Electric Bus Service in Athlone

"€666000 each?"

Keep in mind that the NTA bus contracts now include full service and maintenance for most of the life of the bus. In the past we bought buses upfront for less, but then got burned with some very poor quality buses that needed a fortune in work. Now they do these sort of full service contracts that puts the responsibility back on the manufacturer. Any problems and they can just kick them back to the manufacturer to sort. Overall it has lead to our buses being better built and more reliable which is very important for public transport [1] and cheaper overall. I'd assume this contract now also includes the cost of maintaining the chargers, etc.

[1] Buses breaking down on the side of the road tends to put people off public transport. A sight that use to be queit regular over 20 years ago, but you rarely see nowadays.

"It's fine in our smaller places like Athlone or maybe Limerick but Dublin and perhaps Cork not so easy"

They will be rolling out over 60 single and double decker fully electric buses in Dublin before the summer. Work under way for the substation at the depot. They will be operating on the new O and N2 orbital routes.

As for range, folks should keep in mind, that most buses don't run all day. Most of the fleet is only out in Dublin during the morning and evening peak, over half the fleet park up in depots during the middle of the day and evening off peak hours. So in most cases there is the oppurtunity for two supercharges per day, not just overnight charging. Should be plenty for most routes, even in Dublin/Cork. Obviously they can continue to use the Diesel and Hybrid buses on the longest routes if need be. All buses in Dublin are equipped with GPS and RTPI, so they know exactly the distance travelled for every route and can use the electric buses accordingly.

Also keep in mind, it will take more then 11 years to replace the entire fleet with Electric buses, so plenty of time to take advantage of increasing battery density over the next decade which can then be used for longer routes in future.

"Strange place to put the batteries. It would make the centre of gravity in the bus worse than if they were in the floor which would seem like the logical place for them. Maybe it's a safety thing or something but it makes no sense to me having them in the roof."

City buses have to be low floor to allow accessibility to wheel chair users, buggies and people with disabilities. You might remember that old buses use to have steps up into them! They are all gone now and replaced by 100% low floor buses. And our buses even have a suspension system that allows them to lean even lower when needed.

All this means that you can't put the batteries in the floor as it makes the floor too tall and thus inaccessible. Thus the solution is to put the batteries in the roof of single decker buses. This is nothing new, there are tens of thousands of such battery buses running all over the world (loads in China) for the past decade with no issues.

It is a bit trickier on double deckers as you can't put them on the roof, would make them too tall and top heavy. Instead they are spreading the batteries out under seats and in the back of the bus. This is why BEV double deckers have taken longer to come to market then the single deckers.

These new BEV Double Deckers from Wrightbus were only developed and announced in the past 12 months and the first models have only rolled off the production line in the past 2 months. They didn't exist three years ago when we ordered the hybrids, so clearly we couldn't have ordered them back then!

We have actually cut the hybrid order short, 220, rather then 600 originally planned, now that the BEV double deckers are available. Good news.

Three years ago our only options for DD's was either Diesel buses or Hybrids, no BEV DD had sufficient range and passenger capacity for our needs. That has obviously changed in the last few months with the release of this new model.

FYI We buy roughly a 100 new buses every single year and those 100 buses replace the oldest and dirtiest buses in the fleet. The 200+ hybrids we bought have replaced the oldest and dirtiest Euro 4 engine buses in the fleet. Very much a win for the environment.

And as I’ve described like half a dozen times already! Most of those buses in China are single deckers.

Single deckers EV’s have been easy to do as you can just put the batteries on the roof. EV double deckers are much harder to do as you obviously can’t put the batteries on the roof.

There were some EV double deckers before this, but they were comprised by either having very short range or batteries taking up too much passenger space. Only this new model seems to get the balance right of decent range and decent passenger space.

It is really important that we maintain the capacity and reliability of our bus service. Nothing is more likely to put people off taking public transport and go back to their cars, technetium buses breaking down because their battery runs out or they can’t get on the bus because it is already full, due to their being less passenger space.

Keep in mind that even an old Diesel Euro 6 engine buses releases less NOX then a single Volkswagen Golf. 80 people on even a Diesel bus, never mind a Hybrid one, is a massive win, hell 80 people on a Diesel bus likely has far less green house emissions then even 80 EV cars!

So it is great that we are going EV bus now, but it is just as important that we make sure they are reliable.