Parked in front of the city's headquarters in Orléans, the new electric bus in the Orléans network looks great.
“It looks like a tram,” laughs the vice-president of transport, Romain Roy, while visiting the vehicle, the first of an order for 29 100% electric coaches placed in 2019.
Produced by the Spanish manufacturer Irizar, it will enter service from March 1, and the 28 others will join it at the end of the year, all for a sum of 20.5 million euros.
In the meantime, the Saint-Jean-de-Braye depot, in the agglomeration, will be adapted, to install 29 chargers which will allow the batteries to be recharged in less than six hours, with 220 km of autonomy.
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This delivery was to inaugurate the transformation of the network to all-electric, a first in France.
But this choice was questioned after the municipal elections last June and the arrival at the helm of new elected officials, Serge Grouard in Orléans and Christophe Chaillou in the metropolis.
The reasons for this turnaround?
The too high cost of the equipment, and the probable arrival of new technical solutions in the years to come.
Hybrid coaches will be cheaper
The metropolis, which must urgently replace around thirty additional coaches by the end of the year, has decided, for this new order, to turn to hybrid coaches which are less expensive.
An investment of around 12 million euros has been included in the 2021 budget, and the choice of equipment should be finalized very soon.
"We are going to move towards an energy mix, we must reconcile economy and ecology, and the priority is the proper functioning of the network and the absence of delay", justifies the boss of the metropolis.
Currently, the bus fleet has 170 vehicles, 80% of which need to be renewed by the end of the mandate, and some are really starting to date, since the oldest were put into service in 1999.
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the factories of Finistère where the electric buses of the Bolloré group are built
