EV conversion kits and parts from Thunderstruck and Netgain. And we may offer a consulting service too. It’s an exciting time.”

Source: Motor Trader e-Magazine (March 2022) 

20 March 2022