
Alexander Dennis from Larbert in Scotland is now part of the Canadian New Flyer Group based in Winnipeg in the Canadian province of Manitoba. New Flyer built its first bus 95 years ago, in 1930.
Alexander Dennis can be traced back to a company founded by brothers John and Raymond Dennis in 1895 to manufacture bicycles. Just three years later, they started producing their own motorised tricycle, and another three years later, in 1901, they also began building cars. Their family name also became the brand name.
Walter Alexander also began his business activities with bicycles, but initially as a bicycle dealer in the Scottish town of Falkirk. In 1913, he bought his first bus, a cabriolet bus, with which he offered not only regional scheduled services but also excursions. In 1922, he decided to manufacture the bodies for his buses himself. In 1995, the ‘Mayflower Corporation’ bought the bus manufacturer Alexander and in 2001 brought the manufacturer into the merged company ‘Alexander Dennis’.

In May 2019, New Flyer from Canada incorporated the British bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis into its group of companies; since then, ‘ADL’ (the common abbreviation for ‘Alexander Dennis Limited’), the world’s largest manufacturer of double-decker buses, has also been travelling outside the UK with great success. For example, in the USA, in the former British crown colony of Hong Kong, but also in continental Europe, such as the Swiss Postbus or the Berlin BVG.
It is almost marvellous how flexibly Alexander Dennis can respond to the needs of individual customers. The maximum height of four metres for motor vehicles, which applies in continental Europe, does not exist in the UK, which is why double-deckers here are usually around 4.20 metres high (up to 4.40 metres are common.) The advantage of these higher double-deckers is that they can offer comfortable walking and standing heights on both the upper and lower decks. And therefore standing room on both decks – whereas a continental European double-decker usually presents itself as a ‘seating giant’ for which standing room is a foreign concept.
Alexander Dennis has already built double-deckers for Swiss Post with a maximum height of four metres in continental Europe. And then there is the special case of the Berlin BVG. They decided on a compromise: four metres, they thought on the Spree, was a bit tight, but they didn’t want to ‘overdo it’ with the necessary special permit either – and so Berlin double-deckers have been 4.06 metres high for around 45 years (since MAN became the in-house supplier for Berlin double-deckers). It is remarkable that Alexander Dennis can realise all this from his ‘construction kit’.

New for Cambridge – with the gene for autonomous driving: the Enviro 100 AEV
Alexander Dennis is now presenting his ‘Enviro 100 AEV’ (AEV = autonomous electric vehicle). The prototype is going to the ‘Connector’ project in Cambridge, England. Here, it will initially go into ‘line-related’ test operation to gain experience with the autonomous bus. In addition, the ‘operators’, who will initially have to ride along for safety reasons, will also be trained. For safety’s sake, because – as you could see at the CES in Las Vegas – autonomous buses can already drive on their own. They just aren’t allowed to yet.

The future scheduled service will take place at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus later this year. Backed by Innovate UK, the Connector project consortium is led by the Greater Cambridge Partnership and in addition to Alexander Dennis includes Fusion Processing, IPG Automotive, dRISK and Gamma Energy. It is part funded and supported by the UK Government’s Centre for Connected & Autonomous Vehicles.
The prototype (and its future brethren) will become the property of the Mistral Group, which will lease them to the Greater Cambridge Partnership. The system for autonomous driving is called ‘Fusion Processing CAVStar®’.
Jamie Wilson, Head of Concepts and Advanced Engineering at Alexander Dennis, says: ‘We are continuing to explore use cases where autonomous buses can be used effectively and make public transport networks more flexible.’
Technical data for the Alexander Dennis Enviro 100 AEV
- – Length: 8,500 mm
- – Width: 2,350 mm
- – Height: 3,100 mm
- – Wheelbase: 4,500 mm
- – Up to 45 passengers, up to 21 seats
- – 1 wheelchair space, electric ramp at the front door
- – Electric drive: Voith MD, 250 kW
- – Cell chemistry of the batteries: Nickel-manganese-cobalt (lithium-ion), capacity depending on customer requirements 236 kW or 354 kW
- – Range with 354 kW batteries: 573 km
- – Recharging via CCS Combo plug, also via pantograph on request
- – Emission-free air conditioning with heat pump