Jaunt Motors

30 July 2021

This Melbourne company offers modernised nostalgia for sale or hire

Australia is blessed with uniquely rugged but beautiful landscapes. Dave Budge has always enjoyed driving through them but was never at ease to do so in diesel-powered 4WD vehicles. He’s from Bendigo, so that explains his interest in modifying vehicles. Marteen Burger is from Mount Isa and learned to drive on regional dirt roads up there. A couple of years ago they founded Jaunt Motors to convert classic Land Rovers to less environmentally taxing, electrically-powered vehicles.

Fitting classics with electric motors is a growing industry around the world. Now it’s happening here in Williamstown at Jaunt.

Dave says they began with Land Rovers because there are so many of them around and appreciation for them is strong. They’re classics in every sense of the word. They provide basic, economical, rugged and reliable transportation. Basic is an apt description. However, fitting them with electric motors and associated technology gives them a smoothness never seen in the marque since Land Rover introduced the Series I in 1948.

As Land Rovers are aluminium bodied, they don’t rust but they can still suffer corrosion and other accumulated damage over the years. And, of course, the steel chassis certainly do rust. Restoration of a Jaunt vehicle proceeds in the same way as with any other classic vehicle. Strip it, repair, replace or convert the components, paint it all, put it back together and drive it. We don’t mean to trivialise the process but it’s fairly well understood by most in the automotive trades. The story here is the electric conversion. Dave suggests that connecting a motor to a battery is pretty basic.

“People have been doing it for about 150 years,” he says. He explained that about half of what has to be done is safety related. It’s about anticipating everything that can go wrong and building systems that prevent such problems. There isn’t a great deal of regulation covering such work but most of what exists relates to safety. Hazard lights, head and tail lights, horns and similar things all need to work. And of course, drivers need to be insulated from high voltages. Such conversions are subject to the VASS arrangement. The basic design criterion is that a normal person with no technical expertise should be able to use the finished product with no special training or instruction. Just turn the key and head for the hills.

Fitting an electric motor is one thing, controlling it is another. The controller used is from Italian company, SME. However, that operation has been taken over and absorbed by the TM4 division of Dana, a name familiar to most in the automotive industry. Then there’s all the other support systems and components for managing batteries, etc. Dave says most of what’s required for a conversion is available off the shelf. The batteries are from Tesla models. These are top quality, with long service life remaining, and come with a warranty. A Jaunt Land Rover’s power demands are very low compared with a Tesla so the batteries get a fairly easy life. Depending on the motor chosen, these cars operate on either 140 or 100 volts.

Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) electric cars usually operate at 350 volts or more. The lower figures for Jaunt’s Land Rovers don’t offer as much power but people don’t buy Land Rovers for their neck snapping performance. Lower voltages reduce costs. The major disadvantage of lower voltages is that Ultra Rapid chargers can’t be used. Still, series models can be charged in about three hours. The higher voltage system used in a Defender conversion allows the batteries to receive enough charge for maybe 300-kilometres in around half an hour using an Ultra Rapid charger.

While a lot of companies use Tesla batteries, they don’t all make use of the built-in cooling channels available in the Tesla packs. Jaunt does and doing so ensures uniform performance among the individual cells. PWR in Queensland worked with Jaunt to develop the cooling system. The individual cells in the battery packs have to be balanced to ensure they all work together harmoniously. Poor-performing cells drag down the performance of the entire battery pack. The most common battery option chosen is 52 kilowatt-hours, and this provides 200-250 kilometre range. The longer wheelbase models have 74 kilowatt-hours on board which gives another 100-kilometre range and then the Defender gets a 100 kilowatt-hour pack. There are Tesla powertrain options too. These offer much greater performance but at a much higher price. The Series cars are simple, the Defender is more complex but still fairly simple, or opting for maximum performance using Tesla components is the most complex arrangement. Cooling, for instance, is much more complex with the Tesla motor.

Although the electric motors Jaunt fits to Land Rovers are lighter than the factory power plants, the battery packs add weight back into the cars. However, the Land Rover chassis is well suited for locating battery packs effectively and achieving weight distribution similar to that from the factory. There is a front pack under the control enclosure and a pack on each side of the chassis adjacent to the transmission. 

Transmission? Why would an electric car need a transmission?

Retaining the transmission has meant the motor doesn’t need to be as big as it would otherwise have to be for maximum performance. Of course, electric motors have torque on tap right from stationary and the car can remain in third gear and driven around quite happily all day. But dropping it back a gear or two is an option if the driver requires more rapid acceleration. It’s all about establishing the right amount of power for the vehicles. Also, having a gearbox offers the greatest versatility in off-road conditions.

Land Rover gearboxes were robust enough for purpose from the factory but some of them are 50 years old and a bit tired, so Jaunt has them rebuilt using high-quality new internals. Jaunt replaced the factory clutch with a modern uprated unit. Having the gearbox and a clutch really preserves the feel of the original vehicle, which is what’s wanted by anyone in the market for a Land Rover. Jaunt Land Rovers are tradition on wheels. 

Although most of the major components are readily available, getting them to work together smoothly is another matter. Rob Davies used to work at Holden facilitating the smooth integration of the components and systems used in the cars manufactured by that company. Ah, the good old days. He also worked at Land Rover, so his skill set is ideal for Jaunt. He’s responsible for all the mechanical engineering, while Dave handles all the system design, electronics and software. But as you’d expect, there’s overlap between these areas.

The throttle (if we can even use that term in an electric car), or accelerator pedal, is an electric version. The great advantage of that is that throttle response can be programmed to achieve the driving feel required. Although the motor can spin to 9000 revolutions-per-minute (rpm), it’s limited to 5000rpm. However, acceleration to that point is not directly linear, followed by an abrupt cutoff. This would work but it would feel terrible. Rather, the decrease in acceleration is gradual from 4000rpm – probably a bit like running out of carburettor, as opposed to hitting a rev limiter. And that’s the point, it can be programmed to be like anything. Jaunt conversions also feature electric power steering that allows the factory fitted return-to-centre springs and the steering damper to be removed. The original suspension components are getting a bit beyond it. Jaunt fits new shock-absorbers along with parabolic springs that create some softness even as travel begins.

Earlier models had lower specified engines. Some enthusiasts were skeptical but changed their minds after driving it. There are companies overseas that rebuild Land Rovers on an entirely new chassis with fully independent suspension and all the other modcons. They are just Land Rover shells on a new chassis. Many would argue that it’s difficult to call the results of such conversions Land Rovers. They’re something else. Jaunt Land Rovers are still worthy of the name. They’re vastly improved, but still Land Rovers in more than just looks. A Jaunt conversion makes a Land Rover comfortable and usable on a daily basis. That was the design intention of the original model, but now it matches modern sensitivities. As we mentioned at the outset, you can hire a vehicle from Jaunt to see if it suits modern tastes.

Words: Paul Tuzson. As featured in Australian Automotive August 2021.