00:00 Well, I'm here with David Pope, he's one of the directors of Pope's in Timboon and we
00:07 are actually on their electric school bus.
00:10 They're doing a two week trial and David, without taking your eyes off the road, can
00:16 you tell me a little bit about the vehicle that we're travelling in at the moment?
00:20 I'd love to Monique, I'm not able to take my eyes off the road because of the camera
00:24 here that's monitoring my eyes and if I look away it will actually tell me to concentrate
00:31 on the road again.
00:32 That's incredible!
00:33 So this is a C12E Yuton electric bus, it's a Chinese manufactured bus, it's 57 seats
00:44 and it has a fully electric system, single drive engine, single drive motor, and it's
00:53 powered by 10 individual lithium ion batteries and it's been running around the Timboon and
01:02 Caringamite region now for the last 10 days and doing school bus services and any other
01:09 little jobs that we have, just sort of testing it out and seeing if it handles our road conditions
01:13 and just the more beautiful weather that we have as part of the world too.
01:20 It's been a really, really big hit, our passengers, our kids and our buses have really loved it,
01:27 our drivers have really enjoyed it, we haven't had any range anxiety, we haven't had to worry
01:34 about charging because we have a charging facility at our workshop and so it's been
01:41 something that's a bit of a, for us, we've been able to do a fair bit of myth busting
01:46 about electric buses and how they could function and operate in this part of the world and
01:52 as far as I know Monique, this is the first electric bus to operate in a regional setting
01:59 in the south west and great south coast of Victoria, so we're pretty excited to be in
02:05 that space.
02:06 And I understand that the state government has a goal to, I guess, transition to electric
02:12 school buses at some point?
02:14 Yeah, I think it's something that's going to be happening probably sooner than we realise
02:18 and we were, we've always thought the government's target of 2025 to sort of, was a fairly ambitious
02:26 one but I think our experience through just this trial has really sort of helped shift
02:33 our understanding about what G-Wall that is.
02:36 So there's a goal for the government to have a net zero target by 2040 and a big part of
02:43 that is to ensure that buses, because they make up a big portion of what our school population
02:50 are moving to and from school in, is a net zero vehicle and this meets all of those requirements.
03:00 It's fully electric, it has a range of just under 400 kilometres, it has regenerative
03:07 braking so we can actually partially recharge the battery every time we brake and it's really
03:13 quiet, which is lovely.
03:15 It is really quiet and really smooth.
03:17 Yeah.
03:18 For you, for me it feels really smooth.
03:21 As someone who drives buses, how does it compare?
03:25 It feels like, it drives like a normal bus from my experience.
03:31 There's some subtle changes, obviously there's no, there's no transmissions and there's no
03:35 gears, so there's only one gear and it goes, like gear goes from 0 to 100 kilometres an
03:41 hour.
03:42 So there's no surging, there's no vibration, there's no noise.
03:46 The only noise that we're hearing is road noise as we're going along.
03:51 It's an air strung system so it does handle the road conditions pretty well considering
03:57 the state of the roads and it's a pretty nice little kit if I'm honest.
04:04 And there was one thing that you told me that the kids were a bit excited about, a bit of
04:08 technology that they can use themselves.
04:10 Yes, so this particular spec actually comes with USB charge points in all the seats and
04:16 all the kids were asking me yesterday if they were to plug all their phones in and the bus
04:23 was to go, the battery was to get low, would the batteries on their phone help charge the
04:28 bus?
04:29 I told them that it would, a little white lie, but they were more excited about the USB
04:33 charge than they were about anything else.
04:36 I would have believed you saying that you're going to use some of my power from my battery
04:40 too.
04:41 Well thank you, this is amazing to have a bit of a ride on this bus and so the response
04:49 from the kids, they've been asking some good questions and enjoying having a ride on it.
04:55 Absolutely, yeah we've been getting some really, really intelligent questions from our passengers
05:02 and not just, you know, there's obviously some myth busting around battery technology
05:07 more broadly, but it's really impressive to see the level of nuance and understanding
05:13 that our kids in the region have around this type of technology and what it does and what
05:19 it can make.
05:20 And the reality is it's going to be something that becomes very much the norm for them as
05:24 they grow up, so it's nice to be part of a change, part of something different.
05:30 Thank you.
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