We recently connected with James Fleischman and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, James thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

As a lifelong gear head, my initial reaction to electric vehicles was mostly negative. I viewed Tesla as a gimmick and electric cars would never catch on. I would also happily repeat the negative stereotypes of electric cars that they would not go very far, would take forever to charge, and would spontaneously combust given the chance.

This all changed during COVID when I purchased an electric weedeater after struggling to start my gas powered weedeater for the last time. It worked flawlessly and the batteries lasted much longer than I would have ever expected. It was this experience that convinced me to look at electric cars once again.

I called my older brother, Daniel, and was somehow able to convince him to convert a car to electric and try it out.

We decided on a 1980 Subaru BRAT after tossing many ideas against the wall. Mostly due to nostalgia as our father had owned them (he still has a Subaru Baja), and also that we did not see that anyone else had converted one yet.

This turned out to be a difficult, but very rewarding project. Once the BRAT was completed, we knew we had something special. It was faster and much more reliable than it was before. We had taken this derelict Subaru and gave it new life.

We had not planned on starting a business initially, but after doing some market research, we saw there was room in the EV Conversion space for classic car conversions.

We would then set ourselves apart in the community by hard-charging and turning out conversion after conversion on different makes and models. This was a different approach to what we had seen before, with most shops focusing on specific models.

James, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I graduated from Texas State University with a major in computer science. I found that I had a knack for coding in my early teens, and after trying a few other paths, decided that software development would give me a stable career.

Deep down, my true passion was always cars. My brothers and I would talk regularly about how we could turn our love of cars into a career, but never could come up with the right business idea.

When we jumped into electric conversions, this gave me a way to combine my knack for software and classic car restoration skills.

We are most proud of the fact that we FINISH projects. The fate of many cars that go to restoration shops is not so good. They languish for years while the owners send checks month after month. Many times, the project is never finished and they get back a disassembled shell of a car and an empty bank account. We only take on projects that we will finish, and we have never had a project go unfinished.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

During the first two years that Flash Drive Motors was in business, everyone working here had a full time job. We would work our day job, and then gather in the evenings and weekends to build cars. For myself, this often meant very little sleep.

Needless to say, this was exhausting. But, we all understood what needed to be done and we built some very cool projects during that time and burned the candle at both ends.

We were asked to speak at a conference about the business of EV Conversions, and during the discussion, one person pointed out the reason we were able to do so much, was because Flash Drive was our full time job. This comment made me consider for the first time making the leap to full time with the business.

This changeover to full time did not occur without pain. Adjustments to lifestyle had to occur to account for the smaller income as software development pays much better than starting your own business. Belts were tightened and a heightened sense of urgency was adopted to make this work.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Starting in the EV Conversion world, the first thing you run into is that the average customer is completely different than your typical classic car restoration customer.

Being new to the space, we initially did not understand the demographic of potential customers. We focused on our traditional customer base, not understanding that there is not as much crossover as we had imagined.

We found out rather quickly that we needed to forget all we knew about finding customers, and take a look at how to approach people that were more open to the idea. This meant presenting content more appealing to IT professional types than classic car fans.

We also had to unlearn many of the rules we would follow when building cars. Many classic and muscle car builds shy away from any sign of technology. But, with the EV conversion, those same ideas end up as the focal point of a build. Things like graphical displays are now desirable.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://flashdrivemotors.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flashdrivemotorsaustin/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FlashDriveMotors/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flash-drive-motors
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@dissrepair

Image Credits

Jessica Shumway Photography