(04 Feb 2023, 9:58 pm)nova347 wrote With the Yutongs why is one side of the doors have stripes on it also with the 53/54 ones when I got off on one the other day I almost walked straight into the mirror. It's like almost halfway over the door closest to the windscreen.The mirrors on our Enviro200s are lethal. I had 3 people walk into one in the space of 2 hours yesterday!
(09 Mar 2023, 10:55 am)ne14ne1 wrote There was at least 3x of the shorter Yutongs on the Q3 yesterday as I saw them all at once on Grey & Dean St around 5pm.
Any particular reason for the lack of longer Yutongs, and would that have left the 53/54 short?
Just curious.
(19 Jan 2024, 10:56 pm)BusLoverMum wrote It won't have been the best week for testing the range with the freezing weather.
(20 Jan 2024, 12:18 am)Ambassador wrote I’m not sure on the technicalities of the bid but it’s difficult to compare electric fleets to traditional fleets but there’s probably nothing stopping GNE running the electrics on the Chester runs which it could easily accommodate vs those longer Brandon and Durham running boards which could run with a more traditional vehicle.
(20 Jan 2024, 6:26 am)streetdeckfan wrote On modern EVs, the hit to efficiency in cold weather is nowhere near as bad as the media make out.I think the bigger hit comes at much lower temperatures than we tend to get. We've had a Bz4x for a few weeks and Husband noticed about a 10% drop on Tuesday when it was very cold, particularly at higher speeds on the A19.
On our Leaf we've only noticed an 8% decrease in efficiency in the freezing weather in comparison to the warmer weather a few months back (4.1mi/kWh vs 3.8mi/kWh). And that's without pre-heating the car on grid power on most days.
If they're able to pre-heat the buses while still on charge, I'd imagine the hit to efficiency wouldn't be too different.
(20 Jan 2024, 11:57 am)NL62WVW wrote It's been getting back to the Depot with around 25 - 30% charge left in it
(20 Jan 2024, 11:24 pm)Ambassador wrote I think Newcastle - CLS is longer through then Durham Road route (12 miles possibly)
Doesn’t take into account idle time or traffic (which in the city centre and through Durham Road is horrific at the moment)
(20 Jan 2024, 11:19 pm)mb134 wrote Which probably isn't ideal.
Let's assume it is starting each day leaving the depot with 100%:
- 9.6 miles dead to CLS according to Google.
- Approx 10 miles between CLS and NCL. It does this 7 times (06:50, 07:40, 08:32, 09:30, 10:24, 11:20, 12:14) before the Brandon trip, for a total of 70 miles.
- Approx 20 miles from NCL to Brandon, it does this round trip once so that's 40 miles.
- It then does another CLS round trip (16:32, 17:29), and one last trip down to CLS (18:24), for another 30 miles.
- Then another 9.6 miles dead back to Riverside.
That's an approximate 160 miles per day on that board. If we say it does come back nearer to 30% remaining than 25%, that means 160 miles is 70% of its fully charged range. That gives an approximate 230 mile range on a 100% battery.
If you look at what 6315 did today, it ran dead to CLS to start (9.6 miles). It then did a trip to Durham from CLS (6.7 miles), a trip to Newcastle (17 miles), a Brandon round trip (40 miles), 2x CLS round trips (40 miles), another Brandon round trip (40 miles), a CLS round trip (20 miles), a Durham round trip (34 miles), and a dead run back to Riverside to finish (approx 5 miles). That's a total of 213 miles, and it isn't even a midnight finish or the first bus out of the yard in the morning. You're talking 17 miles to play with, and as those batteries start to degrade that's not an awful lot of wiggle room.
That's even before you consider that the range will take a bigger hit on the higher speed sections of route between CLS and Durham, which it would be required to do more often on most other boards.
(20 Jan 2024, 9:31 pm)Unber43 wrote Well you would hope that GNE ordered enough to Run the 21 all day every day, but it is GNE so most of the time youll have 15 year old E400s, while no double electric buses are on school routes, or circling east gateshead
(21 Jan 2024, 8:38 pm)busmanT wrote Don’t bus companies only run the batteries down each day until they have 20% left?
(21 Jan 2024, 8:38 pm)busmanT wrote Don’t bus companies only run the batteries down each day until they have 20% left?
I don’t think an EV double deck exists that can run from first bus in the morning until last bus at night - they don’t in London or Manchester.
150/170 miles is about the maximum without a middle of the day top up.
(21 Jan 2024, 8:38 pm)busmanT wrote Don’t bus companies only run the batteries down each day until they have 20% left?
(22 Jan 2024, 12:23 am)Andreos1 wrote Sounds like they're not very productive.
Hopefully someone can have a word and drive the cost of them down.
Don't want to be paying a premium for something that's not very productive.
Mind, when you mix a vehicle that's not very productive, with a driver who isn't very productive - it's got disaster written all over it.
(22 Jan 2024, 11:22 am)Rob44 wrote No cost effective but why not by 1.5 or 2 electric decker's for each diesel one? So on can be running the other charging then swap at eldon square and put a full charge one on at 2pm and take the one used on a morning back to the depot?
(21 Jan 2024, 9:09 pm)MVK500R wrote I was talking to a driver on the Q3 the other week. He told me they're not allowed to drive the Yutongs with batteries below 30%, though he didn't say why. Not sure what the case is for the demonstrator.
(22 Jan 2024, 3:47 pm)NL62WVW wrote Need to inform control when it's at 30% so a changeover can be done, they can still driven as long as control ok it.I thought they used LFP batteries which aren't susceptible to the issues Li-ion batteries have regarding keeping it between 10 and 80%.
Anything under 20% and it needs to be taken off ASAP.
It's to prolong the life of the batteries