I would love to convert a school bus RV to electric especially if I could make it a kind of 4x4/AWD hybrid
If you are starting with a typical school bus you will need to entirely replace the front axle to drive the front wheels. For the rear, you replacing the rear axle and suspension, or mounting a motor somewhere near the middle of the bus to drive the shaft to the rear axle.
What do you mean by "4x4/AWD hybrid"? For a two-axle vehicle, AWD is four wheel drive and 4X4.
And why a school bus? If you convert to an EV, you are using little of the chassis. If you are mostly using the body, a school bus isn't a great starting point for an RV; the only good feature is metal construction (rather than sticks and plywood covered by fiberglass or aluminum, like a typical RV). It would be a lot easier to start with a motorhome which is cheap because it has an old or broken-down engine and transmission, since those are the parts you don't need.
Shouldn’t this be quite doable with in wheel motors and a controller of some kind?
Wheel motors sound cool, but are undesirable in almost every way.
And in practical terms, each motor needs a controller... not just one for the vehicle.
How would this be doable?
You can
- drive all wheels with one motor, using conventional 4WD components, or
- drive each axle with a motor, or
- drive each wheel (which means either independent suspension, or mounting a pair of motors on an axle)
There are many goals to set and decisions to make, aside from this choice.