It may have already been mentioned but Tranzit has ordered 114 Optare
Metrocity buses for use in Wellington. These appear to be monocoque
chassis using Euro6 Mercedes running gear.

Brian

----- Original Message -----
From:TramsDownUnder@...
To:
Cc:
Sent:18 Oct 2017 03:01:47 +0000
Subject:[TramsDownUnder] Re: Wellington update

Trolleymotion gets straight to the point:
http://www.trolleymotion.eu/www/index.php?L=3&id=38&n_ID=2805 [1]

Wrightspeed fails to reach the mark after so much hype. A diesel
turbine engine will be doing up to 60% of the work of the engine in a
straight diesel bus, so it's little more than a diesel-electric
hybrid. Now they're considering operating it on specific routes where
the diesel doesn't have to work so hard. The discussion following this
piece is interesting. 
http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=100827 [2]

This is so far behind electric bus developments in Europe and even
Australia I don't know why they even bothered t rying to tackle it
themselves. The fact that it uses fuel at all should have disqualified
it before it was let through the gate. Patriotic promotion of NZ
ingenuity? For sure it was worth giving an inventor involved with
Tesla a go, but he failed to reach the goal. He might help make a
difference with trucks though, which is the hardest nut to crack.
I've heard that the in-motion charging, partial trolleybus test in
Prague has been deliberately timed to be run throughout winter, which
is the most challenging operating environment. The buses are
air-conditioned. A side benefit of this method, incidentally, is that
it only involves unobtrusive, straight sections of wire and removes
the need for the ugly tangles of junctions and turnouts which are the
biggest obstacle to promoting the use of trolleybuses in cities.
Tony P