From Brisbane 2018 to Everything Electric
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Watching Australia's EV Industry Grow From the Inside.
Some shows disappear from memory almost as soon as the stands are packed away. Others become stories.
For Graeme Manietta, one of those stories began in Brisbane in 2018, years before large electric vehicle exhibitions, with huge EV Companies and massive marketing budgets on brands, became a regular feature of the Australian calendar.
In November that year, the Australian Electric Vehicle Association held its EV Expo at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.
Graeme was chairman of the Queensland branch of the Australian Electric Vehicle Association at the time and was deeply involved in the emerging EV community. Electric vehicles were still a novelty to much of Australia.
For those already building them, converting them, driving them and trying to explain them to everyone else, however, something was clearly happening.
People were becoming interested. Very interested.
Brisbane, 2018
The 2018 AEVA EV Expo ran over three days, beginning with an industry conference and followed by a public electric vehicle motor show and trade exhibition.
The program covered battery technology, charging, electric transport, solar vehicles, future automotive training and Australian electric vehicle development.
Manufacturers including Hyundai, Nissan, Jaguar, Mitsubishi, Renault and BMW were represented. There were electric cars, converted vehicles, bikes, motorcycles, scooters, marine systems, charging equipment and renewable energy technology.
Greg McGarvie from ACE EV was also among the speakers, discussing the company's plans for Australian electric commercial vehicles. For Graeme, this wasn't an introduction to electric vehicles. By then he had already been converting and driving electric vehicles for over a decade at that time.
His first electric Suzuki Swift conversion had been completed in 2007.
The Brisbane show was instead an opportunity to put electric vehicles in front of thousands of people and let them see that this wasn't some theoretical technology waiting somewhere in the future. People were already building them. People were already driving them. We were already working out how to make them better.
And apparently, we also had a fair bit of fun doing it.
The Show People Still Remember
Fast forward eight years. At Everything Electric Sydney in September 2026, people were still talking about that Brisbane event, which had 9,000 people in attendance.
And laughing about it.
Exactly what happened over those few days probably deserves its own collection of stories because memories differ and some of the best parts were never formally documented.
But when people are still talking about an EV show eight years later, you know something happened that stuck.
Several people described that early Brisbane gathering as one of the best.
That may not be a scientifically defensible ranking. We'll take it anyway.
Those early electric vehicle events had an atmosphere that is difficult to recreate today. Most of the people involved weren't representing an established mainstream industry. They were building the industry.
There were enthusiasts, engineers, converters, early adopters, battery people, solar people, researchers and people who had simply become fascinated by the idea that cars didn't necessarily need an internal combustion engine.
Much of the knowledge was being developed in workshops rather than corporate boardrooms. Graeme's workshop was one of them.
Then Fully Charged Arrived in Australia
By 2023, the landscape had changed significantly.
Fully Charged LIVE came to Australia, bringing Robert Llewellyn's internationally recognised electric vehicle and clean energy platform to Sydney.
The first Australian Fully Charged LIVE was held at the International Convention Centre at Darling Harbour in March 2023. Almost 14,000 people attended.
Around 75 exhibitors took part, alongside live presentations, electric vehicles, charging technology, home energy systems and test drives.
This was no longer a small emerging movement trying to convince people that electric vehicles might have a future.
The future had arrived. Oz Electric Vehicles was there.
But our perspective was different from that of most new vehicle manufacturers.
We weren't standing beside a brand-new car explaining its features. We were interested in what happened underneath it. Battery packs. Motors. Controllers. Battery management systems. Regenerative braking. Charging. Diagnostics. Conversions. Repair. Integration.
And increasingly, the question that would become hugely important as the first generations of production EVs began ageing:
What happens to an electric vehicle when its battery no longer gives the owner what they need?
From Fully Charged to Everything Electric
The Australian exhibition continued growing and moved to Sydney Showground at Olympic Park. Fully Charged LIVE evolved into Everything Electric Australia.
The name change made sense.
Electric cars were becoming only one part of a much larger energy story involving solar, home batteries, charging, bidirectional power and the increasing connection between vehicles and the electricity system.
Oz Electric Vehicles returned to the Sydney Showground, and on one occasion we shared exhibition space with Greg McGarvie and ACE EV.
By then, the halls looked very different.
New vehicle brands were arriving. Tesla was no longer the only name drawing attention. There were electric trucks and vans, plug-in hybrids, new Chinese manufacturers and increasingly sophisticated vehicles filled with technology that would have seemed extraordinary only a few years earlier.
There was also another change.
New EV conversion and technology companies began appearing, some with significant investor backing, grant funding and marketing budgets behind them. Their stands were polished, their branding was sharp and, from the outside, the competition looked increasingly high stakes.
Some arrived with enormous noise around them. Some disappeared almost as quickly.
That is one of the less glamorous realities of emerging industries. Money can create a very impressive exhibition stand. It can fund marketing, prototypes and expansion. What it cannot automatically create is practical experience, technical judgement or a business capable of surviving after the initial funding runs out.
Graeme has generally remained unmoved by that cycle.
He is an unusually steady man who tends to stay in his own lane. He builds. He researches. He teaches. He solves problems. He keeps learning. And somewhere in the background, he is usually still thinking about how to make an electric vehicle go faster.
Oz Electric Vehicles was not created with somebody else's large investment fund.
Graeme backed himself.
He built knowledge the slow way, through years of practical work, mistakes, testing, problem solving and continually improving what came next.
That has also shaped the way he relates to other people in the EV industry.
He has never needed everybody else to fail for Oz Electric Vehicles to succeed.
He has shared knowledge, supported other builders and remained friends with many people across the industry, particularly those who are genuinely trying to develop electric vehicle technology and make it work.
Over the years we have watched businesses arrive with substantial funding and disappear again. Others have quietly kept building.
For Graeme, longevity has never been about having the loudest stand in the hall.
It has been about still being in the workshop when the show is over.
Greg was another person who had spent years pushing Australian electric vehicle development forward, particularly through the ambition to create Australian electric commercial vehicles.
There was plenty of common ground. Both businesses came from the practical end of the industry. Build something. Make it work. Find out what doesn't work. Fix it. Then make the next one better.
By 2026, Our Stand Had Changed
When Oz Electric Vehicles exhibited at Everything Electric Sydney in September 2026, our display looked quite different again.
This time we had our own stand. And rather than trying to explain every part of the electric vehicle world, we concentrated on several areas where our workshop has developed specialist knowledge.
Battery upgrades. CCS to CHAdeMO charging. CHAdeMO vehicle-to-load technology.
These were no longer conversations about whether electric vehicles might become practical one day.
These were solutions for people who already owned electric vehicles. That is a major shift.
The Second Life of an Electric Vehicle.
Australia now has a growing population of older EVs. Many of those cars remain mechanically excellent. Electric motors can last an extremely long time.
Bodies, interiors, suspension and braking systems can remain perfectly serviceable. But battery technology has moved quickly.
An early EV may have been sold with a battery capacity and driving range that looked impressive when it was new but seems limited beside current vehicles, (as in the Japanese vehicles, e.g. Leaf, Mitsubishi Outlander PHEv).
That doesn't automatically mean the car has reached the end of its life.
In suitable vehicles, the battery system can be upgraded. Newer battery technology can restore lost capability and potentially increase the vehicle's usable range substantially.
But changing an EV battery is not simply a matter of putting different cells into a box. Voltage matters. Current matters. Battery architecture matters. Cooling matters. Charging matters.
The battery management system needs to communicate with the vehicle. The vehicle control system needs to understand what the battery is doing. Safety systems need to operate correctly.
That integration work has become one of the areas where Oz Electric Vehicles has built considerable practical experience.
CCS to CHAdeMO
Another problem has emerged because electric vehicle technology has evolved faster than the vehicles themselves wear out.
Charging standards change. Many earlier Japanese electric vehicles, particularly vehicles such as the Nissan LEAF, use CHAdeMO for DC fast charging.
New Australian charging infrastructure has increasingly standardised around CCS. That creates a strange situation.
A perfectly functional electric car can gradually lose access to public fast charging, not because anything is wrong with the vehicle, but because the infrastructure around it has moved on.
CCS to CHAdeMO adapters can provide a bridge between those generations of technology.
For us, that is exactly the kind of engineering problem worth solving. Keep good cars useful.
Your Car Is Also a Battery
The other technology attracting considerable attention at the 2026 show was CHAdeMO vehicle-to-load. An electric vehicle carries an enormous amount of stored energy.
Normally people think about that energy travelling in one direction. Electricity enters the battery. The battery powers the motor. The vehicle moves.
But compatible electric vehicles can potentially do much more.
With the appropriate equipment, energy stored in the vehicle battery can be used outside the car. It can power equipment. It can provide temporary electricity. It can become a mobile energy source.
For camping, workshops, farms, emergency situations and remote work, that becomes very interesting.
And it reinforces something Graeme has understood from the beginning.
An electric vehicle isn't simply an ordinary car with a different engine.
It is an energy system.
The Questions Have Changed.
Looking back from Brisbane in 2018 to Sydney in 2026, perhaps the most interesting change isn't the cars.
It is the questions people ask.
The early questions were:
Do electric cars really work?
How far can they go?
Where can I charge one?
How long will the battery last?
Can you really convert a petrol car to electric?
Today people walk onto the Oz Electric Vehicles stand asking:
Can you increase my range?
Can my battery be upgraded?
Can I keep my older EV rather than replace it?
Can I charge my CHAdeMO vehicle from a CCS charger?
Can I take electricity back out of my car?
Can this battery communicate with that vehicle?
Can you repair something the manufacturer says should simply be replaced?
Those are much more interesting questions.
They are also the questions that come once an industry begins to mature.
We Didn't Arrive After the EV Boom.
There is another reason these old show photographs matter.
They establish a timeline. Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, 2018.
Fully Charged LIVE at the ICC in Sydney. The Sydney Showground.
The shared display with Greg McGarvie and ACE EV.
Then the dedicated Oz Electric Vehicles stand in 2026, surrounded by battery technology, charging adapters and vehicle-to-load equipment.
Put the photographs together and they document part of the development of Australia's electric vehicle industry.
Oz Electric Vehicles didn't arrive once EVs became fashionable.
Graeme was already converting vehicles, developing battery systems, teaching people how to build electric cars and solving integration problems while much of Australia was still asking whether EVs would ever work here.
The industry caught up. The technology caught up. And today the work has moved into another phase. We are no longer simply helping put electric vehicles onto Australian roads.
Increasingly, we are helping keep them there.
And somewhere amongst all of that is a Brisbane EV show from 2018 that people are apparently still laughing about with tears in their eyes of one of the best weekends ever and about eight years later.
We may need another story for that one.
NOTE: Graeme is also quick to acknowledge that the success of the 2018 event was not his alone. Simone Pfuhl played a central role in bringing it together, working alongside Graeme for more than 12 months through long days, late nights and the countless details that sit behind an event of that scale.
Graeme brought the ideas, the ambition and much of the creative direction, but Simone was the cornerstone who helped turn that vision into something that actually worked. Her commitment, organisation and persistence were a major part of why the event came together as successfully as it did.
Pics (c) 2026 Graeme Manietta, Simone Pfuhl
Graeme Manietta, Founder, Oz Electric Vehicles
EV Builder • Battery Specialist • Conversion Engineer • EV Troubleshooter
Over two decades working hands-on with electric vehicle technology.
Battery Upgrades • Diagnostics • BMS/BCU Integration • EV Conversions • Specialist EV Engineering.
Still being in the workshop when the show is over.