MARINE LAYER EV CONVERSION STORY
Meet our newest electric project, “da bus”
I’ll never forget my first introduction to a Marine Layer T-shirt. I had just finished dropping off my kid at kindergarten when one of the other, sort-of-hip dads and I started chatting. I mentioned that I was looking for a new T-shirt vendor for Peace Vans and really wanted something premium—a T-shirt that just felt special. I had talked to a random company that went nowhere, and as I was explaining this to the other dad, he took my hand and had me feel his T-shirt. I was like, “Whoa! That is nice… I need to check that stuff out.” I quickly got online, and within days, I had three of the softest, best, nicest T-shirts ever. I never closed the loop on bulk T-shirts for Peace Vans, but I pretty much became obsessed with the brand forever. And, oh, they had VW bus stuff all over their brand! 🙂
In late 2023, our EV conversion business was gaining some serious traction, and I was ready to take on more projects. I knew an EV conversion would be a super compelling story for the right brand, so I started reaching out to teams that had a VW in their brand story or that might find a vintage electric VW a compelling brand play. After some awesome brainstorming with our then-marketing guru, Sam, we realized Marine Layer could be a perfect fit. Not knowing anyone there, I started stalking their Instagram account. Every month or so, they’d post about one of their two VW buses being towed or broken down, and I started commenting something to the effect of, “You know… we can make that go away… forever.” Needless to say, we got no traction that way.
So, I went to guerrilla marketing level 10 and started reverse-engineering the email addresses of the two founders. Sure enough, after sending an email to Adam and not getting an instant bounce-back, I crossed my fingers. A few days later, I got a quick reply: “Would love to chat, have been thinking about such a project for a while.” After 12 years of Peace Vans and many years on the line in high-profile situations at Microsoft and similar places, it takes a lot to make me nervous. But I really wanted to land this project, so I nervously followed up the email with a call. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. As you’d expect, Adam was super down-to-earth, eager to learn more, excited to hear the Peace Vans story, and intrigued by the possibility of converting his personal 1977 VW bus to electric.
After some estimates and project scoping, Adam agreed to the project but looped in his marketing team since we both agreed this could be a super fun story to tell using Marine Layer’s channels. A few conversations with their awesome marketing team, including some real mind-melds with their CMO, Renee, and we were ready to go—time to convert the beloved “Da Bus” from Marine Layer to electric.
The project itself was fairly straightforward—except that when the bus showed up, it turned out to be the rare automatic transmission model. Our conversions typically use the stock VW transmissions mated to the new EV motor. Fortunately, Peace Vans has pretty much endless VW technical chops, so we decided to convert the bus to manual while it was here. For our EV projects, the most important decision usually revolves around the batteries—how many and where to put them. Adam wanted to be able to commute from Marin County into San Francisco daily, so we scoped out seven 6.3kWh Tesla modules—our math penciled those out to about 125 miles of range. Fortunately, the bus was a “transporter” edition, meaning it lacked the camping cabinetry and other interior modifications, so a “false floor” was the obvious choice. With that decision made, we were off to the proverbial races.
The project went very smoothly and included the following steps:
Decommission the internal combustion components—engine, fuel system, etc.
Clean, prep, and paint the engine bay. We need a clean space to work in, and with an EV, you’re showing it off quite a bit, so that time is well worth it.
Create the system-wide schematic and wiring diagrams.
Scope and build the battery box.
Prep the batteries.
Dry fit everything—coolant loops, brake booster, e-heat, wire harnesses, etc.
Custom-fabricate carrier bars and other proprietary pieces.
Convert from automatic to manual transmission.
Assemble.
Wire and hook up the coolant system.
Test and tune.
This is a very high-level list—the actual line items numbered in the hundreds, and it was a highly complex project plan. End to end, the project took about four months before we began test driving. After having done quite a few of these, we’ve learned that the fine-tuning stage is actually quite long—while the wheels often spin on the first power-up, it can take weeks of tuning before the systems are truly bulletproof. By July, we were ready to deliver Da Bus, and we loaded her onto a trailer for the trip to San Francisco.
Once in SF, our team started test driving on the hilly terrain, and a critical error popped up. During the design phase, we had opted for a two-speed transmission to ease the transition for the driving team from an automatic setup to a manual. However, on SF's steep hills, the motor was drawing too much current and would shut down. We needed more gears and different ratios. While frustrating, it did give us one of our best stories ever—being shut down in SF with a driverless Waymo car behind us, honking. We kept waving it around (before we knew it was driverless), using the universal symbol of a VW bus driver in distress. However, the Waymo couldn’t make sense of us waving it around—nor was it programmed with the universal knowledge of “when behind a VW bus, prepare to go around it.” We sent the images to the Waymo team. Lol.
After bringing the bus back to Seattle for a quick transmission swap to a better-geared four-speed, we delivered the van to an ecstatic Marine Layer team over Labor Day weekend at a beautiful concert on top of Mt. Tam. It was a fitting end to a wonderful project. For six months now, the Marine Layer team has been driving Da Bus regularly—each night, it uploads the day’s data to the cloud, and each week, we run a quick analysis. The thing is working perfectly….
It’s been such a privilege to work on such a beloved bus, something that means so much to so many. Thank you, Marine Layer, for believing in us and giving us the chance to help you fall back in love with your VW bus.
- Peace Vans
