Notes About This Vehicle

The push to reduce exhaust emissions from vehicles, and eventually eliminate them altogether, has closely focused on buses for several years now, with regulations constantly tightening with time.

The high-profile ‘New Bus for London’ was instigated by Boris Johnson in his first campaign to become mayor of London with the first of the resulting buses commencing operation in 2012 and carrying the fleet designation of ‘LT’. They were powered by on-board batteries, topped up during operation by a diesel motor, though these buses were not alone in the growing market for hybrid technologies.

Alexander Dennis’s brand name of ‘Enviro 400’ has been in use since December 2005, with many subsequent improved evolutions of the design continuing to follow.

The double-deck 400 (single deckers being classified as ‘Enviro 200’) has been available to its customers in a variety of configurations of lengths, widths, doors, seating capacities and other features. The variant produced for Transport for London (TfL) operation can carry up to 85 passengers with 67 seated, wheelchair spaces and ramped access and exit.

The particular model depicted in this drawing exhibits obvious similarities to the earlier ‘LT’ body – a consequence of TfL requiring ownership of the basic style when it instigated the original design process. A particular characteristic is the glazed staircase on the offside, though some examples of this bus have been fitted with T-shaped advert panels, masking this feature and so allowing in less light.

Motive technology is moving apace in order to significantly reduce emissions and this all-electric BYD ADL Enviro400EV is capable of operating in London all day from one overnight charge at the garage and a range of 160 miles. There is no need for a fossil-fuelled motor at all and so no gas emissions either. Furthermore, the internal heating and cooling ‘climate system’ has zero emissions. The battery system is from BYD in China with the body manufacture and overall assembly carried out in the UK.

The first five of these buses entered service on route 43 in early July 2019. From the passengers’ point of view, in my opinion, this is a pleasant bus to travel in and better than many of recent years, where I believe standards of comfort have dropped.

To sum up, it is interesting to muse that it has taken nearly sixty years for any buses in London to achieve comfortable and purely electrically powered operation since the demise of the 72-seater trolleybus, which ran successfully between 1931 and 1962.

Notes About This Drawing

The drawing is based on a general arrangement drawing kindly provided by Alexander Dennis. This type of black & white sketch drawing, as implied by the name, is not intended to define detail but act as a specification guide to builders.

All the fine detail has been interpreted from dozens of general and close-up colour photographs taken for the purpose in July 2019 and press photographs provided by Alexander Dennis. It attempts to show the vehicle as closely as possible to how it looked when new. None of the detail can be regarded as definitive.

It should be understood that all four elevations are seen here as one would see each part of the vehicle at a truly perpendicular angle. In real life this is of course impossible.