As Ember prepares to take delivery of the UK’s first GTe14 tri-axle coaches, routeone catches up with founders Keith and Pierce to discuss the network’s success and expansion
Fintech departees Keith Bradbury and Pierce Glennie re-defined what was possible in the passenger transport sector when they founded Ember, the ambitious Scottish scheduled coach network, in 2019.
routeone visited the pair at their Edinburgh headquarters in May last year. Since then, they have made strides by doubling the service’s passenger numbers, taking on more vehicles, and further paving the way for zero-emission, tech-driven, shared transport.
Today, Ember is in the throes of expansion, as it anticipates its first cohort of battery-electric tri-axle coaches in early 2024. A result of a joint development with Pelican Bus and Coach and Yutong, and a keen understanding of passenger needs, the vehicles promise more capacity on existing routes and the prospect of more growth for the company’s network.
With tentative hints of a national and even multinational expansion as part of their broader ambition, Keith and Pierce stand poised to further disrupt the coach industry with their tech-driven ethos and a keen grasp of operational dynamics.
Network uplift
Ember runs 14 Yutong TCe12 battery-electric coaches out of a hub in Dundee seven days a week. Charging infrastructure has been consolidated there. The vehicles are running just over 60 departures per day, clocking up 800-1,000km per day.
Another 10 TCe12s have been delivered over the last couple of months and are due to enter service on existing routes, as well as a new route out of Aberdeen, very soon. That will give the company up to 24 vehicles in service.
The GTe14s, recently announced by Pelican Bus and Coach, are set to arrive early next year, delivering what Pierce and Keith have long seen as a “somewhat obvious form factor” for increasing battery capacity and range for their fleet.
Ember recognised a tri-axle coach as a preferred platform for many trip types and as a natural evolution for its own fleet. They will offer more capacity, more luggage space, and improvement on details such as aerodynamics, turning circles and passenger conveniences. Part-funded under the existing funding Ember was awarded by the Scottish Zero Emission Bus challenge fund, the GTe14 will be Ember’s primary model of choice moving forward.
“The idea of a tri-axle battery-electric coach is something that we’ve been talking about ourselves and with Yutong for quite a long time,” Pierce explains. “So, it’s not coming out of the blue for us. It’s been something that we’ve gone deep into from the beginning of the business, in understanding not only how to use the vehicles, and how to charge the vehicles, but in understanding things like the batteries, the weight constraints, and the physical parameters where you have compromises.
“Going to a tri-axle vehicle was the obvious thing for quite a long time for us. But it takes time to see these things through, and I think Pelican and Yutong needed to see the commitment from the market to bring this about. We believe we were the only company that was going to put the volume behind it up front, not wait two-to-three years to see how it pans out, not just to give [Pelican and Yutong] that confidence, but also to work closely with them throughout that design process on making sure the layout works well, making sure Yutong has done as much as possible to optimise it.”
Working in partnership
That optimisation goes to a granular level. For example, one area of focus has been the design of the camera mirrors for the reduction of drag on high-speed operations – significantly different, Pierce explains, to camera designs where the primary purpose is to avoid collisions, such as on city buses. Another aspect was good wheelchair access, and no exterior wheelchair lift; a lift built into the centre door creates a “more comfortable environment” for wheelchair users.
Operating TCe12 coaches since 1 October 2020 on intercity routes has given Ember the deep understanding of the battery technology, and Yutong’s vehicle technology, to contribute meaningfully to those discussions. Add to that the fact that Ember is understood to be the operator of the highest-mileage battery-electric electric vehicles anywhere in the world, and it makes sense that, where compromises need to be made, Ember is keen to work through that list and find improvements.
That delivers not just an improved experience for passengers, but also a better vehicle for the operator. “That’s why we’ve been able to put more input into the process of bringing this vehicle to market,” Keith explains. “We have a much deeper understanding of the vehicles themselves.”
Ember reveals one of the positives of working with Yutong has been the latter’s pragmatic approach to barriers that had to be overcome to bring the latest generation onto the road. “That was, in a way, the more interesting part of the discussion,” Pierce says. “We understood the constraints from Yutong’s side; we understood the interest in developing it. We were able to explain what it would need to work well for our operations, and try to find that alignment, working through the design process to make sure it met that requirement.”
Ember’s network is built around what its technology currently allows, and therein lie the requirements for the GTe14. For example, Ember knows it does not need the biggest possible battery within the vehicle – batteries need to be the right size for operations based on infrastructure, and infrastructure can be customised to get the fastest possible charging. “We’re building the technology to optimise that kind of thing,” adds Pierce. “There’s a lot of back-and-forth with Yutong and others throughout this process.”
More focus needed on EV coach market?
The evolution towards using battery-electric tri-axles within Ember’s offering is an obvious improvement, argues Keith. But what is less obvious to him is why other manufacturers are not bringing similar solutions to market.
In that regard, Ember recognises that preparation for Euro 7 currently risks diverting funding, research and development from the introduction of further zero-emission coach offerings, but cannot fathom the logic behind it. “To us, it seems like an obvious misdirection,” Keith says. “Why not pile into being electric, zero-emission? There’s not going to be a Euro 8, I don’t think. If you put all of your research and development resource into zero-emission, you’re going to get a jump into where the market is ultimately going. But we don’t see that from many manufacturers – and that is a surprise to me.”
Another thing Ember highlights, having spent time with European manufacturers, is the lack of “quality of discussion” when it comes to the engineering side of the vehicles. “So much is sales driven, non-technical or low-tech technical,” Keith argues. “When trying to talk about the basics of batteries, there is not a lot of focus. We’re not trying to compare electric to diesel. We’re trying to compare a good electric coach to a better electric coach. It’s quite tedious, in ways, to have discussions where we try to persuade someone that we run on the merit of electric.
“When we’ve been out in China, talking to Yutong, we sit with engineers who understand this stuff, who know more about it, and so we’re able to push them for high-quality answers. We can get something done on the back of it. I would love to see more of the European manufacturers taking that approach.”
Tech sits in the middle
Ember is a strong believer in incremental progress, and much of the discussions on details which lead to a better passenger experience also play into a better operational experience. Tech has allowed such solutions as dynamic vehicle allocations on routes, and improved driver scheduling.
“Putting time into that and understanding how you make improvements there, and where we can make improvements, has a direct impact on the business,” Keith says. “That allows us to run more efficiently, or to use less electricity, or even do routes that are a bit longer – unlocking routes that were previously not possible. All of those things come together.”
Battery management is another part of that, allowing Ember to get longer life out its vehicles. “If you charge blindly, as fast as you possibly can, then you risk a degraded battery, and your cost is now higher than diesel,” Pierce says. “You don’t want to be replacing your coach after 700,000km. That’s just too expensive, and I think really going deep into the battery technology, that’s where the tech can help us – we’re monitoring battery temperatures 24 hours a day, we’ve got alerts if there’s something wrong so we’re not getting damage to the batteries. We’re also sharing a lot of data back and forth with Yutong and CATL, because they don’t have any examples of vehicles running at this mileage – these are believed to be the highest mileage vehicles in the world of any type using batteries.”
For Ember, that is a demonstration that it is possible – if not necessarily easy – to decarbonise, and make the switch to zero-emissions, using technology that is available today. However, coach and bus operators must adjust their mindset, and begin to consider themselves as large energy consumers. Keith highlights this as a shortfall in government, too – despite a growing number of EV fleets, the 2022 Energy Price Guarantee did not highlight bus companies as large energy consumers due to a prevailing diesel mindset.
“It’s hard but possible,” adds Pierce. “If you really focus on it and go back to first principles, and you build your business and technology around that, and you care about the detail – how to procure power, what brands you install, the type of cooling you use – in five or 10 years, a lot of these things will be figured out to the point where it’s completely seamless for someone to do it. Even then, there will be a big efficiency gain from having thought this through and done it in the most optimal way possible.”
An example of how Ember has achieved that is its use of wind turbine generated electricity for its charging hub in Dundee. “A huge amount of our power is coming from 4MW turbines on site – that cuts out the entire electricity grid,” says Keith. “I don’t think many operators are thinking about large-scale power acquisition of that type, and we know it’s not trivial, as it’s not easy to install for most depots. But as we look across the UK and we plan our route network in the coming years, and we look at where to install charging hubs across the UK, that’s where we’re looking for these types of opportunities – where we can be near power generation.
“We know that’s helpful to our business, we know what that’s worth. And where we can plan around that and utilise that, thinking about the detail and how we get maximal benefit from doing this – that’s how we’re approaching network growth, and expanding across the whole country.”
