New Zealand's largest bus company to retrofit fleet with electric engines

Significant part of 1,000-strong fleet will have combustion engines removed and be refitted with an electric motor, battery pack and gas turbine generator

New Zealand's biggest urban bus company will soon be running its vehicles on electric engines after signing a deal with Wrightspeed, a company founded by Ian Wright, a Kiwi and co-founder of Tesla.

NZBus runs more than 1,000 buses across New Zealand, carrying more than 50m passengers each year. The US$30m deal will result in a "significant number" of those buses having their combustion motors removed, and replaced with two powerful electric motors, a battery pack, and a gas turbine generator, that will charge the batteries when needed.