The Harrogate Bus Company have today announced that they will trialling electric buses between Harrogate and Knaresborough.
If the trial goes well, it will be expanded to other routes within Knaresborough.
The move has been made possible as bus technology has developed from the trickle charge buses used on many Harrogate routes, to buses that can work for a day without a further charge.
Alex Hornby, CEO of Transdev, Blazefield said:
Today is very historic as we have now done 400,000 zero emission miles with our pioneering electric buses that we introduced a few years ago.
We now want to take that a step further by trialling newer technology along the Knaresborough road.
This, we hope, will mean we are doing even more zero emission miles across more of our network and to bring the technology to Knaresborough and the areas around Knaresborough.
The technology on our earlier buses is based around opportunity charging where the bus gets a trickle charge when it enters the bus station – that is actually a very efficient way of running relatively low-mileage routes where the buses can get a zap of charge each time they are at the bus station.
With the new technology we would have to do that and on a busy service, like the Knaresborough road, it means that the bus can be charged overnight and run all-day on that single overnight charge. It just allows for much easier operation.
Councillor Phil Ireland, Cabinet Member for Sustainable Transport, said:
I am responsionble for actions on reducing carbons in the district and part of that is about improving air quality in poor air quality areas.
We are hoping of getting electric buses on the Knaresborough Route and that will help improve the air quality management areas at Bond End and York Place.
The bus will start a trial from tomorrow, 8 October 2020.
