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This Startup Wants To Turn Teslas Into Anything, From 11-Seat Minibuses To Pickups

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This Startup Wants To Turn Teslas Into Anything, From 11-Seat Minibuses To Pickups

The slightly dorky vehicle you see here can use Tesla’s Superchargers and so-called Full-Self Driving (Supervised) driver assistance system. And no, your eyes are not deceiving you—this is not a Tesla. At least, not at first glance.

It’s called the Hoffman Badger, and it’s the creation of a small Wisconsin startup that wants to turn old Tesla EVs into pretty much any type of vehicle. The first Badger made its debut at this year’s SEMA show in Las Vegas, driving on its own wheels all the way from its home base and using Superchargers along the way, just like any Tesla would.

Hoffman says it uses all of the hardware and software from the donor vehicle, which can be either the Model 3 or Model Y. The seats, dashboard, steering wheel, motors, and even the door handles are lifted from Tesla. Then, they’re installed in a new chassis that puts the high-voltage battery pack one and a half inches higher than in the original vehicles. This, along with the eight-inch ground clearance, improves the boxy EV’s breakover angle, making it better suited for rough roads.

The startup says it can build around 100 units per year, but exact details haven’t been ironed out yet. In an Out of Spec Review video, Geoffrey Hoffman, the company’s founder, said that he doesn’t have a precise plan for the short term, but that attending SEMA will help in identifying what people actually want.

Hoffman expects the pricing to be somewhere between the Slate Truck and the Tesla Cybertruck , so from $26,400 all the way up to $77,000, if the base dual-motor Cybertruck is the upper target.


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