[Route 40] EvoSeti

30 April 2016 saw the introduction of a further new bus type onto the streets of London when London Central took over routes 35 and 40 with a batch of new MCV EvoSeti double-deckers built on the Volvo B5LH hybrid chassis. They share the routes with equally brand new AD Enviro 400MMC hybrids. EvoSeti MHV7 (BU16 OYP) is seen here on Walworth Road heading for Dulwich.

 

Not sure about these at all, personally – nothing wrong with the chassis but the body looks very generic and featureless, rather than stylish, and London Central’s choice of rock hard seats does them no favours whatsoever, certainly not when compared to the MMCs running alongside.

 

It’s suggested that Go-Ahead London has another big batch of these in the pipeline, plus some for Go South Coast on B5TLs, and whilst Go-Ahead still seem to be buying E400s, it’s Wrights who appear to be the losers, although they’re currently supplying buses to sister companies Brighton & Hove and Go Northern.

 

Whilst not surprisingly, as usual, they didn’t win any business from Stagecoach in this year’s orders, they didn’t win a great deal from First either, and of those, the handful of StreetLites are currently being delivered right now. We don’t yet know where Arriva has placed its orders for 2016/17 and in the meantime Wrights still have the final 200 New Routemasters to build for TfL, buses for Reading and London Sovereign, plus (hopefully) anything else I don’t know of! Even so, there must be something of a sense of disppointment parading around Ballymena right now.

Done