With Arrival now in financial trouble, this article is now out of date as First Solent will receive an order from Wrightbus, for the GB Kite Electroliner BEV.
First Solent, based out of their Hoeford bus depot, have been successful in getting £6.4m of funding for new buses for a number of routes across Gosport, Fareham and Portsmouth.
The new buses from Arrival are following on from their successful roll out of electric vans and as you can see, the models already on the proving grounds are – a bit different.
I have been keeping half an eye on the tweets coming out of Arrival over the last 6 months or so. Of course, we have to take public relations and marketing with half a pinch of salt; but at the same time some of the things they are promoting look good. It is a modular bus that at the moment, can be manufactured into three lengths.
The DfT Awards
So the Department for transport awarded 12 of the 18 applications for funding. These are not all Arrival buses; there are some 943 vehicles being procured across both battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell varieties and across a number of brands. The joint bid from Portsmouth City Council and Hampshire County Council is the only one in the south, with Southampton City Council being one of the six that lost out.
First Solent’s plan
The Portsmouth City Council bid, supported by Hampshire County Council, has been granted a total of £6.4m for the infrastructure and vehicle costs. First Bus will be providing a further £7.9m in order to complete the funded order for 34 of the Arrival battery-electric single deckers.
These are planned for introduction by March 2024.
Back in August last year, the Portsmouth News were running articles on the submission which originally had the vehicles tied to two pairs of routes:
- The 9 and 9A between Fareham and Gosport, via Rowner and Stoke Road
- The 3 which run between Fareham, QA, Portsmouth City Centre, Gunwharf and Southsea; and then runs as a 1 to Fratton, Portsmouth City Centre and Gunwharf.
That would suggest to me that they are going to run (or mostly run) out of Hoeford depot, or maybe even a dedicated satellite depot.
Whether the longer term effects of the coronavirus pandemic has led to a variation of the plan remains to be seen. Thinking about the current timetables the 9 & 9A has a vehicle requirement of about 4 on weekdays, so eight vehicles (per The News) allows for failover and any ad-hoc charging requirements. I could see potential for the service to pick up as well; likewise the 1 and 3.
Testing is already ongoing…
… for the first Arrival test vehicles. Don’t ask me if they are built – look at these Twitter posts from Arrival themselves:
Now the only thing I can say about this gloriousness from the test track in Spain – I hope we don’t get those doors, I don’t think they will be fast enough to cope with a high-traffic route!