It is a demo, thus I had it on trial. It’s going back shortly. The firm did have a larger Sigma 10 on loan for a while too but the range was found to be inadequate. The Sigma 8’s were ok on test, but found to be unreliable in service.

Thank goodness for that.

However its areal quandry for your bus operator, if that money has to be spent on a battery only bus.

I'm surprised Toyota haven't entered that market, maybe they already have in other countries, the hybrid system as used in Corolla given a bigger engine and (plug in?) battery pack would surely make an excellent mini bus.

A battery truck on my work given the weight and PTO drive needed for discharge would be little more than a poor joke, we trialled a CNG powered tractor but give our weights the driver actually watched the fuel gauge dropping, hopeless.

Is there anything battery powered in buses that works as well and as reliably as a traditional Diesel?

Horses for courses I guess.

LKQ (ECP) have at least one electric Berlingo van on the fleet in Portsmouth where they have two branches. Their vans are a common sight not just in the city, but also in my local area about 10 miles out. Whether the leccy van is used for the more outlying deliveries I don't know. I believe we have a regular poster who works for one of the national factors. Perhaps he has some insight on their suitability?

Royal Mail in Pompey have run a fleet of Vito electrics for a couple of years now. Be interesting to know how they have performed. RM appear to run their vehicles until they drop. Our local delivery office have a lot of 2012 Partners and even a couple of 2009 VX Combos.

I am, I believe the regular poster, I've just changed jobs but the time I spent driving E Berlingos doing around 40k in them were positive in the whole, brand new they give around 160 mile range, with a few miles on them this tends to settle down to around 140, a rapid charge at lunch time saw them through the afternoon then a slow overnight charge had them ready for the next morning although I used to bring 'my van' home so I used to give it a quick blast on the rapid charger first thing.

On average we covered between 150 to 200 miles a day mainly in and around Guildford although we did have a few customers in out lying area's that dictated a blast up or down the A3, I tended to keep them in normal mode rather eco or sport ( yes they really do have a sport mode, not sure why as even in normal mode there b***** quick especially away from the lights...).

Incidentally Guildford is very EV friendly, public chargers everywhere, the local bus company have a fleet of electric buses even Guildford police have a couple of Tesla's and the local council are currently offering small businesses a 10k grant to switch to a electric van...

As a side note I noticed a lot of the under bonnet components where marked with the stylized 'T' used by Toyota.

Edited by paul 1963 on 24/03/2024 at 18:49