Wrightbus has completed its first repowered truck, marking an extension of its zero-emission activities beyond the bus sector.
The Ballymena-based manufacturer, which builds around 1,000 buses each year, has been developing a repowering division in Bicester, Oxfordshire. The subsidiary, NewPower, is dedicated to converting diesel vehicles to battery-electric operation. Its Bicester site is the largest facility of its kind in the UK.
Its first truck project involved converting a 19-tonne twin-axle DAF from diesel to battery-electric operation. Engineers spent almost a year adapting the vehicle to house a 282kWh battery system, offering a stated range of up to 290km. The work includes removing the diesel engine and gearbox and replacing them with an electric powertrain, a process that the company says can be completed within four weeks.
The truck was selected because of its similarities to bus duty cycles, including predictable routes and back-to-base operations. Wrightbus reports that more than 90% of the electric driveline is shared with its existing battery-electric bus products.
Wrightbus CEO Jean-Marc Gales said:Buses have led the way in decarbonisation for the last two or three years: year-to-date sales of new buses in the UK are 75% zero-emission, but trucks are lagging way behind, with less than 1 percent of the sector switching to EV.
We believe that repowering is the simplest and most cost-effective way to ignite the market and our incredible Wrightbus engineers have more experience than anyone else in replacing internal combustion engines with electric powertrains.
All future truck conversions will be carried out at the NewPower facility in Bicester. Maintenance, and aftersales support will be delivered through a mix of mobile service engineers and a partnership with SVS, which currently supports Wrightbus’s range of zero-emission vehicles under the Rightech brand.
Jean-Marc Gales added:We’ve also partnered with a service team that understands trucks like no other, complementing our growing fleet of mobile service engineers.
Operators and fleet managers can have complete confidence that we can provide a 360-degree solution; helping bus customers adapt from diesel fleets to zero-emission fleets seamlessly, maintaining them with 98.6% uptime, and with each bus covering an average of 50,000 miles per annum.
Wrightbus is the number one zero-emissions bus maker in the UK. Two years ago, it had 200 zero emission buses on the road. Last year, the figure was over 900 and this year it will surpass 3,000.
Wrightbus currently employs more than 2,300 staff across sites in Northern Ireland, England, Germany and Malaysia. The company expects the expansion of its repowering activities to create 160 new jobs in the UK over the next two years.
The business also developed the first hydrogen double-decker bus and continues to supply both battery-electric and hydrogen vehicles to public transport operators.
