45 brand new double deck electric buses have started making their way over to National Express Coventry, as part of plans to make Coventry the first ‘all-electric bus’ city by 2025. The process will take several weeks, but it means that in the meantime, vehicles will start making their way in the reverse direction, leaving the Coventry garage to replace older vehicles at garages in the West Midlands.
Keen eyed spotters will have no doubt already noticed a handful of vehicles that have transferred to Acocks Green, West Bromwich and Yardley Wood garages and already been pressed into service.
These vehicles will temporarily retain the distinctive sky blue coloured livery, until they are able to be repainted into West Midlands colours.
So don’t be at all surprised if a sky blue bus turns up on your route one day!
But the other question to be asked is what colour will these ex-Coventry vehicles end up in?
The new electric vehicles destined for Coventry are all being delivered in a ‘new’ version of the grey Platinum livery, which features red or blue banding depending on if its a West Midlands or Coventry vehicle.
Some single-deck vehicles have already been painted into this new livery design, which I have been told means they are still expected to be in active service until at least 2025.
While some might think this use of grey makes the buses look ‘dull’, I do think these recent repaints look quite smart, and in one respect it would be nice to finally have a bit of ‘consistency’ across the fleet, rather than the myriad of livery variations we currently have.
Over the next couple of years, with all these electric vehicles destined for Coventry, and around 200 brand new hydrogen buses for the West Midlands, a lot of the older fleet will be removed from service as a result.
It remains to be seen what plans National Express have for zero-emission single deck vehicles, as there will presumably still be a requirement for these, either for less busy routes or those that have to negotiate under low bridges.
So in the short term, we can expect to see a few more sky blue buses patrolling around the streets of Birmingham and the Black Country over the next few weeks, and whether they get a quick ‘red’ touch-up, or a full Platinum repaint will determine how many years those vehicles have left in them.
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