Complete Coach Works drops by Jay Leno’s garage to talk about their electric bus conversions. Just like I advocate here on Flux Auto, there is a huge opportunity to give our existing vehicle fleet a new lease on life with electric vehicle conversions. These guys purchase buses at the end of the useful life cycle of their combustion based drivetrains instead of letting them go to the junkyard or crusher to be recycled for scrap. The buses are then refurbished with a 360 volt AC motor and over 200 kilowatt-hours of lithium ion batteries giving it a 90 mile range. The performance is tested and documented before the buses are ready for another decade of useful service.

We’re all familiar with the phrase “Recycle, Reduce and Reuse.” That’s actually incorrect when you consider the energy and consumption of products through their entire life cycle of being harvested as raw materials, manufactured into a useful product, used up by the consumer and then disposed of. The priorities should be shifted to “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.” Converting cars with dead engines to EV’s is a powerful way to do this.