Modern and electric buses

Wira Bandar PC adds eleven modern city buses to the purchase list, with Malaysian-flavoured names: a 16-seat minibus, a midibus, a 12 m bus, a double-decker and 18 m articulated buses, as diesel buses and as battery-electric ones. Bigger buses carry more people for the money; electric buses cost more to buy but less to run, and they need charging.

Buy one

1. Click one of your road depots to open the depot window, and click New Vehicles.
2. In the New Road Vehicles list the city buses come right after OpenTTD’s own buses. Click one to see what it carries, its doors and, for an electric bus, its battery.
3. Click Buy Vehicle.

To look without a depot: on the main toolbar click Road vehicles (the lorry icon; tooltip Open list of company’s road vehicles) and, in the list, Available Vehicles.

The Kenari City 12e: two doors, and a 350 kWh battery that takes it 138 tiles on a cold winter day (heating on).

The buses

Bus	From	Seats	km/h	Doors (boarding at a time)	Battery	Range when new
Tanjung Minibus	1985	16	100	1 (3)
Seri M9 Midibus	1992	40	90	2 (5)
Kenari City 12	1995	80	90	2 (7)
Merbok Twin Decker	1998	120	80	2 (7)
Kenari Bendi 18 (articulated)	2000	150	80	3 (10)
Kenari City 12e	2012	80	90	2 (7)	350 kWh	159 tiles
Tanjung e-Minibus	2015	16	100	1 (3)	110 kWh	166 tiles
Laju BRT 18e (articulated)	2015	140	100	4 (16)	500 kWh	161 tiles
Kenari Bendi 18e (articulated)	2016	140	80	3 (10)	500 kWh	156 tiles
Seri M9e Midibus	2016	40	90	2 (5)	230 kWh	153 tiles
Merbok Twin Decker E	2018	115	80	2 (7)	450 kWh	160 tiles

• From is the year a model is designed. In a game that starts before then, it comes out that year or up to about a year and a half later; in a game that starts later, it is on sale from the first day. The buses run in the temperate, sub-arctic and sub-tropical climates (not in toyland).
• Doors set how fast a bus loads: the purchase list says Doors: 2, boarding 7 passengers at a time.
• Range when new is without air-con or heating; the purchase list shows today’s range.
• The articulated buses, like all articulated road vehicles, need drive-through stops.
• Electric buses cost about 1.8 times as much to buy and about 0.6 times as much to run. Over 15 years a 12 m bus costs about the same either way, before the time an electric bus spends charging. Big buses cost more to run but less per seat, so they pay on busy lines and lose money on quiet ones.
• The buses are painted in your company colours (the body in the first, the roof and window pillars in the second). Diesel buses carry air-con units on the roof, electric ones battery packs.

How they compare with older buses

• Comfort: riders rate the air-conditioned city buses 85 for comfort and the quieter electric ones 95, against 55 for older buses (35 in the tropics), less as buses age (see passenger satisfaction).
• BRT stations: the city buses have low floors, so they load three times as fast at BRT stations, and they count for the BRT score’s level boarding (see busways and BRT).
• Contracts: towns add up to 10 quality points to your tender bids for electric lines, and give 8-year contracts instead of 5 when at least half of a line’s buses are electric (see transit authorities).
• Clean air: electric buses give off no exhaust and don’t pay to enter low-emission zones (see air pollution).

Batteries

An electric bus's details: how full its battery is, what is left of it after ageing, how far it gets, and its home depot.

• A tile counts as about 2 km: a 12 m bus uses 2.2 kWh a tile, so a new battery lasts about 150 to 170 tiles.
• Air-con and heating use more: in the sub-tropical climate 20% more all year; in the temperate climate 10% more from June to August and 15% more from December to February; in the sub-arctic climate 25% more from November to March and 5% more the rest of the year. The details window says (air-con +20%) or (heating +15%).
• Batteries fade by 2% for each year of age, down to 60% of what they held when new: the health in the details.
• Below 25% a bus heads for a depot, unless it is loading: its home depot when that is at most 48 tiles away and the battery gets it there with room to spare, otherwise any depot not far out of its way.
• A bus that runs its battery flat crawls at 15 km/h to the nearest depot, with a message (… has run its battery flat and crawls to a depot to charge).
• In a depot a bus charges and leaves at 95%. Its status reads Charging: 72%, or Waiting for a charger: 72% when all chargers are busy. How fast it charges depends on the depot’s chargers; chargers over bus stops top buses up on the way. Both are on the depots page.

Tips

• Base electric buses at a depot near their line, with charging bays, or put chargers over the line’s end stops.
• Replace diesel buses with electric ones by autoreplace: it works for the articulated buses too, and new buses start with a full battery.
• Pick the size by the line: the line window’s Vehicles leave stops … full line (see lines) tells you whether the buses are too big or too small.
• The city buses stay on sale next to the vehicles of NewGRF vehicle sets. When you load a game from before they existed, models already designed are on sale at once.

Switching it off

There is nothing to switch off: they are simply more buses to choose from. Electric buses need charging only if you buy them.

See also

• Depot yards, chargers and staff: charging, home depots and yards
• Lines: run your buses as numbered lines
• Busways and BRT: low-floor buses at BRT stations
• Your first city bus network: buy your first buses