Auckland’s (New Zealand) effort at eco-friendly public transport has been scrapped, with the announcement that their fleet of three diesel hybrid buses have been taken off the road.

The buses were naively announced as the “future of inner-city public transport” but being a complicated hybrid dual-drivetrain system they (unsurprisingly) broke down repeatedly and have now been replaced with good(?) old 20th century technology “dino juice” diesel buses.

Each hybrid paperweight cost $560,000 – twice the price of a new diesel bus. Auckland ratepayers have met the bulk of that cost too, with the Auckland Regional Transport Authority paying $786,000 a year, Auckland City Council $40,000, and the Heart of the City business association chipping in.

Two of the three buses lie idle at the Westhaven depot of contractor NZBus. Heart of the City chief executive Alex Swney said the situation was “disappointing” and the association was reviewing the service.

“We have a reliability issue with some of these buses,” he said. “We’ve discovered, along the way, it doesn’t seem to be as durable as tried-and-true diesel.”

Because the bus route wasn’t a long one, I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t just build all-electric buses with LiFePO4 battery packs. I’ve previously priced full conversions of very large vehicles to electric-only with off-the-shelf components, so I know for a fact it could be done for under $110,000 per vehicle.

Not only would Aucklanders be better off financially, but the vehicles would have been more reliable, and much cleaner than the expensive diesel-hybrid experiment.

Therefore in a moment of lucidity, I’m going to offer my services to professionally convert one of their existing dead hybrid buses to 100% electric with a range of at least 50 kilometres per quick charge. That’s a better all-electric range than Seoul’s new electric buses can offer, and at a lower build price too.

50km is enough for several city loops before needing a quick 1 to 2 hour recharge. God knows it’ll cost a lot less than the diesel disasters currently at loose on the roads – both economically and ecologically. Just think… NZBus could be world leaders.