Re: Electric bus - partial trolleybus
  prescottt

The Plzen Elektrobus project is still going as far as I know. It's basically live, in-service development testing and is one of the European projects under the Zeeus program. The state of play in the operation on this route in 2016 is well-summarised here:

https://www.skoda.cz/en/skoda-perun-electric-buses-celebrate-their-first-year-of-operation-in-pilsen/

It's running the service past where I lived in Plzen, pity I missed it by a couple of years. It would have been an interesting comparison with the Chinese BYD buses in Sydney.

The Plzen buses are completely uncompromised fully low-floor normal citybuses. The BYD bus interiors are compromised to hell to fit lots of batteries on board to give it the range (running continuously, so flash recharges aren't possible). As a result its a terrible crowd-handler even with its three doors.

The magic trick is to get the range without compromising the functionality.

There's a pair of new Australian-developed, fully low-floor 12 metre Bustech battery buses about to make an appearance in Adelaide. It's looking basically OK from photos I've seen, but seems to have sacrificed a row of seats at the back to accommodate batteries. Make a note to ride on them when they start running Mark and you'll be able to compare with the Skoda buses.

Tony P