Government agency Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW) has placed an order for 79 battery electric buses to be built by Australian manufacturer Custom Denning. The company, owned by Scott Dunn who previously ran Your Bus in the UK, has its manufacturing base in western Sydney. Its predecessor, Custom Coaches, was briefly owned by Alexander Dennis between 2012-2014.
While TfNSW will own the buses, they will be leased to operators of contracted services. Contractors can also buy their own buses, but only from a pre-approved list that meets TfNSW's requirements.
Following trial running with the State Transit Authority (STA), the Custom Denning Element was added to that list. This enabled STA to order 12 buses for use at its Waverley depot, with the first arriving in December, although their operation will transfer to the private sector in April.
Custom Denning describes the Element battery bus as capable of a range of approximately 300km. It says the bus uses solid state Lithium Metal Polymer (LMP) batteries “designed to operate in harsher climates without the need of cooling systems.” It claims a battery life of over 10 years, while the bus is designed for a 25-year life.
Barely 1% of the 8,000 buses co…
