Through the tunnel at the Very Light Rail National Innovation Centre in Dudley (2024)

Express & Star

We joined the Minister of State for Rail and HS2 on a ride along the 2.2km tunnel track in Dudley at the Very Light Rail National Innovation Centre in Dudley

Transcript

00:00 Well I was just going to say the range of this current vehicle we think can do about 35km on a charge.

00:05 So if you think in Coventry, the typical route length might be no more than 7km.

00:10 Yeah.

00:11 In any case we do two return trips.

00:13 So how long will the charge take when you're not in the car?

00:17 I'm not asking you to look at the current system.

00:19 The current system I think, can be changed depending on how long this one takes.

00:24 I don't know the definite time.

00:26 So what I've done is I've had it on charge for about an hour and a half and it's gone up to 80-90%.

00:36 Obviously you've got to depend on the weather as well.

00:38 Obviously during December we're not on the average clock to get out.

00:41 I'm actually not driving through the day and it takes about 80 times longer.

00:44 So we're talking between one and two hours?

00:46 Yeah.

00:47 My experience, obviously we're also not looking for taking to ground, we're not driving it excessively.

00:54 We're doing lots of things all the time.

00:56 So we charge for it in Canterbury.

00:58 But it's how long it's going to go because we haven't added that out.

01:03 For example, the minimum we've got, we're doing lots of things.

01:07 It's quite fast.

01:10 Sometimes it's quite impressive, but sometimes it's a bit slow.

01:13 Sometimes it's a bit slow.

01:15 But we do our own image.

01:17 The idea was that when it gets to the terminus, over the layover time, that would be sufficient to give it a use.

01:23 We wouldn't fully charge it.

01:25 You just make it a trade.

01:27 Yeah.

01:29 It's impressive.

01:31 [Horn]

01:33 Wow.

01:38 It's quite slow.

01:40 Nothing.

01:46 It's quite slow.

01:48 Yeah.

01:50 [Horn]

01:53 [Horn]

01:57 [Horn]

02:00 [Horn]

02:07 [Horn]

02:13 [Horn]

02:23 [Horn]

02:52 [Horn]

02:55 Remind me again, what's the length of this track?

03:07 It's 2.2 kilometres.

Category

Transcript

Recommended