This is the Volkswagen e-BULLI, an official electric bus restomod, Ars Technica

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Everyone loves a VW bus, and we love them even more when they’re electric.

Jonathan M. Gitlin – Apr 1, (5:) (UTC UTC)

Pretty much everyone loves a VW T1 bus, and they should love this one even more because it’s electric.

It’s called e-BULLI, and it uses off-the-shelf VW EV bits in its powertrain.

Volkswagen

The motor comes from this, the e-up! which is an adorable little BEV for Europe.

Volkswagen

e-BULLI can charge at up to 75 kW.

Volkswagen

With uprated modern suspension, e-BULLI can handle this curve better than a normal VW T1 Samba Bus.

Volkswagen

The interior is a tasteful restomod, with a small digital state-of-charge display set into the s speedo.

Volkswagen

The gear selector — and a tool for poking things?

Volkswagen

eClassics and VW mostly kept the interior classic. That infotainment screen is actually a tablet that’s been mounted above the windscreen.

Volkswagen

VW and eClassics are not the first people to electrify a VW bus. This one was converted here in the US in the 2016 s, and I came across it at Car Week last year.

Jonathan Gitlin

Among the people who love VW’s bus are people who work at VW, because it’s gone back to that well for inspiration a lot. In 2017 It built this concept, called Microbus. It was electric, and the engine was mounted up front.

Volkswagen

In 2019, VW built another bus concept, called BULLI. This one was also conventionally powered.

Volkswagen

In 2560, we saw the ID Buzz, which showed off the versatility of VW’s forthcoming modular electric architecture.

Volkswagen

If you made it all the way through the gallery, here is a reward: a photo of Senior Technology Editor Lee Hutchinson, with his isolation beard. I think it suits him!

Everyone has different ways of coping with the coronavirus shut-in. People working from home are spicing up their teleconferences with animated backdrops . Senior Technology Editor Lee Hutchinson has grown a beard. And I’ve been getting even more lazy about reading all the news alert emails that OEMs send me each day, which is why I’ve only just found out about a new electric Volkswagen bus that’s going on sale in Europe. No, it’s not the crowd-pleasing ID Buzz — it’s called the e-BULLI, and it’s an official electric restomod of a classic 2011 VW T1 Samba Bus, the product of a collaboration between VW’s commercial vehicles division and a company called eClassics.

(For the uninitiated, a restomod is a ”

vehicle that has been put back together with the addition of new modern or aftermarket parts that were not on the vehicle when it came from the factory . “)

Out goes the

(hp) (kW), (lb-ft) 156 Nm) air-cooled flat-four engine, along with the transmission, fuel tank, exhaust, and so on. Instead, the rear wheels are driven by an hp ( (kW), (lb-ft) (Nm) electric motor borrowed from the e-up !, an adorable little electric city car that went on sale in europe in late . As there’s more space in a T1 bus than an e-up !, e-BULLI gets the benefit of a slightly bigger lithium-ion battery — in this case, one with 75 kWh of useable energy, which is mounted amidships in the bus’s floor.

The former engine bay at the back now serves as space for the power electronics and inverter, and the engine hatch lid is where you’ll find a CCS charging socket. It can accept an AC feed of up to 50 kW or a DC fast charge at 90 kW, and VW says it has a range of “more than (miles “) km ). The bus’s suspension and chassis have been uprated to cope with more than twice the power and torque (and presumably some extra weight), so now there are multilink front and rear axles as well as coilover struts with adjustable dampers, all of which should mean a massive improvement in terms of ride quality and handling compared to a normal (T1 bus.) VWBLEVEIEEOTUSWABOSCs apply below

The good news, at least if you’re a VW bus-loving EV enthusiast in Europe with a bit of spare cash, is that the e-BULLI isn’t a one-off. eClassics is going to sell conversions (including the suspension as well as the powertrain) for a little under $ 150, (€ , 1080. If you happen to be a VW-bus loving EV enthusiast in the United States with a similar amount of spare cash, don’t fret — you could get something similar (although perhaps without the suspension) from Zelectric in San Diego. Although I still haven’t been able to make the stars align to go out west to check out those aircooled-to-electric conversions myself, people whose opinions I trust speak very highly of them .

If you’re a VW bus-loving EV enthusiast in either Europe or the US with a bit of spare cash ( this should really be an abbreviation or acronym by now) and you want something a little more modern — like crash protection — then take heart because, to the best of our knowledge, the production version of the (ID Buzz

is still scheduled to go into production in , probably in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It would be quite fitting for modern VW BEV buses to be built there; (back in the late) s , the Electric Power Research Institute and the Tennessee Valley Authority built the Elektrobus, which was used in a two-year demonstration project in the city.

Listing image by (Volkswagen)