(14 Jul 2015, 7:52 pm)Jimmi wrote I found this bus to be a fairly smooth ride, it didn't seem as juddery as the E400's Arriva use on the 7 that I am used to. I found the bus performed okay in terms of performance however going down the A1(M) it has to be said it didn't feel that fast, don't get me wrong it wasn't slow but it didn't feel like it was thundering down here, it's possible that it could have maybe gone faster and this may have just been the speed the driver chose to drive down the A1(M). Didn't get much experience of it on hills as there actually isn't that many and when we did go up them we had roadworks and traffic so that slowed us down a bit. Overall I thought the performance was okay.
First, the vehicle should have been checked over for things like shift quality and will have a performance-optimising programme to be as economical as possible whilst having adequate performance.
It is, after all a demonstrator.
If the driver was 'on time' there would be no need to exceed an appropriate speed - arriving early simply means having to wait at the next timing point.