Trialling Electric Buses… Kind of

An electric bus will be out on Manx roads, but it won’t be carrying any passengers.

The Mercedes eCitaro will be used to test the potential for electric buses on Manx roads.

Isle of Man Transport said the bus’ performance will be studied to gauge its suitability for the island.

It said: ‘During its visit, the vehicle will be used to assess its suitability for the island’s terrain and public transport needs. It won’t be placed in general service, but conditions will be simulated to enable on-board equipment to gauge the impact on battery life.

However

Yes, there is always a however.

While the island is heading towards using electric buses, director of public transport Ian Bates recently told a public meeting that it simply won’t be possible to use them on a wider scale at this moment in time.

He joked that he’d ‘run out of plug sockets’ if they were rolled out in wider use.

Mr Bates said: ‘In the future though, I’d like to think it is [possible] whether it’s a perfect solution I don’t know. We have an opportunity in the near future to dip our toe in the water and have a vehicle here of different types just to map our way round our terrain and that is always the key, an electric vehicle that operates in Liverpool may not work well over here.

‘The capacity of Banks Circus, which is where the majority of vehicles are stored in Douglas, from a service provision point of view, we’d struggle to plug two more computers in, so the charge for a fleet of electric vehicles from a service provision point of view just isn’t possible at this point of time.’

DoI Minister Chris Thomas also told that meeting that ‘consultants were being procured’ as the gov seeks to cut transport emissions.