Electrification potential: Voith’s Holger Seefelder discusses the viability of e-bus retrofits
By Bradley Osborne – 23rd September 2025
There was a short span of time between the late 2010s and early 2020s when it seemed like retrofits would become a serious contender to new electric vehicles in the transition from the combustion engine. Several new companies began by offering retrofit services to convert used diesel vehicles to run on electric. Most of these startups have since fallen by the wayside; many of the remaining firms have survived by changing their business models. The general sluggishness of the electric vehicle market is, of course, partly to blame. However, these retrofit pioneers were also beset by unforeseen difficulties that made what appeared at the outset to be a winning formula – take a used vehicle, rip out the engine, put an electric powertrain in its place, and sell it on – into a more complicated equation. “We totally underestimated the complexity of converting a diesel vehicle into an electric one in the beginning,” said Holger Seefelder, who is responsible for commercial vehicle sales in the Europe, Middle East, & Africa region for German supplier Voith.
