General Car Chat: Vintage Voltage - Anyone have any opinions on show or EV classics in general?

Having a bit of time on my hands at the moment (due to my leg not working) I’ve found myself watching this program. I must admit I have mixed opinions about it, just wondered if anyone else had come across it and what thoughts they had (and would like to share).
Obviously I know there is a certain degree of interest in cars on this site and as we seem to have many members “of a certain age” I thought the idea of converting classics may result in some interesting opinions.
The other reason for the thread is I have too much time on my hands just now!


Total disclosure.
I have to admit at this point that I do consider myself a petrol head but don’t consider myself anti-EV, the only prejudices I have against EVs is the fact we’re being forced that way (if they were that good force/coercion would not be required) and when exponents of the technology make it out to be environmentally friendly.


Why mixed opinions?
Well, due to the nature of these programs, they have to insist on injecting plenty of jeopardy into the build but, of course, it all comes good in the end!
Of course that is just the TV program side of things but on the car builds my opinions are mixed because on the one hand it does demonstrate that electric is not a good way of driving a vehicle for daily use for many people however converting ‘classic’ cars makes things a bit easier in many cases apart from !!!!! (see later). I don’t imagine range is as important in this type of car and if you have to stop for a couple of hours in your Sunday afternoon drive for a charge it can probably planned in.
Also if you start off with a vehicle which is not very good then you don’t have too much to beat.

To illustrate this one example was a VW Beetle, as a hateful little car with bugger all performance you’d struggle to make it worse as an EV. In the example I say they used a motor equivalent to 120HP which is more than 3x the original engine’s performance, so while not being a wild ride is likely to have useable performance. On the downside it also required over 200KG of batteries to get a range of just over 100 miles (IIRC). The original car wouldn’t have had any ‘special’ equipment to convert but even though they converted the brakes from drum to disk I think I’d have like to see a servo in there given the extra weight and performance but all things considered it didn’t seem like a bad outcome if you like that sort of thing.


Now for the “apart from”!
Apparently the ‘conversion’ cost £45k, and this was based on trying to keep costs low as they were working with a guy who wanted to supply these as a business. There was some other remedial work required on the car, not a great deal but it did include £6k or paint. Wasn’t clear if this was included in the ‘conversion’ cost or additional (which I’d have thought it was) but given that they suggested that the ‘donor’ car would cost around £10k it seemed a bit on the pricey side to me for a relatively mundane ‘classic’.
Actually this probably isn’t the best car for me to comment on as I have to admit I hate the original with a passion but on the up side part of my aversion is due to that squeaky air-cooled engine which of course would be ‘solved’ by electrification.

I suppose if a higher spec’ type of car was chosen (something like an E type, Aston or Ferrari) the EV conversion cost may be a smaller proportion of the overall cost although I’d guess this would also be larger for this type of car as it would (probably) require higher power which then requires more batteries (weight as well as cost) and additional systems such as cooling and more complex charging.



Anyway just interested in opinions on electrification particularly when applied to classic vehicles.