Touring electric coach stranded at Eden Project after failing to find charging point in Cornwall

[Jethro_uk]

A fully-electric coach has found itself stranded in Cornwall after being unable to charge at five different locations across the Duchy.

(contd)

PMSL ...

[Andy Burns]

Quick, someone phone Agrekko, get some generators camouflaged and parked up along the route from Cornwall to Glasgow ...

[jon]

Needs a trailer with a diesel generator.

[alan_m]

Knackered battery? The report says that more than one charging point "recognised" the coach but failed to deliver a charge.

[charles]

about 4 years ago, I was on a London bus powered by a battery. In front of each seat was a USB socket. If every passenger plugged their phone in then it would be the same as asking them all to get out and push.

[NY]

Does USB charging work that way? Can an appliance being charged feed power back to the charging device - in this case to the bus's battery or to power its motors? I very much doubt it ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News]

I've got seen any pure electric buses in London these days. Plenty hybrids, though.

[Andy Burns]

It *is* possible, using USB PD

I doubt it too.

[Tim+]

More likely that the charging point needs a software update to recognise a new brand of vehicle.

Tim

[GB]

Quite. How many all-electric Yutong coaches are there touring the UK at the moment?

There probably are all electric Yutong buses, operating in city centres, but they'd have their own charging points.

[Theo]

It could be an issue with the charging system on the coach being designed for Chinese fast chargers and not interfacing correctly with the CCS system that's most common in the UK. I imagine it's not been the most well-tested ever, and some of the charging points (hello Ecotricity) are not known for their reliability.

Theo

[JNugent]

Is it true that the Yutong charging points are called "iddle-eye-poes"?

[Paul]

We have some here (Lithium bus demo, Toronto).

All I can say about these "public demos", is how they instantly show how practical they are.

When I was a kid, we had the electric buses with overhead power pickup with poles. I don't remember any battery problems there. Those could do a 22-hour work day, hose them off, they're ready for the next day. And they had great acceleration up hills. The driver used to enjoy flooring the "throttle", just to demo the available power. The driver has to have some fun.

Paul

[charles]

Our local "Park & Ride" has been using abttery buses for at least a couple of years. Onlt problem is that the vehicles suspension was not uprated to cope with the extr load. As a result, you feel every mump in tehroad.

Known here as "Trolley buses".

[nightjar]

:-)

A mobile EV charging station is the modern equivalent of a spare can of petrol in the early days of motoring. Vehicle recovery services usually have access to thenm, so perhaps they should have joined Green Flag.

[Owain Lastname]

Oh FFS does even an electric socket need updates now?

Owain

[JNugent]

I can vaguely remember riding on a trolley bus during a trip to London when I was about 5. I can remember trams a little more clearly, still in use on my home city until I was 5.

Both modes were, however, highly problematic. However "good" they might have seemed when someone first had the idea for them, they were (totally) inflexible* and were also highly obstructive of the routes along which they ran (though in the suburbs, tram tracks were often routed along centre reservations no long grassed over). They also required passengers to get aboard and alight in the middle of the road rather than at the kerb.

Extending or adding to the network was phenomenally expensive. Scrapping the concept and substituting ICE buses was an obvious move, without even accounting for the fact that ever-increasing numbers of citizens no longer needed public transport at all because they had access to a far more convenient and flexible mode which permitted transport inside and outside the city and even as far as the island extended (and the rest of the continent with a ferry crossing). No contest.

[* The inflexibility and subsequent vulnerability of trams to the slightest physical disruption was brought home to me last year, when on a visit to New Orleans, we learned that the famed tram route along the centre of Canal Street was effectively rendered useless by the fact that building in the course of construction had collapsed in late 2019. Although Canal Street was not itself obstructed, the danger from a sudden collapse of the rest of the stricken building was so great that a wide cordon had to be thrown around it, severing the tram route 9among other things). They were doing their best, operating the "stub" of the route along the rest of Canal Street as a tourist operation, but its value as public transport was pretty close to zero.]

[JNugent]

A reasonable reaction.

[Tim+]

Not really. They just show the inadvisability of taking an untested vehicle and trying to use it with the public charging network. Buses like this would normally charge at a depot overnight and stick to regular routes.

Tim

[ARW]

10 years ago....