Electric Volkswagen Bus teased again: Will it be real this time?

The idea is as cool as it is durable: An all-electric reincarnation of the classic Volkswagen Bus, beloved people carrier of the Sixties and Seventies.

It was first mentioned fully five years ago, when Volkswagen showed an all-electric taxi concept based on an updated minivan with all the design cues of the VW Bus.

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A further concept followed the next year, an electric Bulli (the German name for what North Americans call the VW Bus).

With Volkswagen now selling the VW e-Golf in North America and Europe, and VW Group planning to issue a variety of plug-in hybrid and battery-electric models, the idea of an electric Microbus has come up again.

This time it came from no less a personage than board member Heinz-Jakob Neusser, as quoted in England’s Autocar magazine during a New York Auto Show roundtable.

Neusser said VW vehicle developers and engineers are now working on a revived Bulli powered by a battery pack in the floor that feeds an electric motor driving the front wheels.

It is, in short, an evolution of the current Volkswagen e-Golf powertrain, but likely with a much higher-capacity lithium-ion battery pack.

Neusser specified three required design elements to convey the classic identity of the Microbus.

First, the rearmost roof pillars must be thick; second, the center section must be boxy and rectilinear; and finally, the hood must have a very short overhang, as close as modern safety engineering will permit to the flat front of the original buses.

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The smaller size of an electric traction motor, compared to the height of an engine-and-transmission combination, Neusser said, would help achieve that last design point.

Any all-electric Microbus would still have to have “an attractive cost base,” he noted.

And whether such a vehicle could still be priced to lure sufficient buyers with a range of 120 miles or more remains a very open question.

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Still, with only one all-electric compact van offered by a global maker in any volume — that would be the Nissan e-NV200 — the market would seem to be wide open.

In the coming decade, cities across the globe may push to convert some portion of their taxi fleets — which cover far higher annual mileages than private vehicles — to battery-electric propulsion to reduce emission.

And, hey, how cool would it be to hail an all-electric VW Microbus? We’d ride that one for sure.

This story originally appeared on Green Car Reports. Copyright 2015

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