News Article Highlights Our Bus Conversion Project

We’re proud to announce that our innovative bus conversion project has been featured in a detailed article by the leading German industry magazine, Busplaner! This is a great recognition of the hard work and innovation that went into transforming 18 of Willms Touristik’s double-decker buses from diesel to electric.

The article, titled “Diesel out, electric in: E-Sightseeing double-decker with Allison transmissions,” provides a deep dive into the project, which was supported by a German Federal Ministry of Transport funding program. It reveals how we, the Danish specialist company Banke ApS, tackled the challenge of converting a diverse fleet of MAN buses, with models dating all the way back to 1988 up to 2019, into a single, cohesive electric fleet.

As a leading European integrator of electric vehicle systems, our role was to carry out the conversion work and integrate all the new components. The article highlights several key points:

• The project proves that retrofitting an existing fleet is a financially viable alternative to purchasing brand-new electric vehicles. For a mid-sized company like Willms Touristik, this approach was a game-changer, with 80% of the conversion costs covered by government funding.
• The core of each new drivetrain is a powerful 145 kW Dana TM4 Sumo HP electric motor. This is paired with an Allison T280R fully automatic transmission, a choice praised by the article for its durability and efficiency in demanding city operations. The Allison transmission allows the motor to operate at lower speeds, which significantly extends the driving range.
• With six lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery packs, the buses have a total capacity of 240 kWh, giving them a range of around 200 km—perfect for their daily sightseeing routes. The article notes that the buses now glide through the streets of Cologne almost silently, and the Allison transmission ensures a smooth, jolt-free ride, as if they were “running on rails.”
• A unique challenge of the project was the open-top design of the buses. Our solution involved strategically placing the batteries in the rear and the passenger cabin, which allowed us to maintain the open-air experience while only minimally reducing seating capacity (by two to six seats, depending on the model).

This feature in Busplaner is proof to our team’s expertise and our commitment to creating sustainable, forward-thinking solutions for the future of urban mobility. We are thrilled to see our work getting this kind of recognition.

We encourage you to READ the full article (in German) to get all the details and see why this project is such a success story.