- Fares, please. Hello, it's raining outside.
I'm in Newcastle and literally sat in the driver's
seat of a bus.
No ordinary bus, I'm on a Yutong E10.
It's an electric bus,
or as Go North East like to call them,
which is whom I am with today at their invite.
Hello, thank you.
This is all about the Voltra zero emission buses.
Based in Newcastle, Go North East operate over 100 routes
using 660 buses.
And they have now introduced these Yutong electric
buses on their routes 53 and 54.
That is a 40 minute circular route
where in a day a bus will cover about 150 miles.
Perfect for these electric units
which have a range of 170.
Let's have a look around,
So we are on board,
One of the best things, it's incredible,
is that they've got wireless charging points
behind the seats with little clips.
So you can slide your phone in,
and providing you've got a compatible phone,
your phone just automatically starts charging.
Apart from that, regular USB ports.
You've got these screens here, with up to date information.
There is like a permanent hand sanitizer point
put in there.
Flip down seats.
The seats in the back you have to go up a couple
of steps to get to those.
Tap on tap off,
everything is becoming contactless nowadays.
And over here, we've got Colin Barnes, who is here
to tell us why Go North East are going electric.
- As a large operator,
we've always wanted to do something
for the local environment.
We are always looking for alternative fuels,
and what's next.
So it was a natural choice to go electric.
We can't fully electrify all of our fleet
of 660 vehicles immediately.
But there is a plan,
there is a plan to slowly move to fully electric.
It may take a little while
as the manufactures become more and more
better at building the vehicles and giving better range.
But this is a first nine, we've just ordered another nine.
Once again, there will be a very exciting new bus.
Giving a fantastic offering to our customers.
They are cleaner, they are quieter.
But also, for me, on an engineering side,
there is much less maintenance, they're more reliable.
There's less oils, there's less things to go wrong.
So they become a much more reliable vehicle,
and much better for the environment as well.
- [Geoff] And Colin has an app on his phone
where he can keep track of where his buses are
during the day.
- So basically, I've got an app.
I watch the vehicles all the time, in the nighttime,
I'm monitoring the vehicles, and how they are doing.
So basically, there's a vehicle there.
I'm looking at it now, it's got 86 percent charge.
It's done nearly 43 kilometres today.
And it's only using 1.09 kilowatt hours
per kilometre, which is very good.
I monitor this on the nighttime,
and just to make sure everything is fine.
And also I'm making sure the vehicles are charged,
and just making sure actually the next day everything
is gonna be fine for our customers.
- The weather has not been kind.
Is it me or is there a drop of water on the lens?
They won't let me drive a bus,
even though I've got the high-vis on.
But I'm gonna go chat to a lovely man
called James who is one of the drivers.
- So, when we took over these,
they were absolutely incredible.
The build quality, the ride for passengers, the comfort
is just amazing.
For drivers, it's the most ergonomic cab we've come across.
Everything is laid out nicely.
We've got a lovely new screens, digital displays,
new safety devices, speed warnings, collision avoidance,
cab heating, full air conditioning, and great lighting.
It's just a great experience.
- [Geoff] And then, do they handle differently?
Or is it weird that there is no sort of roar
of a diesel engine?
How does it feel?
- It was, it's different, but a good different.
There's no gear changes,
it's just a continuous drive all the way up.
It's just absolute pleasure.
- [Geoff] Colin shows us how you charge up one
of the buses.
- So basically on a nighttime,
the vehicle comes around.
As you can see, we've got five chargers.
Comes into the lane, and basically, it's very simple.
This vehicle is already on charge.
You can see the green light, it's already on charge.
Well basically, that's your charger, your charging gun,
pop it in and that's it charged.
Very simple.
- [Geoff] How long do they take to charge?
- Well, this charger is 120 kilowatts.
So, the batteries are four 22 kilowatts,
but no vehicle comes back empty.
So even, if you see they come back 20%,
120 kilowatts per hour,
three hours can be fully charged again.
So we don't have really any worries
regarding charging time.
These are smart chargers as well,
so it will only give whatever power is needed
for the vehicle.
It won't just ramp up and ramp down.
It will slowly ramp up the charge, slowly ramp down. Why?
To keep the batteries at the best health.
- It's a little bit space age, isn't it?
It's actually like, it's modern it's clean.
It's like, oh if you've not been on a new modern bus
in a while, you should go on a bus, right?
- Yep. Really were game changing,
and it's really changing how people feel about buses.
- Game changing. - Yep.
- [Geoff] Do you love buses, James?
- Well, I absolutely love them here.
- [Geoff] Why do you love buses?
- They are just fun, they're great,
and we love to drive them. (upbeat music)
- [Geoff] Next, Colin takes me for a tour
through the main workshop
where all the maintenance is done.
- [Colin] So this is a minute of us out of the workshop.
Vehicles come in from either side.
So you literally just drive straight through.
There is a lot of work that goes on in here.
But it's now spare time now, so a lot of the guys
are on their lunch break.
So it will be a bit more quieter.
(upbeat music)
- [Geoff] And then For more behind the scenes,
I took a look at the service control room.
- This is the service delivery control office.
We're based here at Riverside.
And in here, we control the whole network,
as in support, really.
Support for the drivers.
All of our depots all report through here
with any incidents or accidents on the network.
A driver might have a problem, they might have an accident.
The vehicle might break down.
They could have a problem on the vehicle
with a certain passenger.
Verbal abuse, physical abuse,
and this is the centre that they would call.
And I've got an experienced team in here
that know the network and all the areas.
And they would do their best to support.
We also keep records of all incidents out on there.
We report through a reporting system
and also report any loss mileage or gain mileage,
through our network.
There's quite a few things happening today.
We've had traffic lights for new phasing of traffic lights
being put in an area this morning.
And the phasing was incorrect
so it was causing massive delays of up to 20 minutes.
So therefore we have to interject and make sure
our buses can get around the area
rather then getting stuck in the area.
And when that happens,
we liaise with the local authorities, contractors,
et cetera to try and correct the issues
that are out there as soon as possible
so that we can all go back to normal running.
- Something's occurred to me,
electric bus charging, no internal combustion engine,
no diesel, so there's no exhaust pipe, right?
Which probably makes you friends to cyclists
because cyclists often get stuck behind buses in traffic
and now they don't have a big plume of ugh up in their face.
No exhaust.
So Dan is a about to do
the greatest thing that anyone can do with a bus in a depot.
We are gonna take it to the washer.
I mean, all buses get washed,
this nothing specific to the Voltras, we just thought
it would be a fun thing to do.
(upbeat music)
Whoa, whoa!
Spray. (laughs)
I got wet. (laughs) I was gonna call it a car wash,
obviously its called a bus wash.
The rain has stopped, but I got wet from the bus wash.
But having dried from that,
the lovely Martijn Gilbert, who is the managing
director of Go North East, has turned up to have
a chat with me.
- Well, we really, really, really like our new Voltra buses.
They've been in service for less then six months,
but already we're getting great feedback from them.
We're really, really pleased with the way
that they're operating.
And we're gonna be shortly announcing some more to come
to our operation here in Gateshead.
It's still evolving technology.
So electric cars, they're far lower mileage,
haven't got the sort of arduous duty cycles.
We started to see huge uptake of electric buses
now in London.
Thanks to the sort of distance
and terrain that they operate on and the funding regimes.
But outside of London, buses operate over far greater
duty cycles in terms of the terrain they are operating on,
the mileage range, and therefore this is still very
much emerging technology.
But we're in, right at the start of it
becoming on the path to mainstream.
Also, these vehicles are still twice the cost
of a diesel bus.
And of course, we have, like all bus operators,
been heavily investing in the fleet over recent years.
So we have quite a lot of very clean diesel buses
that have still got fair few years left in them yet.
We're very happy to share our experiences,
it's great to be talking to you today.
I know the team's been very,
very proud to take part in this as well.
So yeah, we're happy to share our experiences
and help deliver more electric buses across the U.K.
- [Geoff] Did you choose the name Voltra?
Where does the name Voltra come from?
- The name Voltra is a sort of collaborative effort
between our teams internally and our design agency,
Ray Stenning at Best Impressions.
So yes, we chose that name, a bit of a brand name.
- Did Ray do the design?
- He helped out, he's part of it, yep.
- Ray's a legend.
Nice bit of branding, Voltra.
I do love the, che-che-che,
we should make a thing out of that. That's kind of fun.
The hot news in, off the press, is that the bus,
which has been on the standby all day
is being pressed into service.
In the next hour, it needs to go down
to Newcastle city centre,
and become an active bus in service.
So, our driver, Dan, say hello to YouTube, Dan.
That's Dan, you saw him earlier.
- Hello.
- He's gonna drive it down, but on the way,
I really, I want like a hot drink, like a tea or coffee.
Can you drive, he's basically said it's okay
to drive into Newcastle, but on the way,
- Stop at Starbucks?
- We're gonna stop at Starbucks.
So I'm gonna get my own personal bus service,
is that right?
- Yeah. - Let's do that.
(bus door hissing) (upbeat music)
So we're heading out, and the most noticeable thing
is that there's no diesel engine.
So listen to how much noise there isn't.
It's just this quiet bus,
there's no (imitates diesel engine) of a diesel engine.
No fumes, just smooth electricity. It's nice.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so the bus is now coming up to,
is it Market Street, Market Square?
- Market- - Market Street.
Which is on the circular service of the 53, 54,
it's sort of like the termination point
where they start stop, and bus is gonna go into service.
Thanks, Dan.
- No worries.
- [Geoff] How much do you love buses?
- Absolutely lots.
- Do you love buses more then James?
- [Dan] Absolutely.
(both laughing)
- Zero emission power, that is it.
Thank you to Go North East, thanks guys.
Everybody that has hosted me today,
had a brilliant day in Newcastle.
Zero emissions, electric buses,
running routes 53 and 54 on the streets of Newcastle.
Love it.
Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)