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Roland Perry · November 20th 15, 09:26 AM posted to uk.transport.london,uk.transport.buses

In message , at 09:52:48 on Fri, 20 Nov
2015, d remarked:
I road on a Boris BUs a while back and was underwhelmed by its supposed
Hybrid-ness. I took the 125 bus yesterday which is also a hybrid but not
a routemaster and it suffered exactly the same issues - the engine went off
at each stop and about 3-4 secs after moving away from the stop on electric
power the engine came back on again and stayed on until the next stop even
in slow moving traffic. Rince and repeat. Which IMO somewhat defeats the
whole
point of having a hybrid. I think "electric assisted" would be rather closer
to the truth. In fairness it was somewhat faster up the hills than a diesel
bus but that seemed to be its only advantage.

That's pretty important on the 125 route!

Well true. Certainly the old diesel buses would crawl up the hills at less
than 20mph but they were woefully underpowered. HGVs had no problems.
However even on the flat the diesel engine in these "hybrids" is almost always
running so I really wonder just how much fuel they actually save.

If it manages to keep the engine running only at its most economic
speed, rather than constantly varying up and down, that should save
fuel.
--
Roland Perry