There are people who've recreated the pod electronics with more mordern components so you might want to look into that. I'm thinking I might do the same myself to allow me to make a few changes.
I mostly want to recreate the original functionality but it would also be nice to install a lookup table for more accurate battery charge level reporting (and compatibility with LiFePO4). Datalogging would be nice too, so I can plug the pod into a computer and get a graph of motor current and battery voltage vs time.