10 News+ ran a piece on us last night. They led with the words time bomb, which is bigger language than I'd use, but the story underneath was close enough to what's actually going on in the workshop right now.
It's worth pulling apart, because there are two halves to it.
The half people already know
Most people who follow what we do know us for the cars. A 1975 Porsche 911 Targa, fully electric, which the reporter took for a drive. A Mini that turns the wrong heads in a good way. Land Rovers, Range Rovers, Mokes, Kombis, Porsches. Twenty cars out the door, seventeen on the floor right now. Hand-built in Australia, one at a time, to whatever specification a customer asks for.
That's what most of the website is about, and it's still the heart of what we do. If you've been here before, you've probably been there.
The half that's been growing quietly
The thing 10 News+ got right is that building bespoke EVs from the ground up has given the team a skill set that's becoming useful for a much bigger group of people. The same engineering work we do every day on our own builds, drive units and cooling systems and battery management software and high-voltage architecture, turns out to be exactly what a lot of older EVs need now that the early adopters are starting to fall outside their warranty windows.
The clearest example, and the reason the segment came to us in the first place, is the Tesla Model S and Model X. If you own one and it's old enough to be out of warranty, there's a known problem with the rear drive unit. The seal between the gearbox and the cooling jacket on the motor was undersized for the thermal cycles. Coolant slowly seeps in, dilutes the gearbox oil, attacks the bearings, and eventually destroys the drive unit from the inside out. The Tesla service centre answer is to replace the whole motor. Twenty thousand dollars and up.
We can fix just the part that's failing. Five thousand four hundred and ninety-nine dollars, fixed price, two days in the workshop. Permanent fix. The fix only applies to the Model S, Model X, and very early Model 3 — they all share the same drive unit family. Our Tesla LDU coolant delete page has the detail.
Why those two things connect
The reason we can do the second one isn't because we picked it up on the side. It's because building twenty cars from a blank sheet taught us how drive units, cooling systems, battery management software and high-voltage architecture actually work. Replacing a part is one thing. Opening that part up, getting into the firmware, knowing why the engineers chose the seal they did, and choosing a better one. That's what we do every day on our own builds. Turning that capability outward, on cars we didn't build, is just an obvious next step.
It's also a useful one. The Electric Vehicle Council reckons 23 per cent of new car sales in March were electric. The first big wave of those cars is coming out of warranty now. Repair backlogs are real, parts are slow, and the manufacturer's instinct is often to swap the whole assembly. Some of those swaps are necessary. Plenty of them aren't. The Tesla LDU is just the most well-known example of a problem that's a single component, not a whole drive unit.
Watch the segment
10 News+, aired 4 May 2026.
If you're here because you saw it
If you've got an out-of-warranty Tesla Model S, Model X, or early Model 3 making a noise it didn't used to, book a diagnosis. Two days in our Melbourne workshop, fixed price, no surprises.
If you've always wanted a classic that runs on electrons and you'd like to know what that conversation actually looks like, commission a Jaunt. It's easier than you'd expect.
