(20 Feb 2014, 7:44 pm)Davey Bowyer wrote Hybrids are another kettle of fish and they are really, only designed for town and city use. Looking at the Euro 6 range, the Volvo B5TL, Cummins ISBe and the new Merc 5.1l will be able to handle city / urban routes like the 21. What I'm talking about is endurance and rural routes such as GNE's TTX and 10 and also ANE's X15, X18, X21 and X22. Them routes won't allow buses that were built for city / urban use to be used on them due to the demands required.
To be quite frank, B9TLs aren't truly designed for the demands of the X9/X10 and X15 due to the amount of non-stop running along major trunk roads. As previously discussed, the best vehicles for these routes (and I would also count the X18 in that) are Coaches rather than buses. Astromegas would be far more suited to the X9/X10 plus would last the full 15 years expected of vehicles these days on the routes (6043-8 will need pensioning off in 3-4 years time).