Another Boris Johnson consequence

[flecc]

Just a second flecc but the window design I feel is a bit of a stretch to lay at Johnson's door

My criticism of him is not specifically the lack of opening windows, it's criticism of his decision to go ahead with this overall zany design against all advice to the contrary. At the last mayoral election his rival Ken Livingstone sensibly said he would order no more of them at their ridiculously high price.

Johnson was stupidly obsessed with bringing back the jump-on-and-off open rear platform, which as we know now will no longer be available anyway. The only gain they have is in being hybrid, but there were already well designed hybrid buses available much cheaper from the top bus makers and TfL already have some of these.
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[tillson]

They have an air cooling system, but it's wholly inadequate and has been causing compaints ever since their introduction. It can be a problem on electric vehicles of course due to the consumption demands. These hybrids are electrically driven, their 4 litre diesel being a charging engine for their lithium battery, not mechanically driving the bus.
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I didn't realise they had a hybrid power system. I do know hybrids use a heat-pump type system to cool the batteries and provide heat inside the vehicle, but that's no good when you want to cool inside.

As you say an air conditioning system will make quite a demand on the limited amount out of energy available. Hard to say what the solution is.

 

[JuicyBike]

Hard to say what the solution is.

Never let him near anything complicated again...
Oh Dear God

 

[flecc]

I didn't realise they had a hybrid power system. I do know hybrids use a heat-pump type system to cool the batteries and provide heat inside the vehicle, but that's no good when you want to cool inside.

As you say an air conditioning system will make quite a demand on the limited amount out of energy available. Hard to say what the solution is.

In 2015 the Nissan Leaf changed from it's old greedy air-con to a reversible heat pump system on current models, which has increased the range when air-con is in use, so that has some possibilities. Meanwhile just letting passengers open windows should give sufficient satisfaction.

Hopefully Sadiq Khan won't continue to buy these very expensive and somwhat troublesome buses when the current contract ends. We'll have a thousand of them then, but the remainder of the fleet of some 9000 buses is a mixture of diesel, mainstream hybrid and a few hydrogen powered.
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