The meeting focused on the current state and future of the electric vehicle (EV) industry, highlighting the challenges and transformations it is undergoing. Key speakers discussed the decline in investment and sales within the EV market, drawing parallels to past technological market fluctuations, such as the dot-com bubble. They emphasized that the industry is experiencing a necessary “purge,” where weaker companies will fail, allowing stronger ones to emerge, similar to historical patterns in other tech sectors.

The conversation also touched on the importance of innovation and collaboration within the automotive community, particularly at events like SEMA, where new technologies and partnerships can be explored. The speakers expressed optimism about the future of EVs, suggesting that those who survive the current downturn will thrive in the long run. They shared insights on their own experiences with electric conversions and the technical challenges involved, aiming to make the technology more accessible and appealing to traditional car enthusiasts.

Eddy Borysewicz: Instantly, they go from the fear of the unknown to now I know what I’m looking at. I happen to be friends with some of the largest car builders in America and they’re all gas guys and they’re all now looking to go to this conversion stuff. But they’re scared. They’re scared because they don’t know. They just went from being the top dogs in the industry, knowing everything about what they’re doing to now being zero, the new guy. They don’t know anything. Know how to build a cardinal, but they don’t know anything about this EV stuff. So it’s showing them that, hey, guys, it’s actually not that complicated. And we have a recipe that works and here’s how it goes together.

Cole Strandberg: Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the collision Vision driven by auto body news. As always, I’m your host, Cole Strandberg. Our latest series continues to be an absolute blast. Welcome to the art of restoration. As SEMA quickly approaches, we continue to highlight some of the most innovative, exciting creators in the automotive industry. And that continues with a couple absolute all stars today. Eddie B, as he gave me permission to call him, is the founder and CEO of Revolt Systems, a manufacturer of electric motors for high performance vehicles, as well as snow, Eddie’s right hand manned at Revolt, as well as basically a rocket scientist. Today, Eddie Snow and I are going to talk all about some of their favorite builds, the past and the future of electrification in classic cars, the business of EV’s SEMA 2024 and a whole lot more. Enjoy the show, Eddie and Snow. Thank you guys for joining me here on the collision vision.

Gregg Snow: Hey, thanks for having us.

Cole Strandberg: Looking forward to a fun conversation with a fun group about some fun stuff. Eddie, I’m going to start with you, man. You’ve made a name for yourself by electrifying some really cool cars that have not traditionally been electrified. Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired you to get into what you’re doing today?

Eddy Borysewicz: Well, I think it goes back to being a kid and playing with RC cars. I remember looking at my dad and if you remember back 35 some years ago, four years ago, I mean, these RC cars, they’re pretty powerful. I mean, yeah, the scale was like, you know, if that was a real car, it would be doing like 200 miles an hour and the zero 60 would be like 1 second. And I looked at my dad one day, I said, well, can’t we just scale this up? And he just looked at me and said, patted me on the head and said, yeah, good luck, kiddeh. But, you know, I’ve always been a tinkerer. I’ve always taken things apart. As a kid. I just needed to know what things do, how they work. And I look at anything in life, my brain instantly goes, okay, how’s it engineered? How does it work? And here we are, you know, 40 some years later and, you know, Tesla came out with some really bad, bad, can I say it? Badass stuff.

Cole Strandberg: I love that one slide for sure.

Eddy Borysewicz: So, you know, it’s like, wow, that’s just a giant rc car. Like what I thought about as a kid. And they’re ultra fast, they’re very quick, responsive, very little moving parts, and it just works. Um, I tend to do a lot of mountain bike racing and downhill stuff and I’ve been on bikes my whole life and I electrified one of my downhill bikes and that was kind of one of the first things I kind of got into electrification. And of course that let me like, you know, I want to skateboard. I could drive for 100 miles. And then it kind of snowballed from there. Did some work with other people in the industry, learned a lot of things and just kind of just pushed it. And I said, well, why can’t we just do this to classic cars? All the EV stuff is cute and it doesn’t really produce that much power outside of the big oes like Tesla. Why wouldn’t just stick one of those in a car and hot rod the heck out of it? And that kind of was the idea that triggered this whole rebuilt systems. Thing is there were other companies doing Volkswagens and Porsche’s, but no one really grabbing the whole hot rod industry, which I kind of grew up in. I had a 1967 Ford Mustang as my first vehicle in high school. And every weekend or after class you’d be sitting there wrenching on it, putting more chrome on it, trying to make it go faster. And the little money that we had in high school, we would do what we could to make these cars go fast. And that’s kind of what hot rodding was fast forward to now. And we call this hot rodding 2.0. It’s just, you know, we’re doing the same things that Gary Hooker and all those guys did back in the day, but we’re doing it with modern technology and different set of tools and power plants that weren’t available 50 years ago. And I think it’s, you know, I’m not going to dive into the green stuff at all because that’s just not why we’re doing this. We’re doing this for pure horsepower excitement, and it’s just a different way to go fast. So that was kind of what led me into this whole stuff. It’s just. It’s fun. And I get to now put my brain into different places and. And build all this new stuff. I mean, the car stuff is neat. I’m. He’s more of a car guy, not me. I like engineering stuff and coming up with weird stuff and, you know, things, and then he implements them. So.

Cole Strandberg:  Heck of a partnership, man. And I want to get to Snow’s background in just a second, but it seems like you were just built for what you’re doing right now. That when you were back to that little kid tinkering, if you could see what you get to do today, you would have lost your mind. How cool is that to feel so passionate about your job?

Eddy Borysewicz: Oh, absolutely. I mean, every day, snowing and I kind of talk about this. It’s like if I could see myself as a grown up and pick who I wanted to be, this is it.

Cole Strandberg:  So that’s awesome. Powerful. Very incredible. And I want to talk about the business side of revolt as well, but I’ll do that here in a little bit. Snow, talk to me, man. What’s your background?

Gregg Snow: Well, you can see my hat here. I, at 17, you know, after going to nine different high schools, I went to the military. I joined the military at 17. I ended up Desert Storm. And, you know, we. One stretch, we spent 91 days out at sea. So they taught me how to work on weapons, guns, missiles, radars. And after I got out, you know, some guys like, oh, you have this training. You should come work with us. So I worked in the semiconductor industry for a little better than 20 years. And then I retired, and I got bored. Well, I’m a disabled vet, so I went to school. I got a degree in physics. I got a degree in kinesiology, and I started training. And I have a facility that was right next to where ADB opened revolt. He opened the doors on revil. I think it was October 1. I met him October 12, and he was, like, super cool. And, you know, I remember the first time we sat down on camera, we talked, and I didn’t even know how to say his last name. So four years later, four years later, you know, now, you know, we’re partners in this. And, you know, we. Like he said, we’ve had this conversation many times. And when I was a kid, I remember I was so proud that I got 50 hot wheels cars. That was my 50th car. It was a smokey and the Bandit trans am. And if I never had to work and, you know, raise kids and buy a house and mortgage and all that, if I had nothing to do, I would play with cars. So now that I’m retired and almost 60, well, I get to play with cars all day, and we’re building something that nobody has seemed to been able to touch. So I would say we’re really made some. Some real headway in the EV conversion game. So, you know, I think the partnership, man, we were just meant to be.

Cole Strandberg:  How cool. Love that story there. It is a heck of a yin and yang right there. Two things snow on that. Number one, what a background. That is awesome. I want to dive a little bit into that. Number two, pop quiz. How do you say Eddie’s last name for us?

Gregg Snow: Borysewicz

Eddy Borysewicz: No, he did it.

Cole Strandberg:  There we go. All right. That was selfish as well, because I need that for the intro and outro here when we’re done. Appreciate that, Mandy.

Gregg Snow: Say Eddie B.

Cole Strandberg:  Man. Eddie, I want to hit you with this one from a macro standpoint, from your consumer standpoint, talk to me about how you’ve seen the EV industry impact the custom car space. How has that been received? What kind of folks are interested in this? How many people have you made angry doing what you’re doing? Like, talk to me about this innovation.

Eddy Borysewicz: I made all of them angry. How about that? I think our first time we went to seam was, like, about 2019. Yeah, 20. And we had the mustangs rolling chassis there with one of our revolt motors in it, when we’re still building this whole thing up. And my whole vision with this thing was, I know people. You know, it’s always hard when your parents tell you to take a pill. I have three kids of my own. If I want to have them take medicine, I don’t go, this is going to be good for you. Take it. I go, hmm, this tastes really good. And I walk away, and they’re like, well, we want a papa house.

Gregg Snow: Yeah.

Eddy Borysewicz: So that was kind of my vision into this thing is, I knew what these motors are capable of. I know what Tesla’s capable of. So if I just take that power plant and put in something smaller, lighter, well, I’m gonna get more performance. And I know there’s a lot of people hating on us. And I think when we first went to SEMA, I’d say, what a good.

Gregg Snow: 75, 80% of people, at least 80% had something negative.

Eddy Borysewicz: Yeah. Everybody walking by. I mean, there’s just, you know, maybe 20% to 25% of people are like, oh, that’s kind of cool, you know, neat. Yay. But most of the people who were anti it, but we did have a different look, though. We weren’t this electric motor. That was when Project X was out there. They did their EV conversion. Ford also launched their EV crate motor, which still no one’s ever seen. And I don’t know where that thing is, but who cares? But we took a different approach of billet pretty, and we have the most amount of horsepower to boast out of any conversion or a kit. So coupled with performance, and it’s one of those things you can’t convince anybody of anything. They have to convince themselves. So once we got the Mustang up and running, the next year, he got his truck running. We went down to Bonneville, set a world record with the little giant, and team Vesco with, you know, car did almost 360 miles an hour into electric power. Once you started getting some of. We got some of those things and accolades underneath our belts, the tone changed very quickly. It was no longer yo guys or terrible EV people. And then they call us a bunch of names and, you know, try to put us in the political spectrum, which I think is stupid, too. But they start realizing that, hey, we’re actually going fast. We’re actually doing things. I’ve put people in my car that were like, I hate electric cars. I hate what you’re doing. They’re terrible. And then you take them for a ride in my mustang or something and all suddenly look at you and go, I had no idea that this Gary Hooker, I’m going to refer to him again. He’s a really good friend of ours here at the shop. He comes by here at least once a month. Great dude. He’s a legend. Living legend. I took him for a ride in my car, and he was never an ace. Hilo has electric bikes, electric motorcycles. He gets where this is going. I put him in the car, and I just could not stop laughing the whole time. Gary’s a very cheery person. And he gets out and goes, man, I just love what you guys are doing. This is exactly what we did 50 years ago. You’re just doing it with a different power plant. You know? He goes, don’t worry about what everyone says. He goes, you’re going to be under Matthew rage track. And eventually they’re going to figure it out that they’re getting beat. His truck takes out hellcats at the drag strip, and mine corners really well, and it outperforms most of the vehicles that I go running with. So I think that by itself is. Yes. We used to get a ton of hate. I still do. We post some stuff online. It’s like you desecrated american classic. There’s always going to be the keyboard warriors, and that’s fine. That’s their bag. I just. I don’t care. I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing. I’m not here to make any political statements or environmental statements. I’m just here to make the statement. We go fast. Period.

Cole Strandberg:  Love it. Well, heck, man, you got Snow right next to you, who went from working on missiles to working on a whole different type of missile, which is a very cool career trajectory shift. Eddie, paint me the picture real quick. That first SeMA, you guys were there. What year was this?

Eddy Borysewicz: I think it was 2020.

Cole Strandberg:  Okay.

Eddy Borysewicz: All right.

Cole Strandberg:  Very good. So, kind of in the mainstream, accepted, but still not in that world just yet. Snow, talk to me. I want to talk about some innovation and the technological side of things. Firstly, what are some challenges that you face from a technical perspective while working with electric conversions for these vehicles?

Gregg Snow: Well, one of the biggest challenges, I think, is one of the things that we’ve kind of overcome, and we’ve made as close as you can come to a plug and play kit. Right. So, you know, this is his brainchild. I implement it. I’m trying to make it work. Right. But he came up with an idea, and then when it’s all said and done, you can literally come to revolt and write a check and take the parts that you need to get your car running. That’s the technological, you know, challenge the EV space. So there’s a lot of good companies out there, and you can mix and match some of these parts, but if you don’t know which one talks to which and which one works with which, now you have. It’s a horse of a different color. Now it’s a nightmare, and you have to figure it out. And what happens is, generally, most people will come back to a place like revolt and say, hey, I have all this stuff. Can you make it work? We’ve had two situations where, unfortunately, you need to get rid of all that stuff, and here’s what we offer, and we make it work. So one of the. We did a car for Tim Allen, and the person that was filming for him, she asked me if I was excited, and, you know, because the car is actually running. And I was like, not really, because. Do you get excited when you make a peach cobbler and it tastes like it’s supposed to? No. We have a recipe and we know what works. So we’ve essentially overcome that challenge, that technological challenge that you’re talking about, because we have made a true kit. So does that make sense?

Cole Strandberg:  Absolutely. It’s a perfect answer. And to Snow’s point, Eddie, your brainchild, how has the reality differed from when you kind of first had that vision? Any challenges you didn’t expect to encounter that you’ve had to get through? I’m sure the list is probably long enough to fill an episode based on Snow’s reaction, but let’s. Let’s give it a go.

Gregg Snow: Well, before you start talking, what you just said, we just came from lunch and we had this exact conversation, and I said, yeah, but when you did this, did you think it was going to blow up this big, this fast? Because he has a whole new set of challenges, and now I’ll let him tell you about it.

Eddy Borysewicz: But, yeah, I mean, I run businesses, and this is not my first parade. I’ve had a software company since, you know, I was 19 years old, and I’ve worked with a lot of different industries, started a bunch of companies. Not all of them were successful, but that’s normal. I knew this would go somewhere because it just. There was nobody doing it. So I had this weird gut feeling that I think we’re on. And my brother was the biggest naysayer. He goes, well, it can’t be that easy. If this easy, then everyone would be doing it. And I don’t want to sound arrogant, but it really wasn’t extremely hard. It was just like, let’s just do it right. And no one’s done it right yet, you know, big horsepower. It looks good. It’s plug and play and it runs. That’s the hardest part I had, is there was no kit. When I even I was doing my skateboards, I did some very high powered skateboards and bikes. This is before e bikes were really big. I said, I’m a downhill guy. There was no kit I could buy. I had to build everything from scratch. That’s the challenge, is you’re the first guy to do it, so you have to start with, like, a clean slate and go, does this work? No. Does this work? No. Ah, these two work. So you’re trying to assemble all these things, and especially with this, like, doing the billet work and all the engineering, to me, that’s easy. I love doing that stuff. It’s fun getting everything to communicate properly. And we’re using OEM parts, too. We’re using Tesla motherboards, inverters. We have to now can spoof we have to talk to certain things. There’s a lot of little intricacies in the middle of all that, that it takes years to weed those people out, to get to the right people, to become friends with the guys that know what they’re doing. It’s not just us here. I have a whole team. I have engineers, I have electronical engineers that I work with. We’re building our own BMS systems. Once again, I don’t like the stuff that’s out there because I think a lot of it is. We’re still early in this whole entire world. The Oes have billions and billions of dollars. We don’t. So we have to copy them as much as we can because they already set the groundwork. And it’s not, that’s not a bad thing. That’s a good thing. A lot of people are like, oh, you know, screw the oes. No, they have the answers. Use them. TESLA’s BEen good enough to open up their patents, too, so there’s a lot of good stuff there that we dove into to pull and use in some of our componentry. But running a business is not the fun part. You know, I have to deal with emails, I have to deal with people, I have to deal with vendors, I have to deal with supply chain stuff. And trust me, I hate doing that. I’m stuck in this office here while these guys in their back playing with stuff, and that’s, that’s the part that, that sucks. And there’s no getting around it. And I knew this was going to come someday, but hey, I still wouldn’t trade it in for anything. We’re having a lot of fun. Innovation’s always a thing that happens here. We’re always building new stuff, we’re always inventing new things. We have a new motor system coming out next year, battery systems. We want to really, TRulY encompass that whole plug and play theory of, you know, they’re the Diyers. I get it. You guys are awesome. You guys helped everyone get to this point, but there has to be some, you know, I’d say parent in a room that goes, this is what works. We’ve been working with people like Legacy EV and Ftech as well to come up with some standards that help people develop and build cars correctly. So the last thing I want is egg on anyone’s face. Even if it’s a mistake someone else makes and a car burns down, it makes the entire industry look very terrible. So we cannot, we can’t just always wing it because there’s a lot of people watching. And unfortunately, electric car burns down, we all suffer. It’s not just the guy that blew it up.

Cole Strandberg:  Yep. Absolutely, man. Anytime you have that life safety component, some professionalization, some standardization, some real innovation is really needed, and a very good thing. Now, I want to get into the business side of things. Even. Even if we got to trudge through some of the boring pieces of the conversation, I don’t think that’s possible with this group. But I want to talk about the innovation and really break it down and set the stage. So walk me through at a pretty high level. I’m not a super technical guy, but walk me through the technology behind your conversions and what makes them stand out in today’s market.

Gregg Snow: Yeah, well, okay. One of the main things that stands out is the look right now. We’ve had this conversation in here. That’s why, you know, we really prepared for the answer. We’ve talked about what makes a car. What’s your crown jewel? And you open the hood, and there you see a big block, and you can see the heads, you see the carburetor, and you can see all these parts, but you open the hood on an Ev, and what do you see? You see a frunk. And how does it work in the military? We said pfm. If something you didn’t want to explain or didn’t know how, you just like, eh, pfm. It’s pure magic. Yeah, pure freaking magic.

Cole Strandberg:  I appreciate that edit, because we can let one slide. I don’t think two is going to get through.

Gregg Snow: But the point is, is a car guy is who we’re trying to appeal to, and a car guy wants to see that crown jewel under the hood. And most of the time, you don’t. You just see a box. Maybe you see an orange cable or two, but you open the hood on a revolt car, and you see something like, ooh, wow, tell me more about this. Right? So that’s where. That’s the appeal that we bring to the table. Now, it has the same thing. All cars have four wheels, right? All car has a steering wheel of some sort. You know, they all have some sort of fuel system. Well, when you get down into it, our cars, the revolt cars, the revolt, it all has the same thing as. As a Tesla would have, as, you know, lucid would have as a Rivian has. They all have an inverter. They all have a battery pack. That battery pack sends your voltage, turns it into. From DC to AC, which turns our motor, right? And then you have to have some sort of mechanism to transfer that to the wheels. Now, we specialize in front engine, rear wheel drive. But, you know, we took on a project that was a front wheel drive car. And, you know, we made it work. And the customer came in yesterday and said we exceeded his expectation. So the point here is when you’re dealing with revolt and the system, you actually can see something tangible. It’s not like the average ev where you open the hood and there’s a.

Eddy Borysewicz: Frunk, or we hide everything. We actually open up everything because I want. I want this to be approachable, too. So, you know, going back to your first. Our first time at SEMA with our system, we had some of the, you know, old school gear heads, old school heart rotters. You know, they’re like, what am I looking at? And you’re like, well, this is where the DC goes in. That’s where the AC goes out, and this is how it’s wired. Whoa. That’s it? That’s it. Well, okay, explain more to me. Well, and then they. You see the gears turning versus they can’t see anything once they see it, especially the mustang that we have. I purposely designed that cardinal to be extremely open. You can see all the bms, you can see all the battery cells. You could see the motor over the cables, the contractor box. It’s very easy to kind of map it all through in about 510 minutes with any customer. And instantly they go from the fear of the unknown to now. I know what I’m looking at. I happen to be friends with some of the largest car builders in America, and they’re all gas guys and they’re all now looking to. To this conversion stuff. But they’re scared. They’re scared because they don’t know. They just went from being the top dogs in the industry, knowing everything about what they’re doing to now being zero, the new guy. They don’t know anything, not about a car, but they don’t know anything about this ev stuff. So it’s. It’s. It’s showing them that, hey, guys, it’s actually not that complicated. And we have a recipe that works. And here’s how it. How it goes those together. And that really helps those people kind of get and accept this stuff. In lack of a better term.

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Eddy Borysewicz: Yeah, I mean, that’s what we try to preserve. We don’t do a lot of car builds here. We kind of pick and choose because we’re not a. We’re not a big conversion shop. We’re more of a manufacturer of parts and technology. We have a 1936 cord sitting right behind the wall here that belongs to simple green. It’s the first front wheel drive vehicle that was ever pushed into mass production here in America. And it’s exactly. It was, I think, 1500 of them made. There’s like 50 left driving. This was one of 50. And I try to talk to owner out of it. I’m like, you know, you got a pretty rare car that you maybe want to preserve. And he looks at me, he’s like, no, I want to drive this car right now. I need a tow truck to drive it because it breaks down, it’s got a lycoming engine. And I have an aircraft that no one makes parts for. And most of the parts in this car are 88 years old, and most of the manufacturers are dead. So no one’s gonna be able to fix this. I wanted something reliable. I could still cruise around. So he said something to me, right there he goes. He wants to drive his car. So we preserve that vehicle. We didn’t chop it up, we didn’t gut the heck out of it and replaced. We literally made a kit that almost bolts into that car. It kept front wheel drive. And he told me, do whatever you want. You want to chop the car in half? Chop the car in half? I said, no, no, no, we’re not going to do that. We want to preserve what you just said, preserve that piece of history. But we’re just repowering it in a way that now that car, instead of sitting in his garage, is going to be now driven down seal beach in Santa Monica on a weekly basis. And not only does him and his wife get to enjoy it, because he’s had that car since the nineties and he spent a lot of money sold it. Barry Jackson brought it back. It’s got a lot of history with nostalgia, and he’s. He’s tied to that car. And now he could go drive it without having to worry about it starting. And it’s going to be going up and down the 101, and other people are now going to enjoy that vehicle. So when people say, hey, you’re desecrating an american classic. No, you’re not. How many ls swaps do you see in fords? Shut up. It’s. It’s like, just get your hat out ahead of that for a second and just picture what we’re doing. We’re making this more accessible. My mustang never breaks down. I go through gearboxes, but the motor I’ve never touched.

Cole Strandberg:  Hmm. That’s awesome, man. And, you know, this series is all about SEMA and that world, so I love that kind of story. We’d love to hear some more, too. Are there any success stories or challenging projects or favorite projects that you guys would like to kind of reminisce on a minute for me? Because I know that’s what we all love to see in here.

Eddy Borysewicz: I. Trevor man’s car. Bonneville to Bonneville. Historic moment.

Gregg Snow: Bonneville was a game changer. I mean, not just in land speed racing, but certainly for us. So, Rick Vesco comes to Eddie B. And says, you know, can you make this work? Okay? Sure. Yeah, we can make it work. Okay, good. You got four months, huh? So, he brings the car in, and four months later, it’s running under electric power. Now, when I say running, that means the wheels were turning. Car never left the trailer.

Eddy Borysewicz: We have nowhere to run it.

Gregg Snow: Nowhere to run. It’s a land speed car.

Eddy Borysewicz: It’s a 27 foot long car that’s about a half an inch off the ground with a turning radius of the Titanic. And plus, the car has been around since 1950, so we gotta give a little backstory on this. So if you guys ever look up, uh, team vesto, they’ve been out in salt since 1933. They’re the most prestigious team out there. Um, they’re the fastest team out there. They built something called the turbinator two and a turbinator one. The turbinator two went 503 miles an hour. It’s the fastest wheel driven car on the planet. Uh, the. The little giant, the one we’re talking about was one of their cars built in 1957.

Gregg Snow: 339, top speed.

Eddy Borysewicz: Yeah. 339. It had everything in there, from a Ford model b motor to big blocks, turbo, nitrous, gas, you name it. It’s had it in there. They’ve towed bicyclists behind it. They’ve done everything in that car. So that cars got so much history behind it. So when it came to us, it was one of the moments that, you know, we were kind of fresh in the game, and we looked at it and said, yeah, we can make this thing go. I did some basic math on how many motors we’re going to need, how much power they needed. Cause those guys already knew the formula. We need x amount of horsepower and x amount of torque to go this fast. Okay, I can make that happen. So the car was very challenging because we couldn’t really make it any longer or wider because the body was already made, the chassis was already made. We had alloyed AV’s fabrication help us quite a bit with the chassis because we did have to cut the car up quite a bit to stick our motor systems in. It had a, you know, $100,000 Sanderson race engine inside. And I was doing what. 339? 339 was the top speed. Yeah. And we went out and we had some problems. I mean, the best part is, is it ran its first run. We did the whole five mile pole. And I remember 284 miles an hour. Just shy under 300. And I remember Rick Fesco looking back at me, going, kid, we gave you a 10% chance to even make it to the end of the salt, because Bonneville is brutal. It’s a five mile an hour drag race. There’s nothing out there. You have to bring everything with you. You blow something up, it’s not. You’re not going to Kragan or Napa or you’re not going to the auto parts store. You have to do it right there on the salt. So that was very challenging. We had some battery issues. We were using a Tesla battery, and that one that just had too much sag. We couldn’t sustain the amperage under the load that we had. So we had to go home, lick our wounds, and build a new battery pack in 30 days. 30 days to go back out and run world finals. And that’s where we got a record. Car ran up to 359.8 was its top speed. So that was one of my favorite builds I think we ever did because of what was involved and how quickly it kind of materialized and the fact that people go to Bonneville for 2030 years of their lives and die and don’t get a record. And then we got one literally right off the bat. We ran that car eight times without a single massive hiccup. We mean, we blew. We blew fuses typical little stuff that was a 1520 minutes fix, but the car was consistent. It did exactly what it was supposed to do every single time. And watching people that are in their eighties that have been out on the salt there since they were six years old and know everything about cars and gears and going fast, looking at you going, wow, that’s impressive. And that. That’s so repeatable that their whole entire mind shifted into this whole thing. And not one of them was like, yeah, this electric garbage. Quite the contrary. You figured out a formula that works, man.

Cole Strandberg:  That is incredible. That is a heck of a story.

Eddy Borysewicz: It’s huge. It’s so. I mean, it gives me goosebumps sometimes thinking about it, because that is such a big leap in technology. And, you know, I think the last car before that was Ohio state’s buckeye bullet.

Gregg Snow: Yeah. And that was a 17 or 19 year old record that had stood.

Eddy Borysewicz: Yeah. And they had a whole team of engineers and really smart kids working on that car. And for a couple. Couple of idiots and flip flops in four months, was it. Were able to do it. Now, technology’s gotten better, obviously, we have better battery chemistry and everything else, so I’m not gonna take all the credit for that. But it was a wonderful part of history. I think that to be a part of that, that car is gonna go in the museum now forever with. With our markings on it. And it’s just a neat, neat accomplishment. At the end of the day, man.

Cole Strandberg:  Tough to call it like a you made it moment, but it has to feel that way, has to make you really somewhat emotional about what you did there, which is very, very cool. And I’m sure the best is yet to come, which adds a new layer of pressure. How do you think you can keep one upping what you’re doing?

Eddy Borysewicz: Well, I think what we need to do is, you know, I was asked to go back to Bonneville a few times since then, and I’m kind of bitter about it, I’ll be honest. I respect the sport. I can’t stand Bonneville. It’s hot, it’s miserable. It’s a lot of work for a very, very small amount of play. I didn’t even get to drive the car. And I’m one of those guys that I need to be on the wheel and stuff. So there’s other disciplines we’re moved into. Matty just got the world record on his electric bike. It’s another Bonneville run. He did 240 miles an hour, top speed. And I also bumped up his class record on that. So that was very awesome on his end to know his truck. He’s got the HBD called the hillbilly deluxe. It’s a 1980 GMC Sierra, GMC long bed Sierra that we got. He got off of a farm in Texas. Right now it’s running a single motor. It’s got about 600 hp. It’s a really fun truck. I said, he puts hellcats to shame on the racetrack and has a lot of fun on the 8th miles out. Here we are now taking that Bonneville Motor and that Bonneville battery and putting it in his truck. 1200 horsepower, rear wheel drive. We want to go race the farm truck. We want to go down on the. On a quarter mile with this, you know, beat up farm truck. That’s how I think we want up it. We don’t. We don’t try to run up Bonneville. We just go in a different discipline. Let’s go do drag racing. I prefer tracks. So my car is going to be hitting. We’re going to be going to Tulsa, tulsa, Oklahoma, here doing racing in two weeks. We’re going out there to race my mustang. We’re also doing like button Willow and other places. Some tracks. I like to do that myself. So we’re showing the people the performance side of things. Not just acceleration, but the fact that you could take these cars. My car is a 1965 mustang, for all you guys know. Mustangs and nothing that era. Those are terrible cars. Bump steer. They flex their unibodies. Those first years of the unibodies, those things are just. I remember being high school, the thing handled like garbage. Now we take that, we couple it with a roadster shop chassis. We’re able to bury the batteries real deep down inside the car. Low center of gravity, balance the cars out, engineer them in a way that could. They can never be engineered using a gas engine. Because a gas engine, you have a lot of weight in one spot and there’s no way around that. Well, yes, you can move a mid engine back, but you’re limited. We’re not. We’re a 50 50 split. I’m within 50 pounds of front to rear. And when that car hits a corner, it hits a corner so smoothly. So there’s all these other disciplines. We’re going off road this year, too, or next year. We’re going to build. Building off road vehicles with. With a really, really, really big, big company. I’m not going to spill too much beans on that, but we have some really fun things. We actually work with a lot of large companies. Believe it or not, Magnaflow is one of our favorite people that we work with, and they make exhaust systems, and they. They’re one of our sponsors, so figure that one out, you know, so.

Cole Strandberg:  Interesting, interesting. All right, well, I’m not going to try too hard to pull any confidential information out of you guys, but, hey, you know, we do breaking news here, too, on occasion, but no, from a business standpoint, some really cool opportunities that are obviously extremely well earned. How do you feel for those initial opportunities you guys got discovered?

Eddy Borysewicz: I think that, you know, I tell our interns this. If you do good work and you’re honest, eventually people will notice. So do something different, do something better, and don’t. Don’t lie or cheat or steal, and eventually people will find you. I mean, that’s how kind of we found Tim Allen or Tim Allen found us, is we had some street credibility. The guys are at icon four x four liked what we do. They kind of noticed us and said, and Tim was looking for somebody to help him with this project and said, hey, look, these revolt guys seem to be killing it. Why don’t you call them? And that was an opportunity that landed in our lap that we took very quickly because, you know, obviously there’s good exposure there. Tim was a great client to work with. I feel really bad what he went through with that car, with other vendors, and he was kind of, like, left out in. I left out the dry by some of the other EV guys that worked on that, and we were able to take that car, fix it, and make it right. And I remember their first test drive with Tim. He was tickled pink. He had his nice little laugh and. But those are the opportunities, as a business, that you have to take. And back to Bonneville. Bonneville is a huge sacrifice for me. I spent a small fortune on that cardinal. I remember talking to the vasco. Okay, let’s talk budgets. And they got up and left the room, like, all right, you guys go ahead and talk budgets. We’re out of here. We gave you a car and an opportunity, and that’s all we’re gonna do. So now it’s like batteries, you know, we’re talking $100,000 of the parts and batteries that I had to pull out of my own pocket to start that car. But it’s paid itself back. And those are the things, business wise, as a business owner, that you have to gamble.

Gregg Snow: Yeah.

Eddy Borysewicz: If you don’t throw that down, then you never know. And I remember my wife. She was very good about this whole thing. She was nine months pregnant during this whole ordeal. And my daughter came out literally on October 9. And October 1 is when we got the record. So that was a very close window. I came home with a catcher’s admit, but she even told me, she goes, if you don’t do this and you don’t get it done, you will forever kick yourself for this thing. So go try. And if you fail, at least you say you tried. And, well, we failed the first time, and then we made it the second time. So those are opportunities that I think every business. Trust your gut. You have to. When you smell something good, you gotta go taste it.

Cole Strandberg:  Go all in.

Eddy Borysewicz: Right?

Cole Strandberg:  If you got a good hand, play it, play it, maximize it, make it happen. Man, what a big month for you, that October. That’s insane. A lot going on there from a. Looking at what you guys do, what you’re obviously passionate about. From an outsider’s perspective, one might call you adrenaline junkies. Talk to me about the adrenaline that happens when you. You finally turn over those keys to a client who’s. Who’s been waiting on this or get to see kind of that first exposure, what’s going through your mind? How cool is that when it goes great, how wild is that when it doesn’t necessarily go that great too?

Eddy Borysewicz: Well, it’s never not gone great, but it is. It is a sense of accomplishment for me. I am an adrenaline junkie. I race bikes, I paraglide, I fly airplanes. I do a lot of crazy stuff that kills me or should kill me, but this is a different type of, like, happiness, like, to me. I mean, watching Tim’s face. Yeah. Even yesterday, we had Fred waterfall in here from simple green. He’s. He’s the owner’s right hand, Mandy, simple green cleaning products. And we have their court here. But just watching him be underneath the car with his. With his jaw on the ground.

Gregg Snow: Yeah. Just looking in amazement.

Eddy Borysewicz: That tickles me pink because it’s like, I love to please other people. I’m just not going to hoard it all for myself. Like, when my guys are happy, I’m happy. When he’s happy, we’re happy. We’re actually a very happy family here. We don’t argue. We all get along. Everyone asks for help. And at the end of the day, you know, yes, I’m the business owner. I’m the guy that started this. And even Fred’s like, you know, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. I’m like, hold on. There’s other people here, you know, snow, you know, he sweeps floors very nicely. But we got Maddie, we got will, we got all these other people. So when you. When you’re. When you’re vibing with your friends and you’re all together, lifting each other up and the client standing there praising everybody, that, to me, feels really good. That is an amazing feeling. It’s a sense of accomplishment. And watching everybody get some sort of recognition for it is super cool, because I don’t. I don’t like to sit here and just kind of. Yeah, it was my. No, it’s all of us together. It takes a team.

Cole Strandberg:  That’s awesome, man. Well, and I want to talk about that team, as well. You. You kind of mentioned throughout this conversation kind of uncharted territory here. There’s no playbook in. In going about building a team that does what you do. So, in one case, you go out and find a missile scientist. Who else is on your team? How is this all coming together?

Eddy Borysewicz: So we got myself and snow. We have Maddie. We call him the Wheeling Welshman. So that’s Matthew Dealey. He’s our wiring specialist and pretty much the jack of all traits. Back in the shop, we have Johnny five, Johnny Garcia. He’s one our fabricators that comes on board.

Gregg Snow: That man is a mechanical genius.

Eddy Borysewicz: Yeah. He also writes software programs. He knows his ev’s. He built this really cool car. It’s. It’s called Luxe. It’s a 1972 Toyota Hilux. Yeah. With. With a model of small Tesla driving. And he literally blows away cars because he’s fast. So we also have Albert shave over AV’s fabrication, another fabricator of ours that comes by and helps us out with things from time. The time. Will Buckwhile. Buck Walter from Buck Wired. He does a lot of our wiring, actually, all over our wiring.

Gregg Snow: Yeah, he builds the wiring harnesses and the contactor boxes.

Eddy Borysewicz: And the contactor boxes. Nick, over at NDK Paragon, which is right back here behind me, has a five axis machine shop. The guy is a brilliant machinist, one of the best machinists in the world. When other machinists can’t do stuff, they call him. He does stuff for blue origin. I mean, you name it, he does all aerospace stuff. So whenever you build a team like this, you got to realize that I don’t have all the answers. Yeah, I have a lot of them, but I know who to ask, and that’s what you have to do. You got to put your. Put your arrogance aside for a second and go. I don’t know. Let me go ask Nick. Nick always has the answer.

Gregg Snow: Yeah, Nick will tell you.

Eddy Borysewicz: Yeah, Nick. But it’s one of those things like, you know what? Snow’s better at this. Maddie’s better at this. Well, maybe I’m better at this. Johnny’s better at this versus. No, no, I got this. I could do it myself. He can do it myself. My grandfather said that to my dad. My dad said it to me. He goes, if you want to build a good team, you’re not gonna be able to do it by yourself. You need people around you to do it for you and help you along your journey. And my dad was very good about team building. That’s. That’s him right up here. He’s a famous cycling coach also. His name was Eddie Bdez. He made some of the best cycling teams in the world. And I watched him growing up, and sometimes he hurt feelings because the people that thought were they were going to get hired didn’t. Because my dad only chose the best. And I think that’s why we’re so good here, is I only allow the best people to come in here, and if you can’t carry your weight, you’re gone, man.

Gregg Snow: Names that he just went through, those are literally some of the top guys.

Cole Strandberg:  In the field, the elite of the elite. And it does take leaving your ego at the door to bring on folks who hopefully, right, are better at certain things than you are, are smarter at certain things than you are. And, you know, as a leader of a team, the goal in a lot of cases, for those egos who can. For those leaders who can check the egos, is to not never be the smartest person on a given topic, especially as it relates to technical. That’s awesome. I want to briefly touch on the business side, because we’ve been having too much fun away from the business side. More of the innovation, the fun stuff. But talk to me about how you view the EV conversion industry evolving in the market. It’s already evolved rapidly. How do you see it playing out in the future?

Eddy Borysewicz: Well, I think we have to go back to the.com era. I’m in technology. I’ve been in technology for my whole life. And like any new industry, you get this huge spike from a business perspective. When I was called dot bomb, because we know what happened there is. Everyone floods the market with lots of money, engineering just. Just a giant microscope on the whole thing. Like, the EV’s are now. We are now at the pinnacle of, I think, where we are, we’re about to bomb. There are now companies, EV companies going out.

Gregg Snow: Yeah, they’re dropping off like flies.

Eddy Borysewicz: They’re dropping like Flydenne. There’s a lot of people filing for bankruptcy in the EV world. It’s not what it was three, four years ago. And there’s a lot of different factors that help that happen. The economy is one of them. We also went through Covid and a bunch of other things. There’s political politics involved as well. And also going back to the EV push, when Elon started Tesla, he did it in the right way. He built the better, faster car that was so technologically advanced that it pulled people into wanting to buy them. People wanted a Tesla. It was, you know, I don’t want to say cult following, but there was, there’s definitely a demographic of people that really wanted those vehicles we included. And it had nothing to do with the environment for me or anything else. It was just purely about, this is cool, it’s different. It. There’s nothing accelerates like an electric cardinal, but now that’s kind of fizzled. You know, the OES have dropped billions and billions and millions of dollars in there, which is good because it helps innovation, but also I think the infusion and the push from the government side, you know, it backfires. And it’s not one thing. There’s a lot of things that are causing the EV crash, which is going to come. I think, if whoever survives the next 18 months is going to stick around for a long time, just like the.com era, all these big companies, remember ask jeeves and. And then just kind of all disappeared. And like, Google was left, Microsoft was left and all those. Anyone was left kind of became the household name and those companies flourished and those companies became the technology gods at that point. And they still been around ever since. And I think that we’re going to see something very similar happen here in the EV industry. A lot of investors aren’t investing like they were before or five years ago. Money is not as readily available. Interest rates are through the roof. There’s a lot of factors involved, especially when it comes to the EV stuck, because this is a new industry where four years ago people are just dumping money into because just so much buzz and hype. But now the EV stuff kind of fell back a little bit. The OES aren’t selling as much. Ford had some issues and now there’s like, you know, those rental car places, too are selling EV’s because it didn’t work out for them. So there’s a lot of negatives that are going to impact all of us, and that’s completely normal. If anyone thinks this is all because EV’s suck, no, this is a typical progression. And regression and implosion of a new market of any technology. This happened with.com, this happened with computers, this happened with cell phones. BlackBerry, perfect example. They had the market cornered. Everything was great, but everything kind of receded at that point. BlackBerry went under and Apple launched her smartphone, changing the world forever. But we’re going to see a lot of the same similarities. If you guys look back at any, any big industry that burst and then collapsed and then reshaped itself, kind of the fat goes to the top, we skim it off and we start over. I think that’s what we’re going to see here in the EV industry in the next, you know, 18 months to three to four years. That’s what we’re going to go through. We go through that big downslope. People lose their butts over this, but, you know, at the end of the day, this needs to happen. It’s, it’s, it’s. It’s a purge. And that happens. It’s an industrial purge that happens in any industry.

Cole Strandberg:  And we’re evolution, evolution, maturity. It cleans out, kind of resets the table to be able to evolve even quicker and creates that survival of the fittest dynamic. I think that’s extremely interesting and insightful. Definitely want to keep an eye on that moving forward. The reason we’re here, it’s. It’s the most wonderful time of the year coming up. That, of course, is SEMA 2024. Obviously. It’s a show known for showcasing cutting edge innovations. What can we expect from you guys at SEMA this year?

Eddy Borysewicz: Well, we got. Last year we had about five different cars.

Gregg Snow: Yeah, I think it’s more than that.

Eddy Borysewicz: We tend to go to Sema in a way. I mean, we’re SEMA members, but we have a lot of clients that build really cool cars, and we’re here to support them. This year is no different than any other year. We work with Legacy Ev. They have a good training program, so we kind of, kind of float around SEMA. We don’t have, like, a designated area for revolt because we’re in so many different spots, and we like to support our clients. Snow and I usually break, break apart pretty quickly. He goes his direction. I go to my direction. He goes, talks to some of our other clients and installs and builders and go talk to some other ones. We will primarily be at the simple green booth this year because that’s one of our big cars that we’re debuting at SEMA.

Gregg Snow: I’d say that’s our showcase pieces of the Sema car.

Eddy Borysewicz: Yeah, the green flash the cord. But we tend to float around SEMA, and SEMA is one of those places, too, that I like to talk to as many people as possible, because it’s not just a place with combustion engines and this little EV stuff on the side, but there’s people that make all sorts of components. Electric stuff as being electric. Power steering, electric brakes. Those are not just EV stuff. Those are combustion engine stuff. We’re always looking for the best parts, partners, vendors, people to network with. Neat builds are coming up. So Seema’s really good about that is because we get to hang out and rub elbows with the best of the best. And, you know, like you said, innovation is key in this industry. So if we’re not innovating and we’re not talking to people, we. We don’t go anywhere. And I think 90% of our shows is us talking about what’s next. Yeah, I mean, snow’s. Snows knows car nose cars better than anybody I know. And he’s always like, you know, what could we do? Where are we going? And he knows how to talk to people, and it gets to that spark going.

Cole Strandberg:  So, yeah, you guys know how to talk to people. I think it’s an understatement. A fantastic conversation to today. Super interesting. Before I start to wrap up, though, snow, I want to give you a shot at that, man. What are you excited to see at this year’s SEMA?

Gregg Snow: Well, as always, the EV space, it’s been growing and growing and growing over the past several years. And Eddie B. And I went to our first SEMA together in, like I said, 20, and we didn’t even have a car. We had a chassis with, you know, the motor. The car obviously wasn’t running yet. And there was a few vehicles. I think there was six or seven cars there last year. We went, I don’t know, 35, 40 cars there. So I’m really excited to see how big the, what they call it, future, future tech. Future tech section is going to be, because now we’ve got, you know, eight or nine builds, you know, that are complete out in the field. And I’m looking curious to see we have, you know, a lot of friends in the industry. Let’s see what emuscle car is going to do, brand new muscle car. See what, you know, legacy EV is going to bring. There’s gonna be a lot of tech on display, and a fair amount of is gonna be Revo Motors. So I’m excited to see how much of that, you know, is gonna be, how much it’s gonna grow.

Eddy Borysewicz: Yeah. And we’re not the only people innovating. There are. There’s, you know, hypercraft out there. We got a lot of different people that are bringing things to the table, and it’s always. Even though they’re your competitors, we’re all family here. Yeah, everyone’s, you know, most of us play nice together. It’s like, oh, yeah. You know, Kirk Miller, he was at am. No, he’s at hypercraft. We always are very friendly. He’s a good person. All those guys, you know, we all keep in touch because we all know that if you put your blinders on and don’t play with everyone else in the sandbox, it’s not good. You have to play with everybody. And even though you’re. You’re in competing industries, it doesn’t matter that this ocean is so gigantic. There’s so many fish. Then I tell people, time. Let’s put our nets together. We could catch way more.

Cole Strandberg:  Yeah. Yep. You mentioned it earlier, man. To an extent, everyone in this industry is on the same team. Rising tide lifts all boats, rode the boat in the same direction. Whatever you want to use those stereotypical sayings, but fantastic. Last question before I start to get some. Some contact info and all that stuff. And I do want to be sure to put any links in the show notes for things to check out at SEMA, links on the products, links on your. Anything you want to include. Want to make sure we include it. You mentioned 2020. You had some haters. I imagine that has shifted to a lot more lovers, a lot fewer haters. What do you expect from the haters this year?

Eddy Borysewicz: Keep feeding the engine. The algorithm loves you. You know, it’s drastically reduced, though. Yeah, it’s. It’s a lot less. And, you know, there’s always going to be the guy that hates you, and no matter. I mean, you could solve world hunger tomorrow, and someone’s going to be like, no, you did it wrong. Okay? But no, that’s. As I said, it went from 75 people, 75% back in 2020. I think it’s only about 10% now. You know, very. I went to Pri last year. They were very nice, and they asked us to come out, and they got us out there, and I was warned, be careful. Pri. These are hardcore racers. Not one bad thing, because they saw us take a race car that’s been built in 1957 and made it go faster than it ever has with gas engines. It literally just leveled the playing fields. Everyone’s like, you made it go faster. We’re all race car drivers. That’s all we wanted to hear, period. So very, very different in the last four years. We’ve been in this since the 2020. Sema.

Gregg Snow: Yeah.

Eddy Borysewicz: Wherever. We’re expecting lots of love and hate, too. That’s fine. I’ll, I’m the, I’m one of the best guys to sit there and deal with the haters because I, I sight with them. I’m like, yeah, I like gas, too. It smells good. It’s loud. It makes noise. But, you know, there’s other things here.

Cole Strandberg:  Yeah, I love it, man. That mindset shift is super cool, indicative of a lot of the automotive industry and the innovation that we’ve been seeing here over the last few years. Gentlemen, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Eddie, I’ll start with you, man. Where can people follow along with you and learn more about revolt?

Eddy Borysewicz: Well, you can check us [email protected]. we’re also on Instagram, YouTube. We just started a YouTube channel. It’s not very big. We love to have more supporters there, too, but it literally documents everything that we do. All the little dumb things that we do here at the office. Also, just look up revolt systems on YouTube and follow the build. So we got YouTube, Instagram, and our website, and anybody wants to come on and come by and stop by our shop, take a test drive, our doors are always open, too.

Cole Strandberg:  So, man, well, sign me up and would love to spend time with this crew out at SEMA as well. It’s been an absolute blast. Snow, if anyone wants to get in touch with you, where should they go? Same list?

Gregg Snow: Yeah, same list. Same list.

Cole Strandberg:  Awesome. Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time. Congratulations on all the success to this point. Looking forward to keeping and continuing to follow along with your story. And here’s to a great SEMA 2024. Thanks, guys. Man, what an absolute blast. Thank you again to Eddie and snow from revolt systems for joining us on today’s show, talking all about the wild and massively innovating world of electrification among classic cars. What they’re working on is so cool. What they have coming up at SEMA 2024 is incredible, and these guys are just absolutely entertaining as can be. So I’ve gone ahead and linked a lot of their content in the show notes, highly recommend checking out their builds and everything they have going on, and there’s a lot to learn. Innovation is just going at the most rapid pace in history as it relates to automotive. Keep up. That’s all for today’s episode of the Collision Vision. If you enjoyed it and are enjoying our series the art of restoration. Please be sure to hit that subscribe button wherever you enjoy your podcast and on YouTube, where the collision vision lives in video form. As always, on behalf of the Autobody news team and myself, thank you for coming along for the ride.

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