Another business trip brought me to the little town of Kortrijk near the French border. The place is known in the bus business only because of the Busworld - the biggest bus trade fair.
Mercedes Coach & Neoplan Skyliner
Coach of the Year: VDL Futura
I attended two days of press conferences, walked from stand to stand and gathered a lot of information on our competitors and their products. The newest trends are more and more driving into ecological friendly vehicles. Nearly all major players displayed hybrid buses (diesel-electro/ gas-electro) and there were even some prototypes of fully electrical vehicles which is the next step.
Volvo 7900 Hybrid
Mercedes BlueTec Hybrid
Solaris Urbino Electric
Golden Dragon Hybrid
Some manufacturers even offered test drives of their buses, so I got the chance to make us of my bus driver license and drove a Volvo Intercity bus and the MAN Lion's City Hybrid. The later was very fascinating as I saw immediately that the battery got charged when I braked. Then it switched automatically to electric drive for one km if I stayed below 25 km/h. If the battery got below 50% or I was driving faster the combustion engine kicked in again.
MAN Lion's Coach Hybrid
As Kortrijk is really small, we stayed all in Lille, France. Lille is a lovely and lively old city from what I saw.
Lille
Friday evening I was heading back to Brussels to catch a flight back home.
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