I took a trip down to Portsmouth, eventually, to take a look at the new Solent Electric buses that have been launched by First Solent to run on various routes in Portsmouth, Farnham and Gosport. At the moment they are largely found on services 1 and 3 serving a sort of figure of 6 route around Portsea Island and so I started my day in Cosham where I picked up a first look at the bodywork in person.
First a note of annoyance. Why in the blue-blazes does the Jetpack app refuse to accept uploads from a mobile phone? There is nothing wrong with the images, and it happened with my previous handset as well as this one!
So the first of the three electrics that I caught up with this morning was 63615, which was running the 0939 service 3 from South Parade Pier to Fareham Bus Station. Now I must admit that I like the colour scheme and how it has been applied to the Wright GB Kite Electroliner (I keep wanting to call it the KiteGB Electroliner…. as you will probably see from my new Flickr feed until I remember to go in and change it.
Now if I was being pedantic and because I am not a bus livery designer; I would probably have put the blue / yellow / dark blue triangle more at an angle and align it with the electric flash over the door.
Getting on board
Now, I was the one who chose to get a PlusBus and therefore could not run to Cosham Health Centre to get on all the way to Fareham. In fact, I probably could not run anyway, and would look like a complete idiot trying.
So plan B was to get a short trip before lunch and keep an eye on bustimes.org for later. It meant heading south towards Eastney Health Centre on a service 2 to catch up with 63630 on it’s round trip before heading to Fareham.
Although I was impressed on some of the quietness inside 63630, at the same time I could not quite get used to the underlying hum that we had at some stops. It was not at every stop, so whether this was something to do with the regenerative braking or other I am not sure. It was not as loud as some of the internal combustion engines that I have travelled on in recent weeks, but it would be something to get used to.
A nice touch is that within the USB chargers there is also a USB-C plug point to use. It was only recently that I actually had a cable that had a USB-C “male” connector at both ends so it’s not something I usually take note of; I am sure that enough people now carry a ‘C2C’ cable to make it worth installing.
It’s worth at this point saying, an hour or so after I wrote about the noise, that I just got off 63615 and the underlying noise was not as substantial when the bus was at a stand. I run it from Palmerston Road to Fratton Bridge, so I would have thought with the frequency and boarding time of the stops that we had, that I would have heard it again.
While taking the second trip, I took the time to look at the on-board information system. The first point on 63615 is that I wonder if someone has been promised the chance to peel off the sticky back screen protector at some point… it is getting a little bit frayed.
Although I like the screen and the clear layout, there are a few bits that I would say probably only annoy me and nobody else.
Firstly on this screen, it shows “17 more stops to . . . South Parade Pier – The Hard / Gunwharf” and surely this should not say SPP at all? We passed SPP quite a few stops ago. Then when standing at stops the screen changes and everything apart from the Solent logo reduces to about two-thirds of the size. Whether the design of this is to include a Bus Stopping in the same way as the Eclipse branded Streetlites do, or whether there is something otherwise blipped in the screen display software I do not know.
These are probably only minor annoyances that only annoy me though. It would not surprise me if nobody else has actually ever noticed it. I did note it on both 63615 and 63630 though, so it is likely to be something common to the batch.
The Ride
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not expecting a day one Henry Cort Way smooth experience as let’s be honest, no council can afford to fix the roads at the moment.
So I would say that the ride quality on the Electroliners are not actually that bad. I did not notice any concerning rattles on the bodywork that would make me exclaim that the ride quality is bad, however…. pulling away from stops did seem to have a bit of a kick.
This could simply be that drivers are still getting used to the vehicles and the new drivetrain. I won’t profess to being an expert in driving electric buses because I do not even hold a provisional D-licence; but it feels like when an electric train goes from brake force to power too quickly and the holding brake takes a split second too long to disengage. The acceleration felt like it was much better than say a Streetlite Max and I could compare it to some of the hybrids that I have used in Central London.
The Conclusion
I had to agree with some of the general public travelling on the buses with me today. There were many compliments for the bus to the driver about how nice and smooth it was. I have to agree with them and think that this is an improvement for regular users compared to what they are (likely) to replace. I would say though, let’s give it 12 months and see how the first entrants into service are getting on and whether they are still as rattle free as they were this week.