Jordan Adam
Established Member
I didn't mean 20 year old parts in that sense, more that it was a 20 year old design, my apologies. In terms of the mini/midibus sector, ADL have not produced a proper short lightweight bus like Optare have with the Solo and Wrightbus to a lesser extent with the Streetlite, what they would probably call an Enviro 100. Optare I can remember reading were not going to do anything with the Metrodecker as previous double deck efforts had not gone as well. The thing is getting back to Lothian, they have tried Wrightbus, they were big customers for over a decade, surely you would think that in order to keep Lothian, they would actually listen to their customers instead of losing orders hand over fist to ADL.
I also have to ask, how have the other types seemed to fare in Lothian's fleet other than the usual Wrightbus fare, I know the original Hybrid deckers had their issues, but how have the volvo electric buses and the streetair's (I know they are wrightbus too) been?
The 8.9 Metre Enviro200MMC would fill the Solo/StreetliteWF market, I don't think ADL have any interest in entering the community bus market so i doubt we'll see a wheel forward product anytime soon. Back in the day Alexander's did offer a ALX100 body for the Mercedes 814 chassis.
The Government (and probably the council) would rather Lothian bought ADL products as it's supporting a local company, however Lothian will probably just go with what ever product meets their criteria best at the time. Allegedly Wrightbus were not going to build a 13.4M body for the B8L chassis that Lothian were wanting whereas ADL (Who are more known for doing one off builds etc) did agree to develop such model. This is what has primarily triggered the switch.
Without sounding like i'm being too "Pro-ADL", on the whole ADL are better at listening to what operators want and are quite obviously much more happy to do bespoke designs for particular operators. Panther LE, Leopard Interurban, Plaxton Panorama, Enviro400XLB & Enviro200XLB just being some recent examples i can think of off the top of my head