Small wonders

Minibus builders are making big strides says John Lewis

Build a minibus and you are engaged in a constant battle to keep the un-laden weight down. The more it rises, the fewer the passengers you can carry while remaining at your target gross weight; and the heavier your minibus is, the more fuel you will burn and the bigger your carbon footprint.

Un-laden weights are rising because the base vehicles are getting porkier. Features such as air bags and air-conditioning which have appeared over the years are undoubtedly desirable, but collectively they add a lot of kilos. The advent of Euro 6, which usually involves the use of AdBlue and an AdBlue reservoir, has scarcely helped.

Shaving off a kilo here and a couple of kilos there in a bid to counteract the escalating burden requires painstaking design work on the part of minibus producers. It is an exercise that it is familiar to EVM says Peter Flynn, Sales and Marketing Manager, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

It scored a recent victory in the weight stakes, he says, with the order for almost 300 school minibuses worth over £12m it received from OneBus last year.

Able to carry 12 passengers, each minibus is based on a medium-wheelbase Euro 6 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 314CDI sourced from Sheffield dealer Northside Truck and Van. All the Sprinters are equipped with seven-speed automatic gearboxes.

“We fitted each one with a lightweight composite floor, entry step and luggage rack and got rid of the sliding side door,” Peter said. “As a consequence we were able to keep the gross weight at below 3.5 tonnes – in fact we had 50kg to spare – and retain the spare wheel. [wlm_nonmember][…]

[/wlm_nonmember] [wlm_ismember] “We’ve subsequently built a long-wheelbase version with 16 passenger seats and managed to keep that at 3.8 tonnes,” he added.

EVM keeps weights under constant review. “We have to know the weight of the last millilitre of glue,” he remarked.

Sprinting ahead

One of this year’s biggest changes so far as EVM is concerned, says Peter, is the arrival of the new Sprinter; when a model is replaced then there is always the danger that stocks of the old one will run out before the new one arrives.

“We build everything on Sprinter – we’re big consumers of the 5.0 tonne chassis – and we’re trying to minimise the impact the change will have on us,” he said. At present he is confident that there will be enough of the current Sprinter chassis in the pipeline to keep EVM busy until its successor arrives.

EVM has a factory at Kilbeggan in County Westmeath in the Republic of Ireland and a UK sales and marketing operation in Crawley, West Sussex.

Peter believes that the accessible minibus market will continue to grow, a view that is clearly shared by Minibus Options.

Last year it unveiled what it says is the largest wheelchair-accessible minibus based on a panel van. Grossing at 5.0 tonnes, the 4.1m wheelbase version of the Iveco Daily 50C15 the firm has used can take no less than seven passengers in wheelchairs. It is over 7.6m long, with a substantial rear overhang.

“Previously if you wanted more than six wheelchairs on board you needed to take the coachbuilt route,” said Fred James, Sales Director at Minibus Options; not a cheap route to take for a minibus of that size.

“With our solution though we can bring this vehicle to market for less than £60,000,” he continued. “That’s a significant saving and we’re expecting strong interest.”

The Iveco Daily is proving popular as a platform for minibuses and mini and midi coaches. Able to take 16 passengers apiece, 20 wheelchair-accessible Daily 50C15s converted by Courtside Conversions have recently gone into service with Devon County Council. All van conversions, these vehicles have been designed to accommodate up to six people in wheelchairs.

Minibus Options and Courtside are both accredited to Iveco’s Busmaster programme. Emmie Birchmore, Sales and Marketing Manager at Courtside, highlights some of the benefits of van conversions as opposed to coachbuilt minibuses: “They’re significantly cheaper but essentially offer the same thing. They cost less to repair than their coachbuilt counterparts if they suffer damage,” she adds, “and the parts are readily available.”

Slim chance

Many of Courtside’s customers are community transport organisations that run services in rural areas. That can involve squeezing down narrow country lanes to reach isolated dwellings. “Van conversions are generally narrower than coachbuilt vehicles,” Emmie pointed out.

Such conversions are however constrained by the length, width, height and shape of the factory-built body shell. Coachbuilt bodies can be more flexible, and more closely tailored to the customer’s requirements.

Moving up the size and weight scale a little, Spanish coachbuilder Ferqui’s UK distributor Connaught PSV launched the Daily/Ferqui combination in Britain just over 12 months ago. Since then the firm has received orders for more than 25 and has just commissioned its own demonstrator.

Based on a 7.2-tonne Daily, it is equipped with Iveco’s increasingly popular and highly regarded eight-speed Hi-Matic automatic transmission. The Ferqui-bodied Daily midicoach can be specified with either 29 or 33 seats and is also available as a luxury-specification 25-seater.

“Daily fills a gap in the market now that Mercedes-Benz’s Vario is no longer available,” said Steve Peach, Managing Director at Connaught PSV. “The only alternative is likely to be a truck chassis grossing at anywhere from 9.0 to 12 tonnes which is going to be more expensive, heavier and less manoeuvrable in city centres. It certainly won’t be as agile around housing estates on school contracts as a Daily.”

Fuel economy is not an issue according to Steve: “We know of one operator who is using a Daily Hi-Matic on local stop-start contract work and is getting 24mpg,” he commented.

The need for operators who go into central London to switch to Euro 6 if they want to enter the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), due to be introduced by Transport for London in April 2019, is driving a lot of the demand for vehicles at present, says Steve. Nor will they be the only ones who are affected given the imminent roll-out of Clean Air Zones (CAZs) in a number of towns and cities across the UK.

One consequence is likely to be a decline in the value of second-hand Euro 4 and Euro 5 models – bad news if you want to trade one in against a new vehicle that complies with Euro 6. “Residuals will be affected,” Steve said.

There will still be an export market for older vehicles however he contends, and in the UK among operators who service contracts in rural areas far from ULEZs and CAZs.

Having Daily available is likely to be of benefit in a year when the old Sprinter departs and the new one arrives. “We’ve not been told when we can have the new chassis yet,” Steve remarked.

“We’re seeing a major shortage in supplies of the outgoing Sprinter model,” said Mark Noone, a Director of Maynooth, County Kildare, Republic of Ireland-based Brian Noone. It too is a Daily fan, and reports that models such as the 25-seater Turas 600S which use Daily as a platform are proving increasingly popular. Minis to Midis is Brian Noone’s agent on this side of the Irish Sea.

Get with the programme

A number of minibus converters work closely with light commercial vehicle manufacturers, virtually all of whom run various types of approved conversion programme.

“Courtside has been accepted by a number of approved converter schemes,” Emmie said. “Among other things they offer us interactive portals which allow us to access drawings, wiring diagrams and all sorts of technical data.”

Mathew Smith, Marketing Manager at GM Coachwork, says that it produces minibuses based on Peugeot’s Boxer window van which Peugeot classes as ‘validated conversions’. The company promotes them under the Minibus Lite banner, and the line-up includes a school minibus with seats for 15 passengers that weighs no more than 3.5 tonnes.

Mathew makes the point that GM Coachwork builds to European Whole Vehicle Type Approval (EWVTA) standards which means they have to meet demanding safety requirements. “They include a tilt test,” he remarked.

That typically makes them around £700 to £800 or so more expensive than competitor minibuses that have been subject to Individual Vehicle Approvals, he estimates. Given that there is no suggestion that the latter are in any way unsafe, price-conscious customers such as schools and charities often feel obliged to opt for them to save themselves some cash, he admits – despite the strong arguments GM Coachwork puts forward in EWVTA’s favour.

GM Coachwork also produces Boxer-based 16 passenger accessible school minibuses grossing at 4.25 tonnes and equipped with either an access ramp or an inboard passenger lift. It works closely with a number of other vehicle manufacturers including Renault, Vauxhall and Volkswagen.

Clean up your act

Iveco has been busy developing minibuses that will run on environmentally-friendly natural gas. “It remains the single most efficient technical solution available to solve pollution-related problems in urban areas,” contended Abdi Ali, Product Manager at Iveco Bus UK.

That is not the view taken by Mellor Coachcraft however. At last year’s British Commercial Vehicle Show it unveiled its electric low floor, front wheel drive Orion E minibus.

Grossing at 5.0 tonnes and with 16 passenger seats, it is fitted with lithium-ion batteries. They are said to be capable of delivering a range of approximately 100 miles between recharges in real-world conditions; that could mean fully-laden and with the Eberspächer electric heating switched on.

Regenerative braking helps to keep them topped up and Orion E can be completely recharged in as little as 100 minutes, says the manufacturer.

Mellor Coachcraft says that the batteries should last for at least five years but goes on to add that packs used in similar applications have soldiered on for seven years or more, according to industry reports.

The electric motor delivers a peak output of 158kW (212hp) with a peak torque figure of 2500Nm. EMOSS of the Netherlands has put together the electric drive system while the front end of the vehicle is derived from Fiat Professional’s Ducato.

An extra low range gear has been installed to make it easier for the driver to pull away on steep inclines. Orion E’s interior layout can be altered so that it can accommodate four people in wheelchairs.

Battery or gas-powered, minibuses that use environmentally-friendly alternative fuels look set to become more popular.

“Councils are under pressure to improve air quality and funding to accelerate this may result in us seeing an influx of vehicles powered by alternative fuels entering our workshops,” said Courtside’s Emmie. “We definitely see this as the future.”

At the same time Mellor is continuing to produce more mainstream accessible minibuses for a wide variety of customers.

Bath & North East Somerset Council has just acquired four of Mellor’s Tucana II low-floor minibuses for use on its Dial-a-Ride service as well as on home-to-school contracts. Relying on the front wheel drive Volkswagen Transporter rather than the heavier VW Crafter, they can all transport 14 seated passengers but can be reconfigured to take three seated passengers plus four in wheelchairs. A fold-out ramp at the twin rear doors allows wheelchair access to the passenger saloon. Floor height is a mere 270mm.

Transporter’s input is made up of its engine, transmission, dashboard and brakes. Tucana II’s body employs a lattice-like structure made from stainless steel with aluminium side panels and GRP mouldings. A composite floor is fitted and the bespoke trailing arm suspension at the back is coil-sprung, as are the front axles.

The seats fitted to the Bath vehicles are all Blenheim Shuffles from Phoenix and are equipped with all-age belts.

Last autumn saw Woodall Nicholson Holdings, Mellor’s parent company, acquire the entire share capital of Villmount Ltd, the holding company for accessible minibus builder Treka Bus. Mellor and Treka are continuing to operate independently, but are sharing some functions.

Investing for growth

More recently, Mellor has acquired a site next door to its Miall Street, Rochdale premises which will give it an extra 15,000 sq ft of space which it will use for manufacturing and additional office accommodation. The £1m investment which includes the purchase of the site plus the necessary upgrading and refurbishment work scheduled to be completed by June 2018, will result in the creation of two new production lines and up to 40 new jobs over the next three years.

The need for minibus builders to take weight out of their products means that suppliers of components and ancillary equipment have to make their products lighter too. That is a particular challenge for passenger lift manufacturers says Adam Beck, Managing Director at Passenger Lift Services (PLS), because lifts are being used to load increasingly-heavy electric wheelchairs: “20 years ago the safe working load of one of our lifts was 250kg,” he said; because that was all it really needed to be. “Now it’s a minimum 400kg, and 500kg for some applications,” Adam observed.

So how is PLS – part of the Mobility Networks Group – setting about cutting weight? “We’re putting our cassette-type minibus passenger lifts – we build 1,000 a year – in an aluminium rather than a steel box and that’s saving us 15kg,” he said. “We’ve had to be quite clever with the design and installation of the brackets we use though because although the aluminium we employ is good quality, it’s not aerospace quality.

“We’re making greater use of aluminium in the construction of the lift itself too,” he added. “We’re also making more use of high-tensile steel. Doing so saves weight because you can use less of it without compromising the lift’s strength and durability. We can go from thicknesses of 6mm down to 3mm or 4mm,” he said.

Using 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) has made the whole weight-saving exercise a lot easier: “We’ve been using it for quite a few things for the past five years and for everything for the past two years,” he said. “It makes it easier for us to see where the stress points are and where the strength needs to be.”

While less high-tensile steel may be needed in the construction of a passenger lift, it is pricier than its mild steel equivalent. “It’s around 25% more and as a consequence we’ve had to increase the cost of our lifts by £90,” Adam said. “We’ve managed to take around 50kg out of them over the past few years though and have got the weight down to 159kg,” he added. “We believe we can reduce that further, by around 9kg.”

Cutting weight is an ongoing battle. “Remember that around 2.5kg of a lift’s weight is accounted for by the oil it needs,” he remarked. Then there are the ancillary safety devices that have been added over the years; hand rails and lights for example.

Reverse engineering

Minibus drivers now need to be a lot more careful when they are reversing, says Adam, thanks to a somewhat tougher line that has to be taken when it comes to product safety. Back a 5.0 tonne-gross minibus into a lamp post and bash the passenger lift, then it may have to be scrapped, even though the damage may on the face of it look repairable.

The problem is the unseen harm that may have been done, he says; hairline cracks in welds, for example, which may only be spotted once the lift has been dismantled and thoroughly cleaned. The cost of doing so and putting the lift back together afterwards may mean that it is more cost effective to retire the old lift and replace it with a new one, given the safety-conscious, risk-averse times we live in.

A key trend is the move in favour of fully-automatic cassette-type lifts, Adam says: “We originally launched one back in 2007 but when the financial crisis broke in 2008 nobody wanted it,” he recalled. “All they wanted was the cheapest manual lift we could supply.”

Ten years on and fully-automatic lifts are back in vogue, especially in export markets. “Singapore won’t take anything else and a lot of people are asking us about them in the UK too,” he said.

Like PLS, Vapor Ricon Europe is making increased use of aluminium. “Doing so can take anywhere between 60kg and 90kg out of a lift’s weight,” reckoned Mike Dickinson, Sales and Marketing Executive.

Vapor Ricon’s line-up of products for minibus also includes access ramps. Not linked to the vehicle’s electric system and not requiring the level of servicing that a lift needs, they can be an attractive option. That is especially the case if the minibus is a low-floor model such as the Orion E and Tucana II referred to above – vehicles that do not require a lift to be fitted.

Deploying a ramp can be problematic if somebody has parked too close to the rear of a minibus, however, and getting a heavy wheelchair to go up one can be a challenge. “Fitting a winch is a good solution to this problem however, and fitting a ramp and a winch is cheaper than installing a passenger lift,” Mike said.

Many users of accessible minibuses are not in wheelchairs, but may have mobility challenges nevertheless. As a consequence they need to have what may be to them a daunting step up to the passenger saloon made a little easier. “In response, Courtside offers a fold-out step attached to a fold-out handrail mechanism,” said Emmie. “Furthermore, we’re one of a small number of approved VB-Airsuspension dealers in the UK and we’re finding that more and more customers are asking for front axle suspension to be fitted that can be lowered to decrease the step height,” she added. “They’re specifying rear air suspension as well to give passengers a more comfortable ride.”

Showing restraint

Companies that supply wheelchair restraint systems are changing and updating what they have to offer too, not the least of them being Unwin.

Last year it unveiled redesigned retractors with handles that allow the webbing to be tightened on both sides. The dual-handle format adds just 3mm to the overall width, it says.

Its 3m and 4m electric retractors have been given a facelift to match the company’s uniform brand design and now come with LED lights as standard. The retractor and stalk have been combined on the floor anchor fitting to maximise floor space and two stalk lengths are available: a reversible 400mm stalk for M1 and M2 vehicles and a non-reversible 265mm for M1 Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle (WAV) layouts. The company has also introduced a new Seat Locker designed to make it easier and quicker to lock a seat into place. The seat may have been removed to create more space for wheelchair users.

Unwin is of course not without its rivals. A key one is Q’Straint, which among other products offers the QRT-5 Series four-point wheelchair and occupant securing system.

Last March saw Unwin announce its acquisition of Danish company MarTech Kliplev, which produces aluminium flooring under the Spacefloor banner. Its floors are supplied fully-profiled to fit each vehicle and can be delivered either in their entirety or in two halves. Unwin is part of the Autoadapt group, which provides a variety of products to help wheelchair users lead independent lives – including wheelchair lifts.

Weighing 156kg, the 400kg-capacity BraunAbility Q-Series inboard lift is said by the manufacturer to be rattle-free when stowed and with the minibus in motion. It is also said to come with a platform that is 300% more rigid than any other platform on the market.

If that is so, then it’s good news. The last thing anybody in a wheelchair wants is to go up in the air on a platform that flaps about like a wayward sail in a howling gale.
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